The eduFire Blog » New Schools

Hacking Education with #hackedu

Koichi — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 17:54:06 +0000

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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Sugata Mitra: Can kids teach themselves?

jon — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 04:06:16 +0000

If you doubt the power of technology in education (highly unlikely if you’re ready this blog!) then watch this video:

Mind-blowing to think what could happen if we properly harness all the fantastic stuff we’re creating and bring it to the world.

(Thanks to Veer and Kareem for the tip.)

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TeachStreet Expands to the Bay Area

Koichi — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:08:42 +0000

Our friends over at TeachStreet are probably celebrating today. They’ve just announced their expansion into the Bay Area, and added over 65,000 classes, coaches, and experts to their already robust database. That’s a big number! Congratulations, TeachStreet!

So why do we love TeachStreet so much? I feel like TeachStreet and eduFire have similar goals (to change the way people think about education). We go about accomplishing these goal in different ways, which is what I think makes us such a great pair! TeachStreet offers tools to teachers and students to help them connect. What makes them different from us is that they like to do things in person. If you want to find a class on Japanese, Yoga, Photoshop, or anything else, TeachStreet helps you find someone in your local area to teach it to you. TeachStreet provides a great, free service, and you should definitely check it out if you live in the San Fransisco, Portland, or Seattle areas.

Did you know that you can add a TeachStreet link on your eduFire profile? If you edit your profile, it’s one of the URL options that’s listed there. If you’re a tutor, and you live in one of the areas listed above, definitely give TeachStreet a try if you’re looking to find some face-to-face students. If you’re a student, and you want to find yourself a live teacher, there’s that option as well, too!

Anyways, we just wanted to congratulate TeachStreet on it’s recent expansion, and all it has done to empower teachers and students! Keep up the great work!

[TeachStreet]

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6 Reasons Why Online Education Will Boom in the Bust

jon — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:12:27 +0000

Recently we’ve all been bombarded with news about the financial crisis and dire warnings about what’s ahead for the economy. As of this writing, InTrade has the likelihood that the US economy will go into recession in 2008 at 45%. These odds jump to almost 80% in 2009. Companies are hunkering down for what could be an extended period of decreased consumer spending, reduced access to capital and downtrodden financial markets.

So what will happen to online education over the next few years? Admittedly, I’ve *very* biased but I think the next few years could actually bring a boom in online education. For the following six reasons it seems like online education could indeed be counter-cyclical and steal market share from traditional education in the near future. Here’s why:

#1 – Many people will re-tool in a downturn. When times are good many people tend to be very focused on making money. When times turn bad then the focus is not so much on “How much can I make?” but rather on how “How do I make sure I’m not out of work?” Re-tooling, getting a certification, etc. are things that now become even more important. And for those who do loose their job, the focus often shifts to finding a new job or even on finding a new career. Education lies at the center of all of this attention and in a world that is changing as fast as ours, people who have often been doing pretty much the same work for years now are faced with the proposition of having to do a lot of learning again. This of course isn’t necessarily a bad thing as it can be a great chance to focus on what’s truly important (as happened a lot after 09/11).

#2 – In a down economy, many people will head back to grad school. During the go-go years of the dot com bubble many people left business school early to pursue start-ups. After the bust people who were laid off tended to “hide out” in school for a few years. This is pretty natural. The opportunity cost associated with going to school (in terms of missed opportunities) is much higher when times are good than when times are bad. It won’t surprise me at all to see record numbers of people pursue graduate degrees in coming years. If that’s the case, online education that focuses on preparing people for graduate school entrance exams should be a very hot area.

#3 – People will be more price sensitive in the coming years. When times are good a lot of money gets thrown around at stuff with less concern for what it costs. However, when times get tight a lot more thought goes into spending patterns. Online education tends to be a fair amount cheaper than traditional education, in large part because of decreased overhead and less inefficiency. For example, at eduFire, private tutoring tends to run at 25-50% the cost of private tutoring at brick-and-mortar companies, even though in many cases the tutors are the same ones who’ve taught at traditional education companies in the past.

#4 – Rising gas prices become more of a concern. Similar to the previous reason, people are increasingly likely to focus on gas prices when considering decisions. If someone is consider a class at a tutoring company or a local community college and it’s a 10 mile commute each way that’s like a $4-$6 surcharge in gas prices alone for each class. All of this adds up and the cumulative impact of a weak economy and rising energy prices is already starting to cause an increase in the cocooning effect. That cocooning effect should drive increased demand for online education.

#5 – Larger number of highly-qualified teachers. There is likely to be an increased number of people looking for full-time or part-time employment in the coming months. Many of them may turn to online education as a means to supplement their income. This will likely mean some highly-qualified teachers who will be available here and on other online education sites. An increase in the number of teachers will likely result in a better experience for students looking to learn online.

#6 – Relative strength in foreign economics and/or weakness in the dollar will allow the US to export education to the rest of the world. This is fairly US-centric in nature but a weaker US economy relative to the rest of the world plus a depreciating dollar could mean a lot of American teachers will have an easier time finding students in other parts of the world. For example, in the last year, the US Dollar has fallen almost 20% relative to the Japanese Yen. This means that a Japanese student looking to take a class or tutoring session from an American instructor now finds it almost 20% cheaper. While these changes have negative ramifications as well (a declining US Dollars means Americans must pay more on a relative basis for foreign goods), it could help to spur demand for American classes and tutors.

Of course, if the financial crisis gets too bad it won’t be good for anyone. But at least when it comes to online education it’s very likely that the trends listed above will keep the industry strong despite a downturn. It will certainly be interesting to see how this all plays out.

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What happens when classrooms are replaced by learning ecologies?

reg — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:45:13 +0000

Moved today by this post over on the 21st Century Learning blog.

Why do we need to understand the shift in education? Because they can learn and teach themselves anything they want to know without leaving home. When you move from a classroom structure to a community structure- the students become teachers AND learners and so do we. 21st Century teaching and learning is about shifting classrooms to learning ecologies.

Sheryl goes on to provide a few emphatic examples of this including the following video…made by a 7th grader. :)

Anyone can be a teacher and anyone can be a student…indeed that’s the world we’re moving into. A wealth of knowledge at your fingertips? Yup, we’re hoping to be part of the infrastructure that is making this happen.

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The #1 Reason Why Traditional Education Companies are in Trouble

reg — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:25:17 +0000

The #1 reason why I think that many “traditional” education companies (e.g., tutoring companies) are going to be in trouble in the coming years can be summed up as follows:

Compare how traditional educational companies treat their teachers with how Google treats their engineers.

If you’re an engineer at Google, you’re a rock star. You have fabulous amenities, an opportunity to be creative and devote time to interesting projects and most importantly, you’re treated with utmost respect.

Now compare that with how most (certainly not all) traditional educational companies treat their teachers. Some are worse than others but the majority of people you talk to who have worked for tutoring companies will complain of low pay, lack of appreciation and stifling working conditions. My most vivid memory of time teaching for Kaplan was when I shared some links to helpful study websites with my students and was chastised by my supervisor because I was sharing links that weren’t Kaplan.com.

The reason why this stark difference is so important is that Google gets that attracting top talent is one of the most important forms of competitive advantage in the modern era, perhaps the most important form. Tutoring companies don’t typically think that way. They usually tend to think that it’s “the system” or “their brand” (more here on why it’s probably not that). Sure, in the short term those things have power but over the long haul if traditional educational companies lose the majority of their top talent they are going to have a difficult, if not impossible, time competing.

If you believe teachers are rock stars you treat them one way. If you believe that teacher are expendable cogs in an omnipotent machine then you treat them very differently. I’d love to think that most education companies treat them like the former but sadly the evidence just doesn’t bear that out. Which is why many teachers leave those companies and go on to do other really cool things.

At eduFire we believe in treating teachers like rock stars. It’s in our ethos and we’re excited to continue to create opportunities for teacherpreneurs around the globe. We think that one of the reasons why over 1,000 tutors have signed up in the short time since we’ve launched is because they’re looking for something different. They’re looking to feel appreciated. And we’re in turn excited to be working with such a smart, creative and forward-thinking group of people who deserve every bit of the appreciation they expect.

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Music and Life

jon — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 18:00:13 +0000

Can’t believe I haven’t posted this to our blog yet. I’ve seen it before but Obi sent it to me recently and I think it rings true for what we’re doing at eduFire. So much of traditional education is about reaching a destination (passing a test, getting a degree, etc.). It’s gone so far that many (most?) people have lost out on the joy of learning for learning’s sake. I’m all for education as a means of professional development and “getting ahead” but one of the reasons I’m really excited about eduFire is because we’re going to help show many people how much fun it can be to just learn. Stay tuned!

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Seth Godin on Chaos Theory

jon — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 17:18:22 +0000

Got goosebumps reading this Seth Godin post last night. He is describing exactly what we’re building at eduFire.

Education is largely handmade, not mass produced. That makes it difficult to share best practices and to figure out how to turn mediocre classrooms into great ones. Maybe, just maybe, video of the best teaching will do as much to encourage some teachers as the cell phone video does to discourage the rest of us.

Um, can I get a hell yeah?!!!

While the classroom videos in the post he links to are tough to watch they are a stark reminder of all the work that needs to be done. Optimal learning and creativity simply cannot take place in a fear-based environment. It’s going to be incredibly fun to work with others to radically transform this industry. It won’t happen overnight but as it starts to change it’s going to be amazing to watch.

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Welcome to Online Learning circa 2002

jon — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 01:59:31 +0000

A few people sent me this link from NPR:

Online Courses Catch On in U.S. Colleges

It’s cool but at the same time there are at least 3 things about this story that make me feel like it was written in 2002. In other words, seismic shifts that are taking place elsewhere on the Web that aren’t touching the world of online education (at least as mentioned in the story).

Post what you think they are in the comments. Anyone who gets any of them will get a brand spanking new EduFire t-shirt when we get around to making them. :)

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10Things.tv – Micro-learning is here

jon — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 18:00:34 +0000

A while back I blogged about micro-learning which I think is going to be an increasingly strong trend in the world of education. In short, micro-learning is breaking up learning modules into bite-sized chunks that can consumed in isolation or in series. It’s respecting the fact that people are busier than ever and that the population is becoming more ADD-ish in its media consumption habits.

To that extent, we’ve recently launched a side project called 10Things.tv. It’s a series of short instructional videos for learning languages. The initial videos teach Spanish but eventually we’ll be adding other languages. It’s a great way to pick up a bit of Spanish before you head off on a trip or to whet your appetite to learn more. Take a look at videos below and if you like them visit 10Things.tv for more.

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