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Imagine K12

ycombinator.com

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Re: Imagine K12

#31

Post by smanek »

frak_your_couch wrote: post #28
yummyfajitas wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quality isn't the issue for most subjects. There are plenty of free and cheap textbooks with perfectly fine quality. For example, when I took thermodynamics in college (in 2001), I used a thermo book from the early 70's which cost me $8 on eBay (as opposed to the modern version which cost $100). I also skipped purchasing many books entirely, and just used free materials online, including this newfangled site called w…

Well, I do disagree on the quality aspect. I'd like to see a high quality Calc I and II textbook that's free, coherent, and not aimed at MIT students. My wife is a faculty member and if you can find me one, I'll pass it along (they're constantly looking for one). It's just hard to not choose Stewart..it's a solid textbook for a broad range of students, but it's expensive as shit. A lot of professors are getting that…

http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/ seems good (after 30 seconds of googling, and 5 minutes of skimming).

Re: Imagine K12

#32

Post by ghshephard »

frak_your_couch wrote: post #28
yummyfajitas wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quality isn't the issue for most subjects. There are plenty of free and cheap textbooks with perfectly fine quality. For example, when I took thermodynamics in college (in 2001), I used a thermo book from the early 70's which cost me $8 on eBay (as opposed to the modern version which cost $100). I also skipped purchasing many books entirely, and just used free materials online, including this newfangled site called w…

Well, I do disagree on the quality aspect. I'd like to see a high quality Calc I and II textbook that's free, coherent, and not aimed at MIT students. My wife is a faculty member and if you can find me one, I'll pass it along (they're constantly looking for one). It's just hard to not choose Stewart..it's a solid textbook for a broad range of students, but it's expensive as shit. A lot of professors are getting that…

It's been 15 years since I took Calculus I and II, but looking over: http://www.khanacademy.org/#Calculus

Is there _anything_ in Stewart that isn't covered as well by Khan? You also get advantage of the video tutorial on the topic.

I'm waiting for that point in time when we reach a tipping point and Higher Education Institutions don't just delegate everything to Khan for a lot of their topics.

My Calculus Course (151) at SFU took place in Images Theater at 8:30 in the morning and had 450 Students listening to a lecture on Calculus. The ratio was approximately: 1/8 of the students were bored. 1/8 of the students were lost, 1/8 of the students were attentive, 1/8 of the students were asleep, and 1/2 of the students didn't show up. (8:30 AM!)

I see little need for Stewart in the Face of Khan's Video Collection on Calculus + a bit of wikipedia (Seriously - check out their section on Derivatives and compare it to Stewart)

I will agree with you on the Problem Sets - and perhaps that's the missing ingredient in Khan - He needs to more fully flesh out his test bank - but http://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard is moving ahead nicely. (And, in my mind, is far superior to any static test bank)

Re: Imagine K12

#33

Post by jbooth »

ianb wrote: post #29
shaggyfrog wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll add another one: academia who teach education seem to have an almost visceral reaction to any suggestion of for-profit educational product development. There's this almost dogmatic principal that anything related to education should be done not-for-profit. I speak from experience... I have an idea for an educational game (software) and I haven't had any luck getting the time of day.

OTOH, there are a lot of for-profit educational ventures, and they all seem really skeevy to me -- places like Kaplan or Phoenix University, for instance, or frankly a lot of educational software. Perhaps a pro-market explanation is that the bureaucracy itself undermines the market, creating a market that is not truly driven by stated goals (education) but other factors. I'm not sure I believe that, but it's possible…

The pro-market explanation in the case of University of Phoenix et al is that a lot of people want a degree to have the degree, rather than learn. Maybe they get a bump at work for having a master's.

So the market's working. Hence the term, "paper mills". It's much cheaper to sell people a degree than to teach them stuff.

Re: Imagine K12

#34

Post by shortlived »

This is nice and all but the real issue lies with getting all families involved in their child's education. All of the technology in the world will not solve this problem.

Re: Imagine K12

#35

Post by yummyfajitas »

ghshephard wrote: post #32
frak_your_couch wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I do disagree on the quality aspect. I'd like to see a high quality Calc I and II textbook that's free, coherent, and not aimed at MIT students. My wife is a faculty member and if you can find me one, I'll pass it along (they're constantly looking for one). It's just hard to not choose Stewart..it's a solid textbook for a broad range of students, but it's expensive as shit. A lot of professors are getting that…

It's been 15 years since I took Calculus I and II, but looking over: http://www.khanacademy.org/#Calculus Is there _anything_ in Stewart that isn't covered as well by Khan? You also get advantage of the video tutorial on the topic. I'm waiting for that point in time when we reach a tipping point and Higher Education Institutions don't just delegate everything to Khan for a lot of their topics. My Calculus Course (151…

Problem set quality is not the issue. If it were, I would donate a week or two of my time and build a problem set generator.

The issue is that you need the same problem sets as the instructor. If the instructor uses Stewart and homework is graded, you get a 0 on HW. This is why you can't even go back 1 edition of the book, and why the legacy publishers print a new edition every 2 years with minimal changes beyond tweaking the problems.

A startup idea I never pursued, but one I think has a lot of merit: build an online problem cross referencer. It provides a) free problems to any instructors who want to use them and b) crossreferences these problems with existing textbooks (that way students who don't want to buy the book don't have to).

I'm pretty sure that Int[ 1/Sqrt[3+5x^2], {x}] can't be copyrighted.

Re: Imagine K12

#36

Post by mkramlich »

prestia wrote: post #10

This is a really exciting announcement! Education is probably the most important factor in maintaining long-term competitiveness and the American system is in desperate need of improvement. That said, the hurdles in this area are overwhelming. To name a few: -Layer upon layer of bureaucracy (states, counties, districts, individual school administrators) -Teachers that are reluctant to adopt new technology -Students t…

> -Layer upon layer of bureaucracy (states, counties, districts, individual school administrators)

damage. route around it

> -Teachers that are reluctant to adopt new technology

damage. route around it

> -Students that are difficult to motivate

damage. route around it

i am serious

Re: Imagine K12

#37

Post by maxharris »

ianb wrote: post #30
maxharris wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'right' to an attorney should mean that the government cannot prevent you from attempting to obtain an attorney to represent you. (edit: added the italicized words) Edit: Don't many public defenders think of their jobs as a form of partial charity? Edit 2: Is it a violation of rights that these public defenders aren't the best lawyers available? I don't think so, and the onus is on people that accept positive rig…

Not that I'm a libertarian, but if I was I would be inclined to argue the right to an attorney is specifically in place when the government initiates legal action against you. Outside of specific government action you have no right to an attorney -- you can't for instance sue the government and demand the government provide you with an attorney to do so.

The government may have wrongfully initiated the legal action, but this is not certain before the trial is over. Remember, in the case of guilt (context: when someone is guilty of violating an objective law, so this doesn't apply to all of today's laws), it is merely retaliating.

This stuff isn't just an academic issue: "Shrinking funding and access to resources for public defenders and court-appointed attorneys is only making the problem worse." (See: http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/Bad-Lawyering.php)

I support most of what the Innocence Project does, but I think that charity is the answer here (being a selfish person doesn't mean that I don't support charities; it just means that I don't think that such support earns me moral credit). If the government didn't pay for public defendants at all, I think that the Innocence Project might have an easier time raising money for more and better attorneys.

Re: Imagine K12

#38

Post by jedc »

pclark wrote: post #3

This reminds me of jedc and his MBA research about startup accelerators and how, and more importantly, when to clone. His #1 point was: > You need to be unique, where unique is not just a seed accelerator in a different city Imagine K12 is unique in their knowledge and connections. What a fascinating proposition. http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/2011/02/23/looking-back-1-5-...

Thanks, Peter. This is exactly the kind of program that I was talking about. I hope their connections to schools are able to turn startups in this market into businesses with real impact quickly.

Re: Imagine K12

#39

Post by jbooth »

maxharris wrote: post #37
ianb wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I'm a libertarian, but if I was I would be inclined to argue the right to an attorney is specifically in place when the government initiates legal action against you. Outside of specific government action you have no right to an attorney -- you can't for instance sue the government and demand the government provide you with an attorney to do so.

The government may have wrongfully initiated the legal action, but this is not certain before the trial is over. Remember, in the case of guilt (context: when someone is guilty of violating an objective law, so this doesn't apply to all of today's laws), it is merely retaliating. This stuff isn't just an academic issue: "Shrinking funding and access to resources for public defenders and court-appointed attorneys is o…

Hang on, so you're saying suspend publicly provided attorneys for people who can't afford them?

Is this one of those cases where they're more "free" because more of them are in jail?

Re: Imagine K12

#40

Post by maxharris »

jbooth wrote: post #39
maxharris wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government may have wrongfully initiated the legal action, but this is not certain before the trial is over. Remember, in the case of guilt (context: when someone is guilty of violating an objective law, so this doesn't apply to all of today's laws), it is merely retaliating. This stuff isn't just an academic issue: "Shrinking funding and access to resources for public defenders and court-appointed attorneys is o…

Hang on, so you're saying suspend publicly provided attorneys for people who can't afford them? Is this one of those cases where they're more "free" because more of them are in jail?

No, I'm saying that they'd get better representation if people didn't think "the government has already taken care of the problem, so why should I donate?"

Imagine the effect of a government program intended to assist stranded motorists (suppose that the program maintained a fleet of trucks which carried common spare tires, gas, compressed air and the like). Fewer people would stop to help, and that program would function about as well as any other government program does, which is another way of saying that it would work a lot worse than any private roadside assistance program known today.

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