David Calle

David Calle faced a financial struggle to become a teacher and was lucky enough to be able to combine university study with a teaching job in a learning support academy. Concerned about the lack of support for students outside the narrow confines of the classroom, a decade ago he uploaded a maths video to YouTube which quickly caught on. He then began uploading maths, physics, and chemistry videos, as he knew that many families couldn’t afford an academy or private tutor to bolster what is available in the traditional classroom.

Now his Unicoos website videos have been viewed by over 30 million students and surveys indicate that the site has helped students with almost every aspect of learning. It is the most important Spanish- language educational channel in its category and has 170,000 followers on Facebook. In September 2015, Unicoos was chosen by Google as the channel with the biggest social impact in Spain. His website is helping so many students who are not able to afford to go to a specialised Academy or a private tutor get the help they need outside of the classroom.

David believes that his videos are not there to replace the workings of a classroom teacher but to support it as they both have the same aim; to give the best education possible. As well as for students, Unicoos is beneficial for teachers who wish to start the process of using flipped classrooms.

Through his videos, David hopes that little by little students begin to understand what they thought impossible and begin to feel that if they work hard almost everything is possible. With 20 years of teaching under his belt, he knows firsthand their most frequent doubts, the exercises that give them the most problems and the concepts that they find hard to assimilate. In addition, as an engineer, his classes are practical and he teaches his students that everything around them is science, everything has a link to maths, physics, chemistry and technology.

Science can improve our lives, grow a country, make us better, happier, better the world we have within our reach. If we do not give students limits, if we convince them that with their capabilities and the technology that they have within their reach there are no limits, there will be nothing that can stop them.