למידה, אינטרנט ... ומה שביניהם

For bringing the startup model to schools.

Despite charging about $30,000 for tuition, AltSchool’s losses are piling up as it spends at a pace of about $40 million per year.

"Closing any school is painful," AltSchool founder and CEO Max Ventilla said in an interview. "But ultimately the path for the company to be sustainable and impactful is to provide the platform we're developing to schools we don't directly operate."

Ventilla expressed frustration that AltSchool, which previously received criticism for focusing its attention on private schools serving mostly wealthy families, is now taking flak for choosing to prioritize efforts to serve a broader universe of more diverse students in the public-school sector.

For outside schools, the company charges about $150 to $500 annually per student for its technology, depending on the size of the institution. AltSchool said it currently has hundreds of students at partner schools and will soon have more than a thousand. Its tools help teachers dole out assignments, keep tabs on a students’ work and make adjustments based on performance.

that the growth in computer-based delivery of education will accelerate swiftly until, by 2019, half of all high school classes will be taught over the Internet.

Are we on track?

"There are very real policy considerations and constraints," Levin says, that will impede that prediction from coming true.

But it is that "content" (a.k.a. knowledge) that students must master in order to apply it to hands-on projects. There is no need to sacrifice the rigor of content. Only its delivery and assessment must be changed to move from Carnegie units and seat time to competency-based learning.

U.S. Dept of Labor estimates today’s learner will have 10-14 jobs by the age of 38.

The top ten in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004.

Researchers predict that 65% of today’s grade schoolers will hold jobs that don’t yet exist.

Nobody can prove this claim for sure, and we’ve not found any explanation of where the number came from or what the logic was behind it. Sources lead from the UK out to America and Australia and then hit dead ends.

What about trying to teach some basic statistical common sense?

Is Your Edtech Product a Refrigerator or Washing Machine?

if we ignore the costs of conformability and hope that schools will just figure out how to use wholly new models within their existing paradigm, the promise of new innovations may fall short.

it’s not shocking that the other refrigerator-y edtech tools that we are most enamored with, the Chromebooks and the iPads and the Reminds and the Class Dojos that have the fastest adoption curves, haven’t really changed much in terms of classroom conditions for productive learning. They’re all easy to “install” into the teaching cultures that schools are built around.

Indeed, I can say with some certainty that I am the only person in the world who has written two books on refrigerators who is also interested in education technology.

Can you live without a refrigerator? Most Americans can’t. [Indeed, the refrigerator adoption rate in the modern US is actually 99.5%.] However, French or English people in 1957 still had easy access to fresh meat and produce at large markets. Many still choose to live that way today because fresh perishable food tastes better. Americans, on the other hand, tend to preference convenience over taste. That’s why the refrigerator industry was one of only three in the whole United States to grow during the Great Depression. Anyone who had any money to spend at that time greatly valued the added convenience of electric refrigerators over ice. By 1960, the old ice industry basically disappeared because it ran out of customers.

The whole assumption behind that article is that one technology will always inevitably drive another technology to extinction.

The underpinnings of this tool subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, convey a set of values through its use. ... These values include reverence of logic, an unshakeable belief in the power of collaboration, and a celebration of the psychic and tangible rewards of being a maker.

This happened several times, with kids ranging from ages 8 to 15. In every instance, the maker of a cool project could clearly show this famous visitor how he or she had methodically implemented a plan. Zuckerberg was clearly impressed. As we headed up the stairs to leave the building, Zuckerberg called out to me, “Scratch! Have you heard of this?

However, the most alarming aspect of this is not the substance of what Gates and Christian are proposing, it is the fact that someone with no background in history or in education can happen to chance upon an idea one morning while on his treadmill and before long the education of thousands of children is disrupted to align with his latest fad – all because of the enormous economic power he wields.

I began to wonder why doctors so easily integrated new devices–either as early adopters or even “laggards”–into their daily encounters with patients while it has been a long slog with getting computers integrated seamlessly into daily lessons.

Any answer to the question has to take into consideration the differences between the practice of teaching and the practice of medicine. Teaching is a group process, one adult working with 15-30 students at a time while the latter is commonly one-to-one. Moreover, the age-graded school gives teachers located in self-contained classrooms a degree of autonomy; yet the structure also isolates them from colleagues. It is hard for teachers to collaborate within the school, much less the district level, and to become part of a culture where constant improvement is the norm, not the exception.

There is a very strange tendency in technology writing to take any successful business and view it as a universal acid. All of the commentators and tech media go on an obsessive hunt across every sector: THIS MUST APPLY EVERYWHERE!! is the mantra. So we get “Uber for [insert sector of your choice]” pieces everywhere. I guess they’re easy to write, and people seem to like reading them.

I believe there is someone out there who is on the verge of creating a sort of UberEd, and it is almost certainly not a university president or federal lawmaker. Instead, it’s an entrepreneur who grasps the importance of putting students first who stands to start making waves in higher education.

now every person with a computer can become a global code reviewer

If you know what you’re looking for, inquiry is unnecessary. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, inquiry is impossible. Put simply, if you’re a learner in a new discipline then you don’t know what it is you need to know. So it is very difficult to bypass institutions that are constructed to help you overcome this very problem.

getting a taxi is simple, getting an education is complex

The move comes as Pearson, which makes the bulk of its sales from its educational-testing activities in the United States, warned of weaker profit as an improving American job market slows college enrollments. That, by extension, has slowed demand for its textbooks and standardized testing services, which are the most commonly used for higher education admissions in the United States. The group also pointed to falling university enrollments in other major English-language markets, including Britain and South Africa.

What I think is completely overblown, frankly, is the comparison between education and the music industry. What happened there was people started downloading individual songs and unbundling albums.

That can’t happen with university courses and testing. Open education resources have a role to play; a Harvard professor giving a free lecture online is great, but it is not the same as what happened in the music market.

The possibility MOOCs hold out is that the educational parts of education can be unbundled. MOOCs expand the audience for education to people ill-served or completely shut out from the current system, in the same way phonographs expanded the audience for symphonies to people who couldn’t get to a concert hall, and PCs expanded the users of computing power to people who didn’t work in big companies.

Is The Future Of Learning In The Hands Of The EdTech Entrepreneurs?

There are cynics and traditionalists who insist that technology gadgets in the classroom don’t improve learning, but the meteoric rise of the EdTech sector appears to tell a different story.

Education exports are worth £17.5 billion to the UK economy each year and we want EdTech to become a significant part of that equation. With a new generation of computing and digitally literate students and teachers, there is a once-in-a-generation chance to make Britain an EdTech capital of the world.

The big question for Europe’s EdTech sector is, can it attract major VC funding?

Didn’t we have bigger dreams for instructional technology?

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.

Using online learning, assessment and data analysis, we can more precisely pinpoint what students know and where they are still struggling at the moment they are struggling. We can then use that information to drive better learning.

Education technology, however, is shifting what’s possible – and the benefits for students and teachers could be tremendous, so long as recent attempts to protect student privacy – itself an important goal – don’t get in the way.

to have a chilling effect on the boon of education technology entrepreneurship and private investment currently bringing new tools into classrooms.

The software algorithm identifies exactly what a student does and doesn’t understand on a daily basis and directs each student to online and offline experiences that meet his needs. Teachers in a Teach to One classroom have up-to-date information on how every student is progressing through the material and can act accordingly.

A better summary of year one might be, "Most TTO schools had gains statistically indistinguishable from the national average, one school did substantially better, and one school did substantially worse." I made that sentence up. Here's another possibility, from the paper's conclusion "During year one, student gains were uneven across schools, with only two of seven schools making gains that were significantly above national norms." That would be a better choice for the executive summary.

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.

And so too we’ve invented a history of “the factory model of education” in order to justify an “upgrade” – to new software and hardware that will do much of the same thing schools have done for generations now, just (supposedly) more efficiently, with control moved out of the hands of labor (teachers) and into the hands of a new class of engineers, out of the realm of the government and into the realm of the market.

Why is an absence of change deemed a bad thing? Reading a book is a pretty good way to convey an idea, a story, and an enjoyable, enriching thing to do. That it hasn't changed significantly in 150 years is testament to its value, not a sign of its weakness.

As with reading, this unchanging aspect might be because it’s a good thing. Whenever I hear people state that they want to revolutionise (or do away with) the school system, I am struck by their lack of a viable alternative. If you want to educate all children in your country, regardless of motivation, ability, parental engagement, etc then you need a robust system. If you completely started from scratch tomorrow, my bet is you would end up creating something that didn’t look dissimilar to a schooling system. So the absence of change so deplored by many may indicate that viable alternatives are not available.

BoomStartup, an Utah-based tech accelerator with campuses in Park City, Provo and Salt Lake City, has chosen education as its first vertical-specific program.

Technology driven innovations are changing the face of education – making it more engaging, more personal, more relevant. Our companies will help drive and accelerate this disruption and transformation. Ideal candidates for this program will have innovative ideas that will help to lead this shift, and have the potential to make a large impact in the education community.

will help them find an optimal business model, create a minimal viable product that is revenue-ready, execute into revenue generation, and make connections to customers and investors.

High-powered veterans of Google, Uber, Rocket Fuel and Zynga have joined a startup that aims to help educators reinvent elementary school teaching.

AltSchool aims to use technologies ranging from data analysis to wearable devices combined with private sector entrepreneurial tactics to change elementary school education.

If we acknowledge that all children learn differently, then the way schooling is currently arranged – in a monolithic batch mode system where all students are taught the same things on the same day in the same way – won’t ever allow us to educate children in customized ways.

The AltSchool program is based on proven methods such as the emergent curriculum exemplified by Reggio Emilia.

However, we stress the importance of flexibility and ongoing innovation. We test what works in the classroom and are constantly looking for opportunities to improve.

Coursera is trying to build an infrastructure for in-person learning around its free online courses. Research has suggested that MOOC students who receive offline help earn higher scores on their assessments.

Several branches will provide users with weekly in-person class discussions with trained facilitators, in addition to internet and wi-fi access.

to connect the world to a great education

In all likelihood, companies like Coursera and Udacity — Harvard and MIT’s offering, edX, operates as a nonprofit — that started out as MOOC providers will eventually move away from certain qualities of the unfortunate acronym. “Massive” and “open” are not particularly conducive to viable or sustainable business models.

3 Trends of Digital Education

Source: Knewton

Education is a 7 Trillion Dollar Industry

Education’s most energetic and innovative leaders from all backgrounds of the learning landscape including teachers, administrators, university professors, business and policy leaders converge each March at the SXSWedu Conference & Festival. The four-day event is a platform for the growing SXSWedu community to connect, collaborate, create and change how we teach and learn.

Inside every BrainRush, our Adaptive Practice™ technology applies the science of learning to your gameplay. Each game engages your brain in rapid-fire practice that adapts to your exact needs, so learning is maximized during every second of play.

Next up: I'll be live-tweeting Nolan Bushnell's #SXSWedu talk on "Education and Gaming"... unless my brain explodes or I run out screaming

"In 5 years learning will be 10 times faster" -- Nolan Bushnell #sxswedu #taylorism

"What is the best breakfast for a student? Maybe it's a protein mix. I believe we'll know the answer in 2 years" - Nolan Bushnell #sxswedu

"Students today have different brains" - Nolan Bushnell #fuckyeahscience #sxswedu

"Learning should be active with extreme time pressure" - Nolan Bushnell #WTF #makingshitup #sxswedu

[We started to see] a backlash develop in certain districts and areas against just deploying technology for technology's sake, without having thought about what problem a certain leader was trying to solve, or putting in place really sound processes to guard against abuses of technology. My sense is that we're going to see some continuation of that in 2014 as people become suspect of school leaders just deploying technology simply because you 'have to have technology'.

Connected devices don’t replace textbooks... they destroy them. The last thing I want my students to do is to have a connected device and then have a traditional textbook on it.

1. Is the technology being used “Just because it’s there”?
2. Is the technology allowing the teacher/students to do Old things in Old ways?
3. Is the technology allowing the teacher/students to do Old things in New ways?
4. Is the technology creating new and different learning experiences for the students?

As one moves along the continuum, computer technology becomes more important in the classroom but at the same time becomes more invisibly woven into the demands of good teaching and learning.

The teacher’s tablet also has an app blocker and monitoring functions that can see and control what’s happening on student tablets, and a one-touch classroom-control feature to lock their screens, replacing whatever was on them with an eye symbol and the phrase “Eyes on Teacher.”

This growing stream of information, which can be analyzed down to individual keystrokes, yields a picture that will eventually progress in complexity from, say, a list of words a student looks up to a profile of metacognitive skills — like the ability to concentrate — and in time to a full-blown portrait of a developing mind. In theory, each student will generate the intellectual equivalent of a fantastically detailed medical chart.