Hacking education (part III)

The title of this post comes from two posts entitled 'Hacking Education' which I read recently.

I referred to the first in my post below. It is written by the venture capitalist Fred Wilson over at www.avc.com.

The second comes from Jeff Jarvis (author of What Would Google Do?)

The fact that venture capitalists are looking to invest in educational ventures is exciting because venture capital has a history of stimulating disruptions by providing the necessary finance to innovative companies.

But I also think that it his post is exciting as he sums up the opportunities that technology offers education

The tools to do this are right in front of us; peer production, collaboration, social networking, web video, voip, open source, even game play. I think we can look at what has happened to the big media institutions over the past ten years as a guide to how to do this...We all have to start participating and engaging in educating each other.

As I outlined before, money alone cannot change things. However Jeff Jarvis sees increasing pressure in both supply and demand:

I’m one among many who believe that there are huge opportunities in education, not just to change and improve it but to find new business opportunities. That’s true especially now, as the economic crisis forces people to reconsider and change paths.

Who needs a university when we have Google? All the world’s digital knowledge is available at a search. We can connect those who want to know with those who know. We can link students to the best teachers for them (who may be fellow students). We can find experts on any topic. Textbooks need no longer be petrified on pages but can link to information and discussion; they can be the products of collaboration, updated and corrected, answering questions and giving quizzes, even singing and dancing. There’s no reason my children should be limited to the courses at one school; even now, they can get coursework online from no less than MIT and Stanford.

However for a true reflection of the potential for education to be 'hacked', I think this video says it perfectly on so many levels

Where is the money?

The passion is certainly there.

After I posted linking to Ken Robinson's talk on how schools currently kill creativity, I checked the TED talks page.

Ken's speech is the most emailed and the most favourited

But where is the money?

Without funding, the waves of disruption can only go so far.

While great people will work in education for more than just the financial rewards, to really revolutionise teaching, companies and organisations must get involved. Indeed, it is only by changing the current structures of education provision that real disruption will occur

Fortunately, it looks as though funds may looking to invest in innovative new approaches to education.

It's certainly exciting to see that the people behind such internet luminaries as Twitter, Etsy
and Meetup scouting for opportunities within the education space.

However money doesn't always equal success - the first internet boom saw educational ventures raise significant funds, only for some of them to fold during the subsequent bust

What's different this time?

At the risk of inflating yet another bubble - the online experience is very different from the heady days of 1999, both from the providers' and the users' point of view.

Collaboration was in its infancy, user generated content was more of a possibility than a reality, and more than anything, people were not socialising online. During the last tech-boom, the internet was a place where you went to buy cheap goods, rather than a place that you lived your life.

Education has always been about learning more than the curriculum taught in the classroom, and new 'online education' sites offer far more than just a facility for accessing information, they offer a platform for education that is open in the same way that Wikipedia has become such a valuable education tool right the way up to graduate level.

New structures

Ultimately, collaborative sites such as Wikipedia have highlighted that not only do all of us have areas of knowledge, but we are willing to share that knowledge with others if given the opportunity to do so.

If online education is to succeed, then finding ways to integrate the latent desire that people have to share their knowledge into the education system would be a great step forward

Time to ingnite the passion economy

Can technology disrupt the education system so that more students fulfill their full potential?

Clayton Christensen, the Harvard professor who coined the term 'disruptive innovation', certainly thinks so, turning his focus to education in Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns.

I have already written about the game-changing possibilities for education, and Christensen has recently picked a number of disrupters who are looking to challenge the status quo.

Igniting passion

Saul Kaplan has a great post over at The Business Innovation Factory about the need to create a 'passion economy'

What he says mirrors Ken Robinson's TED speech about how the current education system is failing not only the students, but society as a whole, by stifling people's natural passions





He also has a book out which explores how 'finding your passion changes everything'.

The more we encourage and enable people to find their passion, not only do we increase our ability to solve the world's problems, but we also create a better, happier world for everyone.