The biggest problem is from the age of 2-13. The world's culture is still "coding isn't cool for girls". Look at the difference between the ways boys play in a room vs girls. Girls are encouraged to play princess and house...yes...still!! Boys on the other hand are more likely to invent games, or build things. My sister is 13 and laughs at the idea of learning programming as a girl. She's a super smart girl, but the social pressures are too much to overcome. By this age most of you successful programmers already had some sort of "builders" mindset.
I say we need to address the problem at it's roots. Mentorship, and shining the spotlight of success on women like Adora could potentially be the most important part of our battle here. GO ADORA!!
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Game changing. Humans are creatures of habit, and we need to be able to recognize these habits to successfully control them
Schools aren't just going to disappear. It's natural for technology to take over a sizable chunk of the teaching process, handling inefficiencies as technology has always done best. It's probable that most of the world's population won't need to interact with professors, but a select few will always have the privilege of face to face learning. I believe there are too many niche studies for professors to be entirely replaceable. Not to mention the indirect benefits of attending a school campus.
Definitely give it some breathing room. Goodluck trying to different levels of equity right now, could be very sticky.
- Put people's feet to the fire with a money, and time commitment. (60, 80, 100hrs/week)
- Then just work on it for a few months and see who's keeping up the commitment
It's easy to float on your recent win, and pretend like everyone is equally committed. People will start dropping off in levels soon enough. Or maybe not, and you have 8 amazing founders :)
How about bringing teachers better tools for their classroom? I'm working on this project because I feel like education is the solution to most things in the world. Over 1.2M student dropout of high school yearly in the US alone...we're working on taking the load of teachers, so they can focus more on the art of teaching and engaging their students. http://studysoup.com/careers
I disagree. Kno was not focused on making education better. They were focused on making a bad business model a bit lighter, and more attractive on an iPad. This could be a nice business, but does not represent the type of mindset that would offer VCs the payoff that they need.
Textbooks as we know them are a bad business model in today's education system. Useful, but wasteful. Teachers assign an expensive book. Then students are only required to read 40% of it. Right there, you can see a serious disconnect and waste of resources.
Thanks! Yes, she's a huge reader so this could be a good route. I've heard that project based learning is the way to go - I just have to think of a project that might catch her attention. She's been a bit turned off by the idea when I brought it up in the past.
That's quality feedback! I really appreciate you taking the time to write that out.
We figured since we're so small and unknown at this point, it would make sense to wear the partner badge high on our chest...but your msg makes complete sense.
In case the website didn't make it clear, we provide course creation tools so any educator can create or curate a textbook replacement.
This is really the type of innovation that education needs. Providing solutions for a broken system is very much like putting lipstick on a pig...without the proper infrastructure that can provide the support and challenges that students need, no amounts of interaction, collaboration or analytics will make significant changes (with emphasis on significant).
Although there is a good chance this isn't a "perfect" solution, it's a huge step in the right direction, and I'd like to see more government funding going towards trying new approaches vs funding something that hasn't worked well in a 100 years.
Upvote and a high five to all entrepreneurs working in this field :)
Great piece that breaks down the value of the Flipped Classroom model.20 yrs from now people are going to look back and say "I can't believe teachers would spend 4-10 hrs per week standing in front of a classroom and regurgitating memorized materials! That's what videos are for!" (hear sound of hand hitting the forehead) This is timely because we;re in the midst of Flipped Classroom week, so for more information you can checkout our blog http://studysoup.wordpress.com/ (sry it's also connected to our company StudySoup, but it's still interesting stuff)