למידה, אינטרנט ... ומה שביניהם

המהפכה הסמויה מהעין: מעולם של בתי ספר לעולם של למידה

טכנולוגיות ה-schooling הם טכנולוגיות הבאות לשרת בראש ובראשונה את בית הספר, ואת האופן שבו הוא מתנהל. ככאלה הם מחזקות ומנסות לסייע למבנה הקיים של בית הספר.

אינה מבנה בית הספר או הצרכים של המערכת, אלא תהליך הלמידה עצמו

User or student: constructing the subject in Edtech incubator

the relations between them (מי שהם עכשיו "משתמשים") and the system are described in terms of services, consumerism, usability and efficiency (עמ' 2)

whether the educational process itself can be understood – and should be understood – in economic terms, that is, as a situation in which the learner has certain needs and where it is the business of the educator to meet these needs. (עמ' 58)

a major reason for engaging in education is precisely to find out what it is that one actually needs – a process in which educational professionals play a crucial role because a major part of their expertise lies precisely there. (עמ' 59)

Engagement can be understood in the light of MindCet’s directors’ explanations: if ‘we are talking about users and market’ our main goals become ‘catch the learner’s attention,’ make him stay and give him the user experience. This is a very different kind of student, no longer one in need of guidance and education from a system based on pedagogical methods and principles, but as one that the product is built for – his or her need, desire and choice – for his engagement as a user. (עמ' 9)

For nearly 30 years, pundits have predicted that education technology would disrupt higher education. Online courses will reduce costs and create unprecedented access to higher education, so the argument goes. Likewise, adaptive learning will improve — or replace — the art of teaching as the right digital content is delivered at the right time to each individual learner.

It’s looking increasingly like none of these are the game-changers we expected.

the advent of a new digital language that connects higher education and the labor market and, in so doing, exerts profound changes on both.

The historic disconnect between higher education and the needs of the labor market is a data problem.

will close the gap between higher education and the labor market and usher in a new era in human capital.

It may be that liberal arts courses provide high-value competencies that predict career success across many professions.

what its management team considered gold-standard products complete with a rich multimedia, gamified curriculum that won plaudits from experts all over.

But there was a big problem: Schools weren’t buying en masse what Amplify was selling. A winning strategy had not emerged. For the most part, Amplify was playing a sustaining innovation game—not a disruptive one—against well-established content providers.

In general, we should be suspicious any time a corporation not designed with education at its core wants to teach our kids. As more and more tech and media corporations angle their way into classrooms with ‘free’ devices and ‘free’ curricula, we may see this tale repeat itself.

למדתי שבית ספר איננו עסק.

Few industries have been as seductive, or as frustrating, for technology investors as the business of education. For people who make their living by financing technological solutions to problems consumers and businesses often never knew they had, the glaring inefficiencies in education today represent a tempting target.

In many cases they (בתי הספר) don’t seem to show the sense of urgency that the corporate world does. That has something to do with why the level of investment goes up and down.

I don’t think that investment in education-related technologies is over, but I think there’s some hesitancy. Some people stuck in companies that have taken too long to get to scale are saying, ‘Geez! This education technology segment is tough.

Why There Has Never Been a Better Time to Be an Education Entrepreneur

LearnCapital is a venture capital firm focused exclusively on funding entrepreneurs with a vision for better and smarter learning.

disruption in the education and learning market is in its infancy and cries out for further innovation

a few key reasons why entrepreneurs should focus their efforts on disrupting the education market and getting a piece of the proverbial $4.6 trillion pie.

Your Kid’s School Is Missing the Tech Revolution, and It’s All Your Fault

For the last couple of decades, entrepreneurs and academics have struggled to find ways [to] bring some of the Internet’s disruptive force to the education system — only to be stymied by predictably sclerotic bureaucracies and overcautious government agencies.

But in recent years, entrepreneurs have started making an end run around administrators and taking their products directly to teachers and parents. By targeting individual users, the thinking goes, they can get their products into the hands of the people who use it, instead of slogging through arcane procurement processes.

Let’s be honest. If we were always this cautious about data, the Internet economy as we know it would never exist. Many of the innovations of the last couple of decades have sprung directly from our willingness to blithely let Google track our web activity or post photos of our families on Facebook or share our innermost thoughts with the world on Twitter or allow apps to know where we are at any given moment.

We may know — deeply believe — that technology can have a miraculous impact on the education system, but we can’t help but become at least somewhat driven by our worst fears. We worry that the decisions we make today will have unintended consequences that follow our children for the rest of their lives.

Learner Revolution in, Ed Tech Revolution out

New report suggests investors should focus on companies servicing the “Learner Revolution,” which creates pathways of success that guide individual students

Now that venture capital has flooded most of the obvious ideas, the third wave of investment opportunities will be more complex — a revolution that will be more transformative. The set of companies poised to break out will refine and utilize platforms — software, mobile, analytical — to create products and services that will reach out to individual learners, define pathways for their success, and travel down that path with them. Let’s call it the “learner revolution” characterized by accessible, affordable, customizable, transparent services from post-secondary providers, be they old school or new school.

Employers report that would-be workers have the required degrees but lack attributes like ability to work in groups, communication skills, and emotional maturity. They are looking to colleges to be more like placement firms, sending them young, energetic, skilled workers who they can plug in more quickly.

Everyone sees how broken higher education is, and what a bubble it is, but no one knows how to break it.

Investors agree that higher education is currently in a position to go through great change in the coming years, leaving the door open to the refinement of higher education through the learner revolution.

So when I say then, that “disruptive innovation” is one of the great myths of the contemporary business world, particularly of the tech industry, I don’t mean by “myth” that Clayton Christensen’s explanation of changes to markets and business models and technologies is a falsehood. (I have an MA in Folklore, not an MBA — so that’s part of it, for sure.)

Rather, my assigning “myth” to “disruptive innovation” is meant to highlight the ways in which this narrative has been widely accepted as unassailably true.

The models of blended learning that follow the hybrid pattern are on a sustaining trajectory relative to the traditional classroom. They are poised to build upon and offer sustaining enhancements to the factory-based classroom system, but not disrupt it.

Although traditional and hybrid classrooms are poised for disruption, we do not see brick-and-mortar schools falling by the wayside any time soon.

Like so many millennialist entities faced with the harsh realities of faltering predictions, the Innosight Institute (now under its new name) offers a new prediction.

But, let's be clear, the organization doesn't just predict the future of education. The Clayton Christensen Institute does not just offer models -- business models -- for the future. It does not simply observe an always changing (education) technology market. It has not simply diagnosed the changes due to technological advancements. It has not simply prophesied or predicted what future outcomes might be.

It's written a best-selling book (or two) about disruptive innovation. It has actively lobbied governments for certain aspects of its agenda (its mythology?), becoming a vocal proponent for its particular vision of a disrupted and innovative future. The Clayton Christensen Institute is a member of ALEC, for example, a corporate lobbying organization whose education initiatives include writing and pushing for legislation that enables the outsourcing of education to for-profit, online education providers and that eases the restrictions of entry to the market of the very virtual schools.

Let computers do what computers do best and teachers do what they do best.

First, it assumes that computers somehow work independently of teachers. That takes most of the ways that kids and teachers can work together using technology out of the equation. What [it] leaves behind is automated software that guides student learning in deeply prescriptive ways.

But teaching is so much more than quizzes, lectures and data collection. And the promise of technology isn’t that [it] can automate the rote tasks of teaching – in the end that’s low hanging fruit. The promise of technology is rather the way that it can allow teachers and students to work together to do more, create more, research more broadly, share more widely, learn more deeply.