Archive for March, 2009
Using #teach-me on Twitter for Demand Driven Teaching
Posted on 30. Mar, 2009 by Koichi.
I came across this Tweet by Kareem (yep, one of the eduFire founders!) the other day. I thought it was pretty neat, but didn’t realize the potential of it until we talked about it a little. Twitter could be the home of a small revolution! We’re talking about “Demand Driven Teaching,” here.
So, say you want to learn something new, but have no idea where to find that Esperanto teacher of your dreams. With Twitter gaining more and more popularity, there’s bound to be someone there that knows and is willing to teach you Esperanto (and even get paid for it). Here’s what you’d do, if you were a student.
Students
Say there’s something you want to learn. You would fire up your Twitter account and type out a message. Perhaps you want to learn Spanish. You would type in something like “I need to know how to buy things in Spanish for my trip to Spain next month,” then end it with the hashtags #teach-me #edufire. This will show that you want a Spanish teacher, and you want to learn it on eduFire. You will then show up in Twitter’s Search function when you look for #teach-me.
Teachers
Of course, if you’re a teacher, you can always participate in learning something new as well, but you’re probably in it to find some students! The demand is already there, which is good for you, and people are making themselves easy to find. That’s great! All you would do is do a search on Twitter for #teach-me, and then maybe add what you teach, if you want to get more specific. For example, if you typed in #teach-me spanish, you’d find all the people that mentioned #teach-me and Spanish in their Tweets. There aren’t any right now, but hopefully that’s something we can change in the coming months! I would recommend getting a Twitter application like Tweetdeck to help organize your searches and get notified of changes faster!
Use #teach-me and #edufire to Win Prizes!
In April, we’ll be giving out eduFire t-shirts and free class coupons to students who use #teach-me and #edufire in their tweets. We’ll choose a couple of random tweets, as well as a couple of tweets we just really really like. Of course, all the tweets have to be something you actually want to learn (or be a tweet “spreading the word”), otherwise it’s missing the point, so no spamming the hashtag just for the heck of it! That’s cheating!
We look forward to seeing this tweet in action! I think there’s a lot of potential here – and a lot of students and teachers will be able to find each other when this thing takes off. We definitely need your help to spread the word, or to use this hashtag yourself! Thank you everyone for your support!
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Add Your eduFire URL to JapanSoc
Posted on 25. Mar, 2009 by Koichi.
I just came across this in JapanSoc today! We love this website, so thank you for making us a part of your e-lives!
JapanSoc is a social bookmarking site a lot like Digg, but only for Japan-related things. I know there’s a lot of people learning Japanese on eduFire, so you should definitely check it out. It’s a great site and community!
Anyways, another big thank you!
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What if…
Posted on 19. Mar, 2009 by jon.
OK, I’m about to go a little out there. But a thought occurred to me as I was checking out the site tonight and seeing all sort of cool things happening ranging from lots of people Twittering about us to us being on the verge of hitting 30,000 posts in the forums to new classes in all sorts of amazing subjects ranging from social investing to holistic nutrition. It pretty much hit me straight between the eyes.
What if that moment we have all been waiting for had arrived?
Bear with me here for a minute. If you’re reading this blog it’s probably because you actually give a damn. You care about education. Maybe your education. Maybe education in general. Maybe education for people in places who weren’t quite as blessed as we are.
And you’re probably here because you think that education can be better. That you shouldn’t have to suffer for a mediocre education at a price that increases at an ever-increasing rate (health care is the only thing that has increased in price at a faster pace than tuition over the last 20 years). That no one should for that matter. That high school drop-out rates that exceed 50% in some cities in the U.S. are a national travesty. And that our inability to re-train workers being displaced by shrinking industries shouldn’t have to be an international catastrophe.
Like a lot of other people you’re waiting for a change. So let me suggest something radical. What if that moment has arrived?
Two weeks ago I was out in New York City to attend Hacking Education, an amazing event put on by Union Square Ventures, a top-tier VC behind such success stories as Etsy and Twitter. The guest list ranged from people who are about as distinguished as they come to 25 year olds with the best resume on the planet. And they all came together to discuss one thing: How to revolutionize education.
Sitting in that room that day, listening to the ideas (and contributing a few of my own!), I couldn’t help but feeling that maybe this is it. Maybe the change that people have been talking about for some long is actually happening. And certainly not at all just at a place like eduFire. But with other amazing edge startups like TeachStreet, Knewton, Smart.fm and LiveMocha.
And so while the whole world seems like it’s off it’s rocker with talks of bailout and corporate greed maybe there’s something else going on here. Something more powerful than any of us yet have realized. An opportunity to create a true system of Global Intelligence. A chance to turn teachers into rockstars.
That’s a big frickin’ opportunity. Massive. And with big opportunities come big responsibilities. Especially in times like this it’s easy to throw in the towel. To see another depressing piece of news and just say “Screw it.” Or not. Or instead to realize that we can pick ourselves up, dust ourselves and go out and build amazing stuff that will change the planet.
That’s what we try to do every day here at eduFire. Build something that will help someone. Maybe a student who is look for some extra help in an important subject. Maybe a teacher trying to earn a decent living doing what they’re most passionate about.
And we’d love to have you help us out. Because ultimately at the end of the day it’s not about us as defined by the people on our team. It’s about *us*. What we’re all building together and the legacy we’ll leave to the generations that will come after us. By supporting the platforms that are trying to change things and supporting each other you are playing a role in being a part of this change.
So I’ll leave you with a few action items before your day is done. With each one of these that you do you’re playing a role in being a part of the change:
Know someone who is studying for the GMAT? Tell them about Grockit. It’s a ridiculously cool multi-player game that helps you study for the GMAT alongside other students.
Know someone who does local (face-to-face) teaching? Have them sign up on Teachstreet (if they’re in the US) or on School of Everything (if they’re in Europe). You’ll be doing them a big favor!
Know someone who is learning a language? Tell them about Smart.fm and LiveMocha, two of the most butt-kickingest language learning sites out there.
Last but not least we’d of course love your help too. :) We’ve put together a special Spread the Word page on edufire that you will give you a bunch of ways you can help us out. We’ve also added new “Post to Twitter” and “Post to Facebook” links on all of our Classes (more details here). As I mentioned before, every little bit helps.
I’ll close by saying that I’m really, really excited to look back on this moment in 5 or 10 years and say “Wow, that was it. That was when it all started.” The collective moment that we’re sharing, one infused with hope and optimism for a future that doesn’t exist but is brighter than any we’ve ever envisioned before. That moment is perhaps the one we’ve been waiting for.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
-Lyrics from “Blackbird” by The Beatles
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Post an eduFire Class to Twitter or Facebook!
Posted on 17. Mar, 2009 by Koichi.
Sometimes it’s the small things that make me happy – in this case, doubly so! On any class page, you’ll now see some text that says “Post to Twitter / Facebook.” All you have to do is click on the social site of your choice, and we’ll automate 90% of the work for you!
Let’s take a quick look at what happens when you click on an individual site, starting with Facebook.
With Facebook, you can choose to send a message to an individual / group of friends, or just post it to your profile. Choose the image that is best associated with the class, and then post! You’ll have to be logged into your Facebook account for this to work, but otherwise it’s really easy!
Just like Facebook, you’ll have to be logged in to post to Twitter. You’ll have a chance to change the text to whatever you’d like (maybe “I’m teaching a class on…” or “I’m taking a class on…come join me!”, to name a few), then you just hit update to post it. That’s even easier than Facebook!
Thank you for sharing eduFire classes! Every time you share you’re building up the eduFire community, helping a teacher, and putting a kitten in a warm home. We really appreciate it!
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eduFire Educates Teachers and Students
Posted on 13. Mar, 2009 by Koichi.
eduFire has created two class-list pages: The eduFire Teacher Class page, and the eduFire Student Class page. Now, just to clarify, we’re not here to tell you how to teach, or how to run your classes. We do, however, want to show you how to use the tools that are available to you, and help you with marketing your classes and teaching services. The actual teaching part? That’s all up to you, of course. We’re not going to step on that. We just want to make sure everything works for you, and you know the potential of the platform before you start teaching!
When you join eduFire from now on, you’ll get links to these classes in your eduFire mail, but for you eduFire veterans, it might be worth scanning these pages every once in a while to see what’s new. It’s not just tutor and student orientations that we’re offering! There will be marketing classes as well.
If you have any suggestions or ideas for classes that you think could help you as a teacher or student, please let us know and we’ll see what we can do! We hope that these classes will help you squeeze every bit of potential out of the platform, and let you be the best possible teacher!
Once again, here’s the links: Classes for Teachers and Classes for Students
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March Madness!
Posted on 10. Mar, 2009 by Koichi.
On eduFire this month, you can take a group class and get the next one free! All you have to do is take a paid class, and then send your invoice (or paypal receipt) to ryan@edufire.com who will get a coupon back to you in return. You can do this up to two times this month, and coupons can be used on classes of equal or lesser value to the original class you took.
Tutors, be sure to tell your students to take advantage of this so they can pay for one of your classes and get the next one with you for free (you still get paid, of course!).
Students, be sure to take advantage of this offer while it lasts and tell those love-to-learn friends of yours! This is a great opportunity to get twice the learning in for half the price!
Oh, and if you want even more opportunity for free classes, be sure to follow us on Twitter and join our Facebook Page, because we’ll be giving out some over there to help promote the March Madness promotion!
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The first live video class from 30,000 feet?
Posted on 08. Mar, 2009 by jon.
Today I took Marco’s awesome class on Memory/Mneomics. Like all of the eduFire classes I’ve taken so far I really enjoyed it and learned a lot. However there was something different about this class…I was taking it from 30,000 feet. Courtesy of the fine folks at Virgin America (I highly recommend flying them whenever you can!) and the awesomeness of Gogo Inflight Internet I was taking the class from onboard the plane exactly the same as if I were sitting at home.
And then a thought occurred to me…am I the first person to take a live video class from a commercial airplane??!!
Wi-fi is just being made available on flights (Virgin just started a few months ago) and live video learning is pretty brand new as well. Hmmm, this might have been a historic event! :)
Regardless, it was pretty amazing and I thought I should capture the moment for posterity so I’ve included a short snippet of the video below. It’s not much to watch but you can see people going up and down the aisle. I didn’t capture the sound properly (all you hear is jet noise and me typing on the keyboard) but that’s me you see live with Marco on video and I could hear him fine the whole class. I could have even participated via audio if I had really wanted to annoy my seatmates. ;)
Today was just another one of a lot of “Anything is possible.” moments I’ve been experiencing lately. If we can participate in live video classes while on a cross-country flight at 30,000 feet then what can’t we do? :)
(P.S. The other fun part was that I encoded the video using HeyWatch, uploaded the video to YouTube and wrote and posted this all while still in the air. I heart the Internet! :))
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Following the Brilliant Minds Behind Hacking Education
Posted on 06. Mar, 2009 by Koichi.
An incredible event went down in New York today: the “Hacking Education Conference.” Jon was there, and even though I wasn’t, I followed it on Twitter and was able to contribute a bit from across the country. Everyone at the conference (or tweeting about it) used the hashtag #hackedu to keep track. All day, I’ve been compiling a list of all the contributors to the #hackedu conversation and wanted to share them here with you, so even after the conference is over, you can continue to see what these educational geniuses are up to. Oh, and of course, with every Twitter-related article, a shameless plug: follow us over at @edufire. [...]
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Hacking Education with #hackedu
Posted on 06. Mar, 2009 by Koichi.
You know how much we love education, and also how much we love Twitter, so when the two collide, we’ve got ourselves a funky dance. Jon Bischke (eduFire CEO, of course!) is currently attending an event called “Hacking Education” over in New York City. It’s unfortunate that all of us can’t be there, but if you’re on Twitter, you can get pretty close! There’s a ton of activity on Twitter regarding this, and all you have to do is put in the search #hackedu to get a play by play of what they’re doing.
Not only that, but as you can see in the image above, it’s one of the most popular topics right now, so check it out! I’ve found a ton of great edu-Tweeters by doing this, and have already learned a lot. Twitter truly is an amazing tool to follow conversations. Now we just need to get this conference streaming on eduFire…
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A Manifesto for EduChange on the Eve of Hacking Education
Posted on 05. Mar, 2009 by jon.
I’m currently en route to New York City for an event called Hacking Education that is being put on by the good folks at Union Square Ventures. Fred and crew have invited some of the leading thinkers, entrepreneurs and investors in the edu space for some spirited discussion about how we can revolutionize education. I’m honored to have been invited.
I have a lot of my own thoughts on the subject, some of which I’ve posted here before. I wanted to try to sum up my thoughts in a blog post. I know I’m naive and don’t understand how much of the education world work. But I guess we all to some extent. And I’m not entirely unconvinced that people who are naive won’t come up with the best solutions to the massive and mind-blowingly colossal failure that is the modern education so here goes…
A Manifesto for EduChange
#1 – Get really clear on whether you want incremental or revolutionary change. Before you get started with any initiative, start-up, investment, etc. you should think long and hard about whether you’re dealing with incrementalism or revolution. This can be described by the Peter Drucker distinction between management (”doing things right”) and leadership (”doing the right things”) and best summed up by this Russell Ackoff quote:
The righter we do the wrong thing, the wronger we become. When we make a mistake doing the wrong thing and correct it, we become wronger. When we make a mistake doing the right thing and correct it, we become righter. Therefore, it is better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right. This is very significant because almost every problem confronting our society is a result of the fact that our public policy makers are doing the wrong things and are trying to do them righter.
Every action you take to change education either helps us do the wrong thing “righter” or helps us to do the right things. Which best describes your actions?
Let’s be clear. There’s a ton of money to be made in doing the wronger things righter. Almost all of the money currently being made in the space is being made by people enabling the wronger things to be done righter. So if you want true change you are going to, at least at this moment in history, be fighting the current that will push you into working to make incrementally better a fundamentally broken system. If it’s just about the money for you then go do that. And probably stop reading here because the rest of this article is going to strike you as a lot of idealistic hot air.
But if that’s not you, please keep reading. :)
I’m not going to go much into why the current system is broken. Heroic guys like John Taylor Gatto have already devoted their lives to chronicling that. Basically it breaks down to the fact that the modern education system was originally developed to make us into good factory workers. Basically it optimizes around turning us into cogs in the wheel. It does a darn good job of that. Or at least it did until the modern form of business started melting down. And now it completely fails.
In the words of Jonathan Kozol (from the Russell Ackoff book Turning Learning Right Side Up, the most underrated book on edu revolution):
U.S. education is by no means an inept, disordered misconstruction. It is an ice-cold and superb machine. It does the job: not mine, not yours, perhaps, but that for which it was originally conceived…The first goal and primary function of the U.S. public school is not to educate good people, but good citizens….In the double talk of Schools of Education, we employ…elegant expressions like ‘the socializing function.’ The function is…: 12 years of mandatory, self-dehumanization, self-debilitation, blood loss.
We’re doing a really good job at turning out people who fall in line, can’t demonstrate creativity and view learning as compulsory. And that completely sucks. So get really, really clear on whether you want to continue to perpetuate that system or whether you want to actually change it. The latter = much, more difficult. People will call you crazy. But then again the only people crazy enough to think they can change the world…
#2 – Realize that edu revolves around credentialing and until we change that system it’s going to really, really hard to do much else. Credentialing dominates education. Want proof? See how much value people place on a degree from Yale vs. online lectures from Yale. The former has 1,000x, 10,000x, 100,000x as much economics demand right now. Sure you get other stuff from attending Yale…the network, interaction with the professors, etc. But let’s not kid ourselves, if you didn’t get a degree at the end of the day people wouldn’t doing everything in their power to get into Ivy League schools (or trying to get their kids into Ivy League schools!).
Paul Graham has some great thoughts on this. Fred Wilson is headed down a similar path it appears. Even the eduPirate is getting in on the party.
What’s needed here? Take the power out of the hands of the power brokers. Give it to the people who care about a systems that more about effectiveness than maintaining the status quo.
Can’t be done?
Bullshit. (Pardon the French…I tend to get excited about this stuff.)
Rewind 20 years and people would have said the exact same thing about software. If you take control out of the hands of a few select people at the top it will never work. We’ll have anarchy. No way could a group of hackers ever compete with companies like Microsoft. Never.
The situation isn’t identical with credentialing but it’s really darn close. It will take the same courage that people like Eric Raymond exhibited. But it’s possible. I’ll go one step further. It’s inevitable. It’s just a matter of how long we’re willing to suffer with ineptitude. We did it for a long time with software. But we moved passed it and look how much the world has changed. That’s the opportunity that exists right now in the edu space.
#3 – Move towards efficient markets. True, unfettered capitalism (not the crony capitalism that we’ve seen as of late) is the most powerful force on the planet (next to the sex drive perhaps! :)). Let’s unleash it on education. How? Do for education what companies like eBay and Etsy have done for goods market. What Mechnical Turk is doing for the market for peoples’ spare cycles. What ELance, oDesk and Guru do for service providers. Soooo many other examples.
Right now the markets in edu are horribly inefficient. Demand isn’t meeting supply in many parts of the world. People are way over-paying in some areas and others are under-charging for their services. It’s a mess. One of the things we’re trying to do at eduFire (and what others at places like Myngle, TeachStreet and WizIQ are doing) is help change this. But there’s so much more opportunity here. Clayton Christensen talks a lot about this in his book Disrupting Class. It’s well worth the read.
One of the reasons why efficient markets will rock is that they will help empower teachers to capture more of the value from the service their providing. Right now teachers take home approximately 10-20% of the revenue that their students are charged (Note: This does vary widely but for the majority of teachers are in that range). The only way that is possibly sustainable is in an inefficient market. If I’m a tutor and the only way I can find my students is to join a tutoring company that charges my students $80/hour and pays me $12/hour then that’s what I settle for. But when I can find my tutor on eduFire, craiglist or TeachStreet I’m not going to put up with that for very long.
Education is on the verge of going through Napsterization. Many people might not agree. That’s fine. People in the music biz didn’t agree 10 years ago. People in the newspaper biz didn’t agree 5 years ago. But the same forces that caused creative destruction in those industries is starting to do the same thing in edu.
#4 – Turn Teachers into Rock Stars. We’ve talked a bunch about this already on the blog so I’ll let you read posts like this one, this one and this one if you want more background. Simply put, we need much (much!) bigger incentives at the top end of the spectrum if we want to see true innovation. Look at industries like music, movies, sports. Think what people do to succeed in those industries. Read Outliers and and give a long hard think to Gladwell’s 10,000 hours concept. The Beatles at Hamburg. Tiger Woods putting for hours, even after he finishes his rounds.
Out-sized efforts come when people are seeking out-sized rewards. In education the rewards (money, fame, etc.) are extremely modest. Which is why people like Rafe Esquith who actually do put in Tiger-type hours are a complete anamoly. Read There Are No Shortcuts and then tell me if his efforts don’t actually border on insanity given the lack of rewards (and often even, unbelievably, punishment for putting in extra effort). God bless him though.
When you attach big rewards to something you’ll raise the level of competitiveness. You’ll attract in more talented people. You’ll get innovation. Sure, it’s not all about the money or fame. In fact, for many people it’s decidely not about that. It’s about appreciation they receive. It’s about their feeling of contribution. Amp up the opportunity to have those needs met in a profession and you’ll ramp up the number of people who want to enter the profession.
We don’t need more teachers. We need more talented teachers. And the only way we’ll convince the uber-talented high school student to pursue teaching instead of banking is when we raise the potential upside of entering the education field. In the words of TED curator Chris Anderson:
For one thing, the realization that today’s best teachers can become global celebrities is going to boost the caliber of those who teach. For the first time in many years it’s possible to imagine ambitious, brilliant 18-year-olds putting ‘teacher’ at the top of their career choice list. Indeed the very definition of “great teacher” will expand, as numerous others outside the profession with the ability to communicate important ideas find a new incentive to make that talent available to the world. (Link)
Turning teachers into rock stars, like the other stuff in this manifesto, isn’t going to be easy. But some people are already doing it. The top teacher for Korean-based Megastudy made millions of dollars last year. Teacher videos on sites like TeacherTube (rock it out Mr. Duey!!) and YouTube are getting hundreds of thousands of views. World-class professors are more visible than ever thanks to kick-ass services like iTunes University and Academic Earth.
We’re getting close. Long way to go. But look how far we’ve come in a short amount of time.
#5 – Recognize that arguing over offline edu vs. online edu is like arguing whether it’s better to have arms or legs. It seems like a lot of energy is being spent right now figuring out how much of education will be online or offline. That’s pointless. It’s much smarter to figure out what offline does best and what online does best. Then ruthlessly shift education in the direction of the more efficient modality.
A couple of areas that offline does best
Rich interaction between teachers and students – Say what you will about web conferencing (and we’re obviously big proponents!) there still isn’t a good substitute for in-person interaction. I’m currently listening to an awesome Berkeley class given by Steve Blank and available on Venture Hacks. Blank is a master of classroom interaction. There’s a great energy in his class, awesome banter and stuff that simply couldn’t be duplicated (at least not now in an online classroom).
Socialization – Although I pretty much hate that word I can’t think of a better alternative. Learning to interact with others is huge in the world we live in and while the online communications mechanisms provide some socialization it’s not enough. This isn’t to say that school needs to be the sole place for socialization. I actually think things like sports, drama, etc. provide more positive models of socialization and better frameworks for developing teamwork and leadership skills. Still, physical schools are still the most common place this happens.
A couple of areas that online does best
Self-paced learning – Disrupting Class is a manifesto for this. Online every student can go at their own pace in a way that simply isn’t possible in the physical world. Computer-based self-paced learning has the potential to completely revolutionize education if we approach it properly.
A Global learning environment – We’ve had classes on eduFire where more than 20 countries have been represented. The power of bringing together people into a true global classroom is staggering in its potential. Can you imagine an Iraqi child and an American child taking a world affairs class together. Do you know what that will do for the planet? I can’t even begin to imagine the impact but it’s very, very exciting. Online brings together the world in a way that offline never would be able to.
There are a ton of additional things that could go in either category. The key here is identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each and then creating a blended learning program that best leverages both. Way (way!) better than having a holy war over which form of education is “better”.
#6 – Revel in the Power of the Tail. The new edu has amazing opportunities on the tail. Here’s a good example: Cramster. My buddy Rob who started this site has done an awesome job with giving people a chance to interact with other people who are working on the exact same homework problem that they are, regardless of where that person happens to be. This is very, very big.
Take this one step further. Imagine a teacher who simply decides to focus exclusively on getting extremely good at explaining the problems in one particular chapter of a popular textbook. Let’s say that they develop movies and games and anecdotes and all sorts of stuff to make the problems in that one chapter just totally come to life. 10 years ago there was no market for that. Today, there are whiffs of a market. 10 years from now it will be really obvious that there’s a market. And that teacher will create a great livelihood by simply getting incredibly good at being able to teach a micr0-chunk of content and then scaling that teaching across millions of people.
But now here’s where it gets really fun. If one teacher can support himself or herself teaching the problems out of one chapter of one textbook then it’s easy to imagine thousands of teachers doing the same thing. And now as a student it gets really good. Because for every subject/textbook chapter, etc. you have someone who is world-class available to teach you. It would be like going to school and having a teacher in every subject who’s as knowledgable and passionate as Al Gore is teaching about climate change or Richard Feynman is explaining physics.
Some start-ups are already heading in this direction. Besides Cramster, it seems like Knewton and Brightstorm are planting seeds for platform that could serve the tail very well. And there’s a ton of opportunity there.
#7 – For goodness sake, leverage the power of “students teaching students” already! Who came up with this arcane notion that all the knowledge is in the teacher’s head and can only be transmitted in a one-way direction from teacher to student? That’s simply a perpetuation of the system’s politically autocratic beginnings. As Ackoff puts it in Turning Learning Right Side Up:
There is a well-defined hierarchy, a clear chain of command. Each level has almost unlimited control over the next level below, the student being at the bottom of the heap. There is no regular means of appeal, only the hope of moving someone higher up by playing on their good will.
Time to get rid of that and the best way to start is by empowering students to teach each other. It’s fairly well-estabished that the best way to understand something is to teach it to others. So why aren’t we doing that? There are some cool things happening online in this area, most notably Grockit. But we an awful long way to go here.
What’s great about “students teaching students” though is that while it increases retention for the students it dramatically reduces the pressure on the teacher. Freed up of the constraints of being the sole vessel for the transfer of knowledge the teacher know has the ability to use their energy to augment the learning process. Take a look at this video of “power teaching” to see what I’m talking about.
Like most of the stuff in this list, student-to-student learning isn’t applicable in every situation. However, it’s relevant in a lot more situations than it is currently used in and the latent potential of that is immense.
#8 – Design it from the ground up to be adaptable. I’m rolling into 3,000 words here so I’m going to end with this one. No true revolution can occur unless the new system that is being built is being built for change. Peter Drucker has a great quote in the Tom Peters book Re-Imagine:
My ancestors were printers in Amsterdam from 1510 or so until 1750, and during that entire time they didn’t have to learn anything new…Knowledge becomes obsolete incredibly fast. The continuing professional education of adults is the No. 1 industry in the next 30 years.
And no doubt you’ve all seen this video by now:
We’re using outdated methods to teach irrelvant skills but our schools and training institutions can’t keep up with the pace of change we’re witnessing in society.
Wanna guess what the most in-demand skill on oDesk was in 2008?
How many people are teaching kids how to use WordPress effectively?
We need to re-think how we teach and learn in an enviroment where the only constant is change.
There’s so much more I could say but hopefully (if you’ve made it this far!) you’ve got a better grasp of what I think could be done to shake the foundations of the education industry. Which, by the way, is a massive freaking industry…$2 trillion globally by many accounts. And I can’t think of an industry more responsible for the health of the world, or lack thereof, than education.
We stand at a really unique point in history. As I mentioned in my personal blog earlier in the week, I think we have a real and unique opportunity to re-make entire industries. I can’t think of a more powerful opportunity on the planet today than the opportunity to re-make education.
