The eduFire Blog » Revolution

What is the Future of Teaching?

jon — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:29:16 +0000

Great article from Josh Catone in Mashable yesterday entitled What is the Future of Teaching? I posted a follow-up in the comments and wanted to share. Here it is. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments!

Great article Josh. I’ve spent *tons* of time thinking about this over the last decade. Here’s my quick take:

#1 – Online vs traditional learning can be viewed across three vectors: Cost, convenience and quality.

There is little doubt that its cheaper to run classes online (no facilities costs, less personnel required, etc.). There is also little doubt that online classes are more convenient. You can take them from home, office, etc. and likely have a more flexible schedule than traditional classes offer.

However, the big question is around quality. I’d offer (and this is coming from the CEO of a company that specializes in online classes) that on quality alone traditional classes are still better. But what’s interesting is that the gap is narrowing quickly. It’s not at all unrealistic to envision a future in which the online class is significantly more engaging and effective than its offline equivalent. If that happens then guess what? Game over for the traditional class model (after all, why would you choose something that is more costly, less convenient and lower quality?).

#2 – I do disagree with the notion that the price of education is going to zero.

I believe in The Grand Unified Theory of the Economics of Free (I think that’s the right title…it’s a TechDirt post from back in the day) which states while abundant resources will trend towards zero (their marginal cost), the spreading of those very same resources will drive up the prices for scarce resources. In music, a band gives away MP3s (abundant resource) and makes more money from concert tickets. MIT gives away OCW material but more people hear about MIT (especially in developing countries) which leads to more demand for MIT degrees.

The abundant resources (e.g., textbooks, audio/video recordings of lectures, etc.) will tend towards free. That makes total sense. What will not tend towards free will be things like the value of a scarce degree (Ivy League degrees are likely to become valuable not less), a teacher’s time or the attention of the students. To say that education will be free assumes that the marginal costs of those things are zero which is almost certainly not true. Sure you’ll always have people who might volunteer to teach a free class (just like a band might play a benefit concert for free) but that doesn’t mean this will happen at scale anymore than any other industry can expect to draw talented people in if they aren’t being paid.

#3 – Flat out, we need better tools.

And to get better tools we need more innovation and investment. While education is a huge industry ($2 trillion by many estimates) I think it’s safe to say that social gaming has received more investment in recent years despite being a much (much!) smaller industry. The problem is that while it’s easy to look at a social game and figure out how to squeeze out some short-term cash it is much (much!) harder to look at a big industry with huge structural problems and figure out how to improve it. And improving it likely will take a lot of time and patience. It won’t be a “Build one thing in year 0. Have billion dollar company in year 3.” scenario.

But there are a lot of great people trying. Check out places like 2tor, Academic Earth, Cramster, Grockit, Knewton, LiveMocha, PrepMe, School of Everything, Smart.fm, TeachStreet, Tutor.com, Tutorvista and a whole host of others that I’m sure I’m forgetting to see what I’m talking about.

Oh, and of course us. :) (http://www.edufire.com)

Related posts:

Using #teach-me on Twitter for Demand Driven Teaching

Koichi — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:00:32 +0000

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!

Related posts:

Following the Brilliant Minds Behind Hacking Education

Koichi — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 05:59:04 +0000

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.

Who’s Tweeting #hackedu? A list of “Education on Twitter”

This is just a list of people who have contributed to the “Hacking Education” discussion on Twitter (will be adding more as they come along, to a certain extent). I don’t know exactly who was at this conference, but honestly, it doesn’t matter. Everyone listed below is passionate about changing education for the better, so if you are as well, this is a great list of people to follow! If they have a blog, I linked it under their name.

If you’re looking for a good recap on the event, AVC does a great overview with some great points as well (my favorite is number 11). My congrats and encouragement to everyone out there hacking education! I’m looking forward to building change and a great future for the system!

Related posts:

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…

Related posts:

Can Anyone Teach?

Koichi — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 07:15:09 +0000

In short, I think the answer is yes, but I really look forward to seeing what you have to say as well, in the comments! This can be a touchy subject – I’ve seen lots of debate go back and forth on this. I’ve seen “old school” (haha! pun!) teachers argue that in order to become a teacher, you must go to teacher’s school, and you must get a masters in teaching. If you don’t, then you don’t have the know-how or experience to become a teacher. On the other hand, I’ve seen others argue that anyone can teach. It’s not something you necessarily have to go to school for, and everyone has something that they can share with the world. Everyone has something that they are an “expert” in. I think they’re both wrong.

Anyone can Teach

To put it literally, anyone can teach. It’s a fact. Not everyone, however, can teach well. But, it’s not always a matter of experience. I have had so many terrible teachers who were longtime veterans. They knew all the ins-and-outs. They’ve had 20 years to “perfect” their lesson plans. And yet, they were uninspiring, unpassionate, and I didn’t learn very much at all. I didn’t want to learn. When I think back to my teachers, the best teachers weren’t necessarily good because they had been doing it for a long time. My best teachers were good because they were passionate about teaching. I’ve had awesome teachers in their twenties, and awesome teachers in their fifties. Despite their complete difference in experience and age, they were both great teachers… because they loved what they were doing, and it showed.

Not Everyone Can Teach

Unfortunately, not everyone is going to be a good teacher. I do think, however, that there are a lot of people out there who have no idea that they’d be a great teacher. A ton of people who have never thought about teaching, but would be fantastic at it nonetheless. These people didn’t get their Masters in Teaching. They are just passionate about something, and through that passion, could do an amazing job sharing it with the world. I think everyone knows someone like this. Someone that you wish would share everything they know with the world, because you know there’d be a line of people waiting to listen.

That’s why I love eduFire. It’s an open platform, which means anyone can join and start teaching right away. There’s no screening process, and anyone, no matter their location or experience, can be a part of our teaching community. If there was a screening process, there’s no way I would have gotten in. I have no real teaching experience, and have been learning along the way (and I think… well, I hope, my students are enjoying their classes). Great teachers will rise to the top, and not so good teachers won’t. Some veterans of teaching might have the advantage, and some might not. Some greenhorn teachers will hit superstar teaching status, because they inspire others to learn. I haven’t seen any correlation between experience making a teacher good. The only thing I’ve seen so far is passion, and teachers who can stay passionate their entire teaching career are going to climb to the top. If I were to put it into math terms (which I’m really really bad at, because I’ve had a lot of terrible, but very experienced math teachers…)

Experience /= Win

Passion = Win

Experience + Passion = Double Win

So what do you think? Am I just blabbering on like an old fool? Like I said, I’m really looking forward to your perspectives in the comments below!

Related posts:

What will change everything.

jon — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 19:38:13 +0000

Every year an organization called The World Question Center posts a question to society’s leading thinkers. It’s known as the “Edge Question” and it’s one of my favorite things to read. This year’s question in particular is awesome:

What will change everything?

The sub-question was “What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?” and the answers are fascinating to read. One in particular that struck me was the answer of Chris Anderson, Curator of the famous TED Conference. His answer? A Web-Powered Revolution in Teaching. And if you’re a long-time reader of this blog you’ll notice that it sounds very familiar.

Consider this passage:

Five years ago, an amazing teacher or professor with the ability to truly catalyze the lives of his or her students could realistically hope to impact maybe 100 people each year. Today that same teacher can have their words spread on video to millions of eager students.

Compare with this blog post on eduFire from back in April of 2007:

Entrepreneurial Education refers to opportunities for scale similar to other industries. Top performers in other industries reach thousands or millions of people with their “content.” Top performers in education often reach only hundreds or dozens of people each year. In a world of Entrepreneurial Education that is ludicrous.

Here’s another passage from Chris’s answer:

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.

We’ve been talking about the concept of rock star teachers for some time now in blog posts like this one, this one and this one. In fact we’re even hosting an eduFire virtual conference this weekend titled Turning Teaching into Rockstars. Assuming you won’t actually be at TED you should attend! :)

Finally, one more piece of evidence that our frequencies are aligned:

But a young girl born in Africa today will probably have access in 10 years’ time to a cell phone with a high-resolution screen, a web connection, and more power than the computer you own today. We can imagine her obtaining face-to-face insight and encouragement from her choice of the world’s great teachers. She will get a chance to be what she can be. And she might just end up being the person who saves the planet for our grandchildren.

If you’ve read our very first blog post this might ring a bell:

Just a decade ago it was hard to imagine a child in Africa growing up listening to the best lecturers from Harvard and MIT. Today, with things like the sub-$100 laptop and mesh networking we’re almost there. The power of that idea is immense.

The next Einstein might be growing up in Madagascar right now.

The next Oprah might be a kindergarten girl in Sierra Leone.

I hope Chris is right. And I think he is. There are times when what we’re doing at eduFire feels like Woodstock. It’s like everyone is looking around at each other and realizing that this could change everything. And of course not just what we’re doing. What other kick-ass startups like Grockit and LiveMocha and TeachStreet and WizIQ and countless others are doing.

I’m reading Banker to the Poor right now and to be completely honest, it’s setting my hair on fire. What Yunus did was go into an area of the world where there was poverty and oppression and little hope and through his innovation helped to empower thousands and lift them out of poverty. Education offers the same opportunities. It already has lifted millions out of poverty in places like Singapore and India. And we’re just getting started.

It’s why we do what we do. Because we wholeheartedly agree with Chris. If we’re right, this will change everything.

Related posts:

Jam Today? / When the Education Bubble Finally Pops

jon — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 06:10:01 +0000

Jam Today? / When the Education Bubble Finally Pops.

Must-read blog post about the possible impending bubble in education. Plus there’s a plug for eduFire Classes. Each day that goes by I see the opportunity for start-ups to fundamentally change how people around the planet learn. It’s going to be incredibly fun to be a part of that change.

Thanks for the mention James!

Related posts:

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.

Related posts:

The Launch of MySpace Music and What It Means to the Future of Education

reg — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:23:32 +0000

Last night at Midnight MySpace launched MySpace Music which allows you to, for free, stream millions of tracks from all sorts of artists (e.g., I’m streaming Prince while writing this). It’s perhaps the most ambitious step in the “Content is Free” direction since YouTube starting getting traction a few years back. So I know what you’re about to ask…

What the heck does this have to do with eduFire and education?

I’ll offer a simple answer: Everything.

For decades music has been predicated on you having to pay to access content. Sure you could listen to the radio for free but if you wanted to listen to something of your choice then you had to buy the record, 8-track, CD, mp3, etc.

Now, with sites like Imeem and MySpace Music, you can now listen for free. That’s big.

For decades education has been predicated on you having to pay to access content. In the case of education the content came in the form of university lectures and what not. You paid big bucks for the privilege of consuming this “content”.

Now, with stuff like iTunes U you can watch this content for free. That’s big.

These changes have far-reaching implications. More far-reaching than just about anybody realizes.

So as the price point for content falls closer to zero (ultimately all music will be available for free) does that mean content has no value?

Actually, it’s more likely to be just the opposite of that.

Huh?

Just because you’re not charging for content doesn’t make it lacks value. What MySpace has done in one fell swoop is just re-focused the Attention Spotlight back on itself. It may never be your social network of choice but it just became the best (if not perfect) place on the Web to consume music. So if you’re a music lover you are probably going to find yourself giving more of your attention to MySpace in the coming months than you did in the past.

And that gives MySpace an incredibly competitive advantage in terms of creating community around content, attractive advertisers and building its brand.

So again…how does apply to education?

Right now most of the folks in the education space are still trying to build the best silos. Instead, they should be viewing the industry the same way that MySpace is viewing the music biz. By leveraging the power of “free” content. By building brands around their All Stars. By creating fantastic user experiences that leverage th “3 Cs” of context (Why am I here?), content (What am I doing?) and community (Who am I doing it with?).

MySpace gets this. They are taking something that is free and creating $2 billion worth of value from it. If that ain’t alchemy I’m not sure what is.

Silos seems to work for decades and alternative strategies seems entirely counter-intuitive. And then someone comes in and drops a bomb and in the matter of a short decade your industry has been entirely transformed. And music isn’t the only industry that’s being radically transformed right now.

A lot of people don’t think this applies to education. A lot of people didn’t think it would apply to the music industry either. But when these changes happen they tend to happen faster than almost anyone realizes. And my sense is that they’re about to happen pretty fast in education.

Related posts:

Power to the People

reg — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 03:06:39 +0000

Union Square Ventures is high on my list of venture capital firms I respect most. They’ve invested in a bunch of my favorite companies including Disqus, Etsy and Twitter (and I’m about to be a Tumblr user for my personal blog which I’m highly looking forward to!). This weekend there was a good article about Union Square posted in the New York Times (HT: Kareem) in which they talked about education as a sector that hadn’t been touched in a big way by web services:

The partners said they planned to look at how Web services might transform sectors not yet touched in a big way, like education and the environment.

We at eduFire couldn’t agree more. Then I hopped over to their blog and read this cool post entitled “Power to the People“.

Lectures could historically only be heard at the time and place of the lecture. Now we can watch a video recording of a lecture over the web. A tutor had to be in the same place to look at the work of a student and provide feedback…With access to course materials, ability to watch lectures and even tutor at a distance, we believe that we are only at the beginning of the web’s impact on the fundamental structure of education. We expect much of that change to be away from the existing educational institutions and towards empowering individuals and newly-formed groups.

Um, amen.

What Union Square and some other smart VCs get is that the fundamental organizing structure in education could likely change very radically in coming years. For starters, schools have done a tremendously ineffective job at properly organizing education. Tons of good teachers quit. The ones who stay are hampered by stifling bureaucracy.

But schools don’t need to be the fundamental organizing structures for education. Just because it’s been that way for quite a while doesn’t mean that it will always be that way. Indeed, you’re seeing more and more people opt out of a bad system (over 1 million students are now homeschooled in the US alone) and that’s likely to only intensify as online learning alternatives increase in quality and quantity.

That’s one of the great things about about the Web. If it’s broke in the “real world”, you can, in most cases, fix it on the Web. Don’t like the way video works in the real world. Create YouTube. Think that the music industry in the real world is messed up. Create MySpace or Imeem or Pandora. Don’t like how the education system in the real world works…

OK, better get back to fixing it! :)

(P.S. Bonus eduFire T-shirt for first commenter who can tell where the photo above was taking without clicking through to Flickr!! :)

Related posts:

The eduFire Blog » Revolution

What is the Future of Teaching?

#1 – Online vs traditional learning can be viewed across three vectors: Cost, convenience and quality.

#2 – I do disagree with the notion that the price of education is going to zero.

#3 – Flat out, we need better tools.

Using #teach-me on Twitter for Demand Driven Teaching

Students

Teachers

Use #teach-me and #edufire to Win Prizes!

Following the Brilliant Minds Behind Hacking Education

Who’s Tweeting #hackedu? A list of “Education on Twitter”

Hacking Education with #hackedu

Can Anyone Teach?

Anyone can Teach

Not Everyone Can Teach

What *will* change everything.

Jam Today? / When the Education Bubble Finally Pops

6 Reasons Why Online Education Will Boom in the Bust

The Launch of MySpace Music and What It Means to the Future of Education

Power to the People

What will change everything.