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.

Innovative teaching methods - making things stick

Teaching methods are another area that offers great opportunities for innovative providers.

Gerd Gigerenzer's Reckoning with Risk shows how traditional methods often leave people with a poor grasp of statistics.

While statistics may sound like a small area of mathematics, Gigerenzer uses examples from medicine and law to highlight the importance of ensuring that we do not misunderstand statistical information

This is best shown with an example:

The probability that a woman of age 40 has breast cancer is about 1%. If she has breast cancer, the probability that she tests positive on a mammogram is 90%. If she does not have breast cancer, the probability that she nevertheless tests positive is 9%.

What are the chances that a woman who tests positive actually has breast cancer?

Presented in this format, most people suggest that the probability is about 90%, as they are confused by the framing of the situation in probabilities.

However Gigerenzer then presents the problem in natural frequencies

Think of 100 women. One has breast cancer, and she will probably test positive. Of the 99 who do not have breast cancer, 9 will also test positive. Thus, a total of 10 women will test positive.

How many of those who test positive will actually have breast cancer?

This way of presenting the numbers clearly shows that 90% of women who test positive would not actually have cancer.

Which way would you prefer your doctor to have been taught?

Gigerenzer goes on to illustrate this with the example of an experiment where American and German students were taught statistics using probabilities and natural frequencies.

German students have traditionally better at understanding probability based statistical teaching, and retain that knowledge better.

However, when taught to convert probabilities into natural frequencies, both groups acheived significantly better results

Even more impressive however, is the difference on retention - in both groups students were able to continue to apply the techniques accurately on later tests, which they were unable to do when taught using traditional probabilities.






As Gigerenzer says, dealing with uncertainty is a crucial skill in today's world, and the better able people are to accurately evaluate outcomes, the better they are able to deal with reality and all its inherent challenges.

Motivation

However, the more important development that comes out of teaching students in ways that 'stick', is that everyone enjoys things more when they can do them well.

This changes everything.

While the above example involves maths, the development of new teaching methods to ensure 'stickiness' means that students will face learning with a whole new outlook.

The idea of making things stick comes from the book of the same name by Chip and Dan Heath. Dan co-founded Thinkwell, a company which specialises in new media textbooks.

As Carl Tyson, the current CEO of Thinkwell says "education and learning are fundamental to making our country competitive in the world".

As detailed in my previous post, I think that education not only offers to make a country competitive, but also improves out chances of solving many of the world's problems.

Although unfortunately I wasn't taught using natural frequencies so I'm not sure how much...!

The future of education; education as our future?

While researching my previous post on Teachstreet, I came across Edufire.

While Teachstreet generally focuses on offline 'extracurricular' learning (e.g. cooking, music), Edufire offers online video classes (mainly based around languages or exam preparation).

Seeing Edufire in action got me thinking about Chris Anderson's answer to the annual Edge Question, "What will change everything?" - that a web-empowered revolution in teaching will change everything by unlocking the potential of a higher proportion of the world's population.

Anderson suggests that knowledge and inspiration will be the catalysts for this 'great awakening' of human potential

If you learn of ideas that could transform your life, and you feel the inspiration necessary to act on that knowledge, there's a real chance your life will indeed be transformed.

There are many scary things about today's world. But one that is truly thrilling is that the means of spreading both knowledge and inspiration have never been greater

Anderson is the founder of TED, which clearly aims to offer inspiration, while Edufire is looking to provide the knowledge element of the equation

Certainly Edufire is still in its early stages - the class focus remains very narrow, the audience is unlikely to be children in Africa overlooked by traditional education. But the potential is there.

If companies like Edufire can develop a sustainable business model, then the global rollout of online education may be only delayed by technological limitations, and as Anderson says, "a young girl born in Africa today...might just end up being person who saves the planet for our grandchildren"

Teachstreet - made for the 'Experience Economy'

Teachstreet is a great example of a business that has positioned itself to tap into consumer demand for experiences rather than mere products or brands.

While Trendwatching identified this movement towards skill based status back in the boom-time of late 2006, this trend is only likely to increase as people turn away from conspicuous consumption.

Indeed, as consumers refocus on value, learning new skills offers long-lasting value that few other purchases can match.

As the backlash against credit card debt increases, and people have more free time to occupy themselves they will look to activities other than 'shopping'.

The boom in 'craft' activities and education reflects people's desire to leave behind the throwaway excesses of consumer culture and hark back to a simpler time

Teachstreet's beauty is that they not only encourage community involvement through their now-standard 'social networking' features, but also that their feedback system allows would-be students to overcome their fear of being out of their depth, or ripped-off. Another previously opaque industry gets a light shone into it

Teachstreet's position at the convergence of these trends mean that they have every chance of succeeding if they can generate critical mass

'Why?'

I've always been captivated by trying to explain things, seeking to impose some sort of logic on the past and, with much less success (but no less enthusiasm) on the future.

So I read.

A lot.

I blame it on evolution. I realised that endlessly favouriting articles in Google Reader, only to never re-read them, probably wasn't really helping me find the answer to 'Why?'

The internet opened up the infobahn for us infonauts, although attention rather than accessibility became the limiting factor in seeking answers.

Slowing down

I probably read too much, darting from one topic to the next with barely a pause for breath.

So I've decided to try and convert some of the fruits of my reading into this blog. Some posts will be my own observations and thoughts, others are likely to be more hat-tips to other people who can say my thoughts better than I can myself, or sites that are actually practicing what I'm preaching

My interests are so varied (or more likely my attention span so short!), that the themes of this blog will probably wax and wane, but I have found myself thinking more and more about change, especially the ways in which technology is changing society, and the ways in which businesses are adapting (or more usually forming) to take advantages of these changes in our lives

Hopefully, by exploring some areas in more detail, and by having to think about what I'm writing, I can become a better Infonaut.

Will I ever know 'why?'

I hope not.