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Why tech has failed to innovate in education?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Why tech has failed to innovate in education?

#11

Post by shishircc »

billconan wrote: post #5
shishircc wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome, thats a step in right direction i believe

Why do you think user generated content is important? Why shouldn't the content be made by a platform, like Coursera?

I think answer is scale.

Why should open source software not be created by one company in a closed way ?

Both software and learning material are extremely elastic.

Once created, they can be used by one person, one million people or hundred million people.

This means allowing collaborative creation of it brings best minds together and creates something that no company can afford to create in-house alone.

Re: Why tech has failed to innovate in education?

#12

Post by shishircc »

maxharris wrote: post #8

You can't make money in education because public education takes the entire budget via taxes. And after that, you have no access to the customer [i.e., the parent(s) and their child(ren)]. All of that economic power and control is bottled up into school districts, and selling to them is even worse than selling to large businesses. No matter what else you do, if you can't make substantial revenue, you can't pay engine…

Maybe the answer is to create for professionals and adults first.

Once its a success there, schools would follow.

Re: Why tech has failed to innovate in education?

#13

Post by shishircc »

idoh wrote: post #10

@shishircc wish you good luck on this, but your conception as to what's stopping innovation in tech is not correct. I'd advise you to hang out with teachers, administrators, and parents to get a better feel for it. The successes with education tend to sidestep the whole thing and offer an alternative, instead of working with the system, for a reason.

For me, schools and universities are not right place to start.

Start with working professionals and adults. If a solution there is enormously successful, it would work its way backwards into universities and schools.

Re: Why tech has failed to innovate in education?

#15

Post by shishircc »

billconan wrote: post #5
shishircc wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome, thats a step in right direction i believe

Why do you think user generated content is important? Why shouldn't the content be made by a platform, like Coursera?

This explains contribution of github in enabling software collaboration. Just change that to education material and it would explain the why https://youtu.be/w3jLJU7DT5E

Re: Why tech has failed to innovate in education?

#16

Post by codingdave »

I think people are forgetting what it is like to be a child and learn as a child. Putting words on-screen doesn't matter if children cannot read. And children like to move around and interact with both people and objects in the real world.

I found that my kids hated all online learning products until they were at least 10. And then once their reading and writing ability was advanced enough to consume online content, it felt like overnight they loved the ability to research a problem online and learn independently, but they still want someone in the room to answer questions when the online content doesn't make sense. And they still hate most products because now they are too slow, or too inflexible, or something just isn't right for them.

In short, the systems that are being designed by adults don't have product/market fit because they aren't doing usability testing with students. They aren't respecting how children develop, how they communicate, how they learn, etc.

Re: Why tech has failed to innovate in education?

#17

Post by shishircc »

codingdave wrote: post #16

I think people are forgetting what it is like to be a child and learn as a child. Putting words on-screen doesn't matter if children cannot read. And children like to move around and interact with both people and objects in the real world. I found that my kids hated all online learning products until they were at least 10. And then once their reading and writing ability was advanced enough to consume online content,…

Makes sense

Unless one can understand and appreciate how kids feel about the product, product would not work.

An education product must have offline, online and human touch for it to succeed, apart from ability to research.

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