21–30 of 148 posts
Figure out a way to franchise high schools to make them into coworking spaces. All teachers are remote and all teaching happens over skype. The employees on site are there only to make sure the kids dont kill each other. Offer an insane amount of subjects (this is possible since there might be only 30 kids worldwide interested in xyz, now they can take a class on it). The future of education is something along these…
Figure out a way to franchise high schools to make them into coworking spaces. All teachers are remote and all teaching happens over skype. The employees on site are there only to make sure the kids dont kill each other. Offer an insane amount of subjects (this is possible since there might be only 30 kids worldwide interested in xyz, now they can take a class on it). The future of education is something along these…
Reminds me of the AirBnB guys pitching their original idea of people renting out their couch for strangers to sleep on and getting thrown out by virtually all of them. “Who would EVER want that??”
I understand this article is a bit outdated, but companies like Duolingo or Clever seem to prove a few of the author's arguments wrong. One would think there would be a market for Duolingo style apps for other subjects, such as mathematics, where the user is simply charged on a subscription bases. Could such a business not survive?
Except we have no idea whether these companies are actual businesses or not (i.e. have profits). Anectodal - Clever has just as much funding and number of employees as another EdTech business I know about that also interacts with "millions of students" but is barely pushing beyond a few million dollars in revenue. This isn't enough to sustain a business with 100+ employees in the bay area.
Figure out a way to franchise high schools to make them into coworking spaces. All teachers are remote and all teaching happens over skype. The employees on site are there only to make sure the kids dont kill each other. Offer an insane amount of subjects (this is possible since there might be only 30 kids worldwide interested in xyz, now they can take a class on it). The future of education is something along these…
Sounds inhuman.
what's inhuman about this btw?
> The average, middle class person thinks about education as an expenditure, not an investment. The way I remember it, middle class folks in Kansas City suburbs really, really care about the quality of their schools and levy property and sales taxes to fund it. Rural Ohio townships where dual earners are making 17k less than the national median for such households may not have a lot of middle class to speak of. Cost…
Is it? I'd be interested to see some data to support or refute this. I'd always assumed that students benefit somewhat from other students being around (due to observing how others learn, being pushed to be better etc.), so perhaps the ideal ratio would be in the 1:2 to 1:4 range.
If people have really figured out that 1:1 is better than 1:2, 1:3 and 1:4, I'd love to see that data.
The article correctly identifies consumer-facing education businesses as being incredibly difficult. I used to work in education and Chegg is the only consumer-facing company I can think of in the industry. Most other education companies have either sold or partnered with schools (Neverware, Clever, Jamf, etc). One of the interesting things with the market is that it's difficult to start penetrating districts since s…
Disclosure: I have two kids in high school, both of whom need graphing calculators for their schoolwork. Both would prefer to use Python/Jupyter.
Because academic-style and bootcamp-style education is largely a bullshit. As opposed to apprenticeship which happens in real business conditions.
The article correctly identifies consumer-facing education businesses as being incredibly difficult. I used to work in education and Chegg is the only consumer-facing company I can think of in the industry. Most other education companies have either sold or partnered with schools (Neverware, Clever, Jamf, etc). One of the interesting things with the market is that it's difficult to start penetrating districts since s…
I'd add Texas Instruments, with their graphing calculators. They have an extremely low tech product whose prevalence actually detracts from kids learning to make effective use of computation. But they've established a monopoly position by understanding what real problems they're actually solving: 1) Moderating development to within a pace that teachers and the curriculum / testing industry can keep up with. 2) Keepin…