The eduFire Blog » Using Technology

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)

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Take eduFire Classes on Apple’s new Tablet

Koichi — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 22:05:34 +0000

Here at eduFire, every single one of us (except for a couple of traitorous interns) are Apple lovers. Everywhere you look you’ll see Apple products. iPhones, Macbook Pros, Mac Minis, and more. Now, for the first time ever, a brand spankin’ new Apple tablet… well, in our poorly photoshopped dreams, anyways. But you knew that right after looking at the picture, right?

Live Classes on the Go

With all the hubbub and excitement about about the may-or-may-not-exist Apple tablet, it got me thinking. The rumors suggest that there will be a version with a webcam, and a version that is made for “education,” whatever that means. Whether or not an Apple tablet includes a webcam, it’s the perfect platform for on-the-go eduFire classes. My guess is that you will be able to connect to a 3G network with these, which means you could technically take a class from anywhere that has a cell connection. Originally I had hoped my iPhone would get me onto an eduFire class (no flash support yet, sadly), so this may be the next best thing. No, it’s even better.

I have a dream, where one day anyone and everyone will be able to pick up their tablets, PC or Apple (or linux!), and learn something new from anywhere they want. Where people will be able to pull out one of these at the beach and take a lesson in marketing, or learn some Italian while listening to the waves hit the shore. Learning from bed or the passenger seat of a car will never be easier. A product like this, which could easily become more widespread than other similar tablets or netbooks on the market (c’mon, it’s Apple, people buy their stuff just because it exists), could really change how we learn online. You will no longer be tethered to your desk or modem, and learning will be able to happen anywhere. How cool would that be?

I also have a dream to not make horrible photoshoppings of things. Maybe I should take a photoshop class.

If you had one of these, where would you take a class from? I wonder who will be the first to suggest the toilet?

Apple Tablet image provided by Gizmodo, thanks guys!

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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!

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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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Global Intelligence

jon — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:39:14 +0000

I’ve been pumped to write about this for a while because I think it’s one of the most important trends that’s happening right now. Perhaps the most important trend. I don’t say that lightly either. We’re on the verge of something that’s incredibly powerful and the acceleration of this trend has become really apparent in the last couple of years.

What do I mean by Global Intelligence?

A bunch of people have written about this before and I think everyone has their own definition. I probably started thinking about it a lot right around the time I saw this video:

For me Global Intelligence means the following:

#1 – An interconnected world where when one person gets smarter, we all get smarter. I use “all” loosely here as at this stage of our development it doesn’t mean everyone. It more likely refers to a small portion of society that is digitally connected and actually seeking out information and knowledge. Perhaps that’s about 1% of the world’s population. Maybe slightly higher.

In a world of true Global Intelligence there is a tremendous multiplier effect. Think back 20 years ago. Let’s say that I was studying nutrition and decided to write a book on the subject. First of all, the likelihood that I would even get published was very, very small. If I did manage to get published the total number of people who would read what I wrote would also likely be much smaller than it would be today. So the multiplier effect of my learning would be somewhat tiny, especially in the aggregate.

Fast forward to today. First of all, if I’m studying nutrition I don’t need anyone’s permission to share my knowledge with the world. I simply create a blog or a YouTube channel or whatever and start getting my wisdom out. This has created an explosion in knowledge/content all along the “tail”. And if my work is really good? Well the audience that consumes it is going to be much larger than it would have been in the past.

#2 – The ability for people to get more knowledge out of their head and onto the Internet. Twitter has been fascinating to watch over the last couple of years for this reason. Think back to a decade ago. Getting the knowledge in your brain on to the Web was actually pretty tough. Then along came blogging tools and there was an exponential increase in the amount of knowledge available online. However, blogging was still something that required a fair amount of effort.

Along came YouTube and now people had the opportunity to share their knowledge via video in a much easier way. So you had an explosion in video knowledge transfer, tons of video tutorial sites and an exponential increase in video blogging. Very powerful stuff.

Then came Twitter. Twitter has two distinct components. The “Just has a cup of coffee and preparing for the workday” type of tweet is moderately useful in term of social connectedness, personal expression, etc. However the much more powerful part of Twitter is what’s commonly characterized as the micro-blogging component. It’s essentially a much easier way to get knowledge out of your head and on to the Web than we’ve ever had before.

I installed the most excellent application RescueTime this fall and I noticed something very interesting in my logs. I spend almost as much time searching Twitter as I do searching Google for information. That astounded me. The reason is that a lot of the information on Twitter is very different from what I would find on the Web. For example, if I’m looking for what people are saying about eduFire or another online education start-up I’m more likely to get timely and intimate feedback from someone’s tweet than from their blog post.

This is a huge trend. A while back I wrote a blog post here where I asked our readers how much of the world’s collective knowledge is available on the Web. The answers were interesting and most people tended to agree that a very small percentage of our individual knowledge is available collectively. What tools like Twitter have done is increase that percentage by some factor. Time will tell whether it’s by a small amount or a large one but my guess is that it will be larger than most people think.

#3 – Connection of knowledge seekers with knowledge providers. This is the third component of Global Intelligence. If I have a question (and we *all* ask ourselves hundreds or thousands of questions on a daily basis) there’s almost certainly someone in the world who has an answer. The difficulty is in connecting to that person or that knowledge. Search engines have helped dramatically with this. Social networks are also helping. However, we still have a long way to go.

As friction reduces in this area there is going to be an increasingly realization on the part of most people that they can turn to the Global Intelligence when they have a question rather than using many of the inefficient methods they have used in the past. As they do that you’ll see markets emerge for Global Intelligence and you’ll see much better tools for search and discovery than you see today.

So I’ll leave it at that for now. We’re hardly on an unimpeded path towards Global Intelligence as there are a good number of counter-balancing factors including spam, information overload, the digital divide and proprietary data stores. I’ll address those in a future blog post. But, as I mentioned in our year-end blog post, I am really encouraged about where we’re heading right now and how far things have come in just the last couple of years. It’s going to be fun for all us here at eduFire to play a role in pushing us further down this road.

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Reason #4541 Why We Love eduFire: Snow!

Koichi — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 01:51:50 +0000

The other morning I woke up to several inches of beautiful snow. Snow on it’s own isn’t too bad, but then it warmed up slightly and melted a bit, then dropped to a frigid 25 degrees Fahrenheit (that’s about -4 Celsius). Everything turned to ice, and I was trapped! I live on a pretty big hill, so I wasn’t going anywhere.

That made me realize, though, that it didn’t matter! When you’re teaching or learning online, all you need is a computer, some equipment, and an internet connection. I was able to open my window and enjoy the snow, while everyone else was skidding around trying to go to work.

How many of you get to enjoy/not enjoy the snow where you are?

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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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Using Google Docs to Collaborate with Students

Koichi — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 01:51:29 +0000

Cool Cat Teacher just wrote a post about the use of Google Docs in her classroom, and how it allows her students to collaborate on spreadsheets, documents, and presentations. That got me thinking. How could it be used by tutors (or the students of tutors) on eduFire? Google Docs are a great resource for teachers and students alike to allow collaboration of documents – something you can’t do with Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or Excel. Here’s what I came up with – let’s see if you can add some more.

Homework

Since both the teacher and the student can work within the same document (at the same time, even), a teacher could send homework via Google Docs, the student could fill it out, and then the teacher could correct it. When the next lesson rolls around, both the student and the teacher could pull up the document, and they can look over it together.

Presentations

One of the best ways for a student to learn, is to teach the subject they are learning themselves. A teacher could have a student make a presentation (though, if you’re using this in session, you should just use the present feature available in Adobe Connect), and then send it to you to look over. Once again, the teacher can make edits and notify the student. Plus, you can share these presentations with everyone in the world!

Keeping Track of Progress

If you’ve ever used a spreadsheet program before, you’ll know that it’s an excellent way to keep track of data. Using the Google Spreadsheet application, you can keep track of what the student has learned, when they learned it, etc. If you have a lot of students, this really helps to keep track of all that information. Also, you can share these documents with your students so they can see what they’ve learned, making it easier for them to review and make sense of everything.

Making PDF’s

Although there are a ton of other ways to do this, Google Docs is a great way to turn documents, spreadsheets, and presentations into PDFs, for even easier distribution. That way you know everyone can open the file you’re sending, and it will look the same for everyone as well, which is great since eduFire has such a broad community!

More information about Google Docs

There is also this great presentation (made in Google Docs, of course!) all about using Google Docs in the classroom. A lot of these techniques carry over to eduFire classes as well, so definitely take a look.

So, what ways do you use Google Docs in your eduFire classroom? How do you use it in your real life classroom? How do you use it in live tutoring? I believe the possibilities are endless, and only require a creative mind to come up with them! I look forward to seeing what you have to say about it!

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Grockit Launch

reg — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:29:45 +0000

Back in July of last year I got my first whiff of Grockit, a MMOG for learning. Based on what I know of Farb and the team over there I was very impressed and excited to see it launch. Today, Grockit launched at TechCrunch50 and it’s a very cool looking application.

Basically a group of people get together around a question and discuss the right answer. One player can try to convince other players of right answers in attempt to reach a group consensus. It facilitates student-to-student learning which is a fantastic way to prepare for an exam.

Grockit hasn’t launched publicly but their presentation is embedded below. Kudos to the team over there for a great-looking product. I’m excited to see this evolve!

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The Olympics Are Here! 8 Free Ways to Learn Mandarin Quickly.

reg — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:55:25 +0000

Ni hao! We’re less than 72 hours from the Opening Ceremony for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. And we know what you’re thinking…I haven’t learned any Mandarin yet!!! Don’t worry, we’re here to save the day with 8 free ways you can get learn the “language of the Olympics” fast. What better time than now? Enjoy!!!

#1 – Watch Movies – What could be a more enjoyable way to learn a language than by watching movies? Here’s the trick…find a bunch of movies that you want to watch that have Mandarin language tracks and English subtitles (Netflix is a great place for this). This way you’ll be hearing and immersing yourself in the language but at the same time you’ll be able to follow the movie and match up expressions. Then as you improve you can replace the English subtitles with Mandarin subtitles to improve your reading skills.

Of course you can always watch Mandarin videos on video sharing sites like YouTube and here and here on eduFire as well!

#2 – Build your Vocab on the Web – It’s never been a better time to be a language learner. In the last couple of years a number of free services have launched that help you build your vocab online (and often for free!). Some of the ones that we like include Confucius Institute Online, Internet Polygot, LiveMocha, Mango Languages, nciku and Zap Chinese. Also, make sure to check out free Mandarin Flashcards here at eduFire as well.

#3 – Music – Like watching movies, listening to music is a fun and easy way to improve your foreign language skills. Thanks to the Internet there’s a lot of music out there that will help you learn Mandarin. Some options include Groove|Asia, Mandarin Radio and this list from Wikipedia.

#4 – Podcasts – As with music, podcasts can be a great way to learn Mandarin while you’re driving to work, hitting the gym or just getting stuff done around the house. Check out Open Culture’s list, stream Mandarin podcasts from Odeo or search iTunes for “Mandarin” and subscribe to your favorites.

#5 – Reading – There are a lot of ways to brush up on a foreign language through reading. One simple way is to buy a copy of a book in English and another copy in Mandarin. Then read them side by side. Or alternatively, look for a book with animations so you can follow the story in pictures and try to pick up on the context of what’s being said (here’s an example). Search Amazon for “Mandarin” or depending on where you live and your familiarity with Mandarin, try Joyo, Amazon’s site for China. And of course, in sticking with the spirit of the post, remember that there’s a good chance that your local library will have some books you can borrow that will help you learn Mandarin.

#6 – Classes – Free Chinese classes online? Heck ya! As previously mentioned it’s never been a better time to be a language learner with high-quality free courses being offered by people like The BBC, The Foreign Service Institute and MIT.

#7 – Find a Partner – One of the quickest ways to learn a language (other than hiring a private tutor) is to find someone who knows Mandarin and who is willing to practice with you. There are a couple of approaches you can use here. First of all, you could post an ad in your local craigslist looking for someone who is willing to do a “language exchange” (someone who knows Mandarin and is looking to practice their English skills). Another option is to find someone online. There are a number of services that you can use here including italki, LiveMocha and My Happy Planet.

#8 – Travel Somewhere Where They Speak Mandarin – OK, this technically isn’t free. But if you’re already traveling to China then any additional practice you’re going to get is going to be free of charge. So take full advantage of that opportunity! Make friends in the pubs, chat up everyone you see and if you’re single, definitely fall in love with someone who speaks Mandarin. That’s definitely the best way to assure that you’ll learn the language quick!

Best of luck in your Mandarin studies and enjoy the Olympics!!!

UPDATE: A commenter on Reddit pointed out that we didn’t mention ChinesePod. It is linked from the OCulture list of podcasts but I wholeheartedly agree that it is a can’t-miss resource for learning Mandarin and should be highlighted!

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