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Guidelines for Edtech Products

ycombinator.com

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Re: Guidelines for Edtech Products

#21

Post by nickpsecurity »

KeatonDunsford wrote: post #11
2pointsomone wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keaton, you make it incredibly clear that you have no understanding about how education works. It's really sad that you criticize YC and our excellent educator community. Your neglect and lack of respect for teachers and traditional schooling is appalling and disturbing. The saddest part is that a large number of young techies (you are 19) feel like you. Nevertheless, I want to empathize with you, and suggest that yo…

You may be right. But if I'm right, I'll help more kids faster. And that's what I care about. And I think I am right, because I see what I'm talking about every day. With the exception of a few incredible teachers and mentors out there (I myself had several), education today isn't genuinely exciting for most students. Many teachers are truly great people and are valuable to students. But are they a necessity, or a lu…

You make some good points and I appreciate the links. The one thing you're leaving off that public and private schools teach are the lessons learned from face-to-face social interactions with peers, bullies, and authority figures. Public schools largely held be back as a savant where I had to learn most shit on my own. Some teachers were great enough to try to help me on the side. Nonetheless, the basic principles on human behavior I've encountered in various workplaces were the same as I dealt with in public schooling. Other people good at balancing various tradeoffs in the schools did well in the workplaces I've been in. Among the worst were the homeschoolers with one or two exceptions. Especially when they were trying to change things with resisting authority figures before getting slapped in the face with constant expectation to do what you're told. If anything, those of us from public school experience more freedom going into average workplace than we had then.

So, if kids left the normal educational system for your app, how would you replicate that experience gained in soft skills when most of their learning is just watching videos or messaging/talking to people through a phone? Or are you going to push it off to parents hoping they just all change in terms of how they facilitate training in social interaction? Remember that many students being held back by poor education are in the hood, rural areas, homes with apathetic parents, etc. The schools might be the closest thing they get to learning from some decent or just diverse people. Plus, there's the side benefit that they're like a day care allowing parents to go to work or have a mental break at least until summer. ;)

Re: Guidelines for Edtech Products

#22

Post by nickpsecurity »

2pointsomone wrote: post #9
KeatonDunsford wrote: post #8

To be honest, I'm extremely disappointed in these guidelines, given that this is coming from YC. Why? They divert focus away from doing whatever it takes to make something incredible for users: underserved students in a failing system that's becoming exponentially costly and disconnected from our modern society. Even if that means challenging convention and breaking some rules. Think of where Airbnb, Uber and Bitcoin…

Keaton, you make it incredibly clear that you have no understanding about how education works. It's really sad that you criticize YC and our excellent educator community. Your neglect and lack of respect for teachers and traditional schooling is appalling and disturbing. The saddest part is that a large number of young techies (you are 19) feel like you. Nevertheless, I want to empathize with you, and suggest that yo…

I quickly skimmed your site. I think the assignment on counting a room full of cash was brilliant. That should instantly get students attention in general and to how they might count their future stash. I'm interested in hearing how well that assignment did in both learning and creative solutions from students.

Re: Guidelines for Edtech Products

#23

Post by 50CNT »

KeatonDunsford wrote: post #17
50CNT wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the mean in education isn't all that great, is it? There's issues that stem from assumptions about education that were correct in the 14th century but have since become a bit dated. You can improve a system built on the wrong premises, but you can't fix it. It's a system that works through sheer force of will, and squanders the efforts of educators and students alike. The ambition of education technology shouldn'…

I've been incredibly inspired by YC and only mean for my criticism to be constructive. But by naming their edtech initiative "Imagine K12", they've already lost. I care as much about solving education as they do. I think the basis of my argument is factually correct. Just look at the data. Why not treat education like any other disruptable industry?

Thinking about similar things, wanna chat?

Re: Guidelines for Edtech Products

#24

Post by KeatonDunsford »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #21
KeatonDunsford wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be right. But if I'm right, I'll help more kids faster. And that's what I care about. And I think I am right, because I see what I'm talking about every day. With the exception of a few incredible teachers and mentors out there (I myself had several), education today isn't genuinely exciting for most students. Many teachers are truly great people and are valuable to students. But are they a necessity, or a lu…

You make some good points and I appreciate the links. The one thing you're leaving off that public and private schools teach are the lessons learned from face-to-face social interactions with peers, bullies, and authority figures. Public schools largely held be back as a savant where I had to learn most shit on my own. Some teachers were great enough to try to help me on the side. Nonetheless, the basic principles on…

If you look over my application linked in the OC, you'll see our number one design goal is to connect users physically. There's something incredibly powerful about the social experience that school provides like you're describing that no big edtech platform today has made an explicit design goal. In short, we'll have to "design for trust" a lot like Airbnb did (see Joe Gebbia's TED talk). The locations could be anywhere from a local Starbucks to a public library to the nearest college campus. If educational content could be optimized for the smartphone, a lot like Snapchat has optimized the Snapchat story as their primary unit of content on mobile, then any place could become a sort of classroom. So long as you're surrounded by kids like you learning and making things with you that you care about. Meetup.com has accomplished this to some extent for working professionals, but we don't think it's specific enough towards specific projects in the context of youth education.

This is going to be a really hard problem to solve overall from a design perspective. And like you hinted, it will be even harder for us to do this for kids in poor or rural areas in contrast to rich kids in urban areas. But we're going to figure it out somehow. If the timing is right, self-driving cars and improved cheap public transportation will help this tremendously. Our app could then in theory automate the entire process of getting a group of kids connected somewhere safe and public. The value and safety of those kinds of experiences could be built upon even further if you add in a kind of crowdsourced mentorship experience on top of that, like Uber for chaperones in a way. If you're a local software engineer or cinematographer or biophysics researcher, you could give back to your local community by helping out local kids who want to contribute in your field. Now all the sudden everybody can become a teacher, which feels really good. Like Quora answers, but in person.

Re: Guidelines for Edtech Products

#25

Post by KeatonDunsford »

50CNT wrote: post #23
KeatonDunsford wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been incredibly inspired by YC and only mean for my criticism to be constructive. But by naming their edtech initiative "Imagine K12", they've already lost. I care as much about solving education as they do. I think the basis of my argument is factually correct. Just look at the data. Why not treat education like any other disruptable industry?

Thinking about similar things, wanna chat?

Sounds good. Shoot me an email at keaton@bloomv1.org. Other social media info is in my HN profile page.

Re: Guidelines for Edtech Products

#26

Post by KeatonDunsford »

npunt wrote: post #19
KeatonDunsford wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, which is why I applied. And I agree in the sense that I believe in YC more than anybody. But I disagree in the sense that no edtech solution to date is dramatically changing the world as much as a Facebook or Uber, so something must not be working. And I'm calling out Coursera, Udacity, Udemy, EdX, Khan Academy, Codecademy, Vidcode, Jumpcut, MakeSchool, AltSchool, HackClub, codings bootcamps and regular school…

YC won't do your homework for you. There's great resources out there tho - start by spending a few hours on EdSurge. I literally started the company to inform folks like you entering the space to learn what's going on, who's doing what, and how ed is different from other industries being impacted by tech. It's the best resource out there. The main takeaway I have after seeing so many enter this space in the past 7+ y…

With all due respect, it's a total fallacy that edtech has to be different from other industries. There's no physical force in the universe forcing education to be any certain way. So if one way is provably better, we should just build it, and deal with the obstacles when they come up later. Kids, both privileged and not, have been dropping out for years because they're tired of things. I'm building this for them.

To quote Balaji Srinivasan of 21 & A16z:

"Don't argue about regulation. Build Uber. Don't argue about monetary policy. Build Bitcoin. Don't argue about it. Build the alternative."

Re: Guidelines for Edtech Products

#27

Post by tkosan »

KeatonDunsford wrote: post #8

To be honest, I'm extremely disappointed in these guidelines, given that this is coming from YC. Why? They divert focus away from doing whatever it takes to make something incredible for users: underserved students in a failing system that's becoming exponentially costly and disconnected from our modern society. Even if that means challenging convention and breaking some rules. Think of where Airbnb, Uber and Bitcoin…

I think new education systems that are based on software will eventually replace most teacher-based education systems. Not only do teachers not scale, most of them don't understand the subjects they are teaching at a deep enough level to teach these subjects effectively.

I am convinced that software tutors that are based on AI research which was primarily done in the 1970s and 1980s will form the core of these new software education systems. For the past few years I have been working on an AI tutor for solving elementary algebra equations that can already teach parts of this subject better than a human can. If you are interested in discussing how AI tutors like this can be used to help realize the vision you have for Bloom, contact me using the email address that is in my profile.

Re: Guidelines for Edtech Products

#29

Post by revelation »

When exporting grade level data, denote kindergarten with a number 0 (zero), not a letter K, and denote transitional kindergarten with -1 (negative one).

What. What on earth is this set of "guidelines". Is there a color scheme recommendation somewhere in here, too?

Re: Guidelines for Edtech Products

#30

Post by spacelizard »

2pointsomone wrote: post #9
KeatonDunsford wrote: post #8

To be honest, I'm extremely disappointed in these guidelines, given that this is coming from YC. Why? They divert focus away from doing whatever it takes to make something incredible for users: underserved students in a failing system that's becoming exponentially costly and disconnected from our modern society. Even if that means challenging convention and breaking some rules. Think of where Airbnb, Uber and Bitcoin…

Keaton, you make it incredibly clear that you have no understanding about how education works. It's really sad that you criticize YC and our excellent educator community. Your neglect and lack of respect for teachers and traditional schooling is appalling and disturbing. The saddest part is that a large number of young techies (you are 19) feel like you. Nevertheless, I want to empathize with you, and suggest that yo…

Most educational systems are rooted in child-care, not in actually educating students. And the ones that do have the resources to properly educate students are often so entrenched in politics and status that they become better conduits for indoctrination instead of empowering students to better make decisions themselves. Like any old organization problems, it is going to be incredibly difficult for them to shed that history.
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