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Request for Education Startups

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Request for Education Startups

#81

Post by germinalphrase »

hdctambien wrote: post #77
barry-cotter wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One big issue you face is that you're going to be teaching children and helping to shape their minds so you must use valid scientific research to back up your ideas less we create a generation of adults who cannot think about the world. Don't let the barely adequate be the enemy of the actively harmful. Most education research is of low quality and education does not incorporate known effective techniques like mast…

Honestly, fixing the education of educators would be the best long term solution. Alternatively, creating a complete, ready-to-go curriculum package for every course (as defined in every state) that could be handed to anyone might be a startup-able solution to that problem. Although, that might also just be a patch that leads to a local maximum of not-very-good teachers teaching from better-than-before curriculum. Wh…

I believe there is opportunity in giving teachers better tools to teach as well as they are capable.

Teaching is difficult enough from a personal performance and logistical standpoint that there is low hanging fruit in simply helping teachers be their best professional self.

For example: I have approx. 200 high school level students. If I assign them to write one page I have just given myself 200 pages of assessment to complete. Assessing writing is more cognitively demanding than simply reading 200 pages, so if I can read and provide feedback on each page in 3 minutes - working non-stop - I have 10 hours of work. I have 5 hours of prep time per week which is primarily used for preparing the 7 hours a day I spend actively in class with students. Given that we don't complete just one assignment per week - you can see the logistical difficulty.

I teach english. There are commenting/notemaking tools in almost every online word processing toolset, but none of them are streamlined for assessing writing (i.e. providing rubric based feedback, rapidly annotating with custom or pre-created notes, allowing for layered annotations to identify different structural features of writing). There's opportunity in figuring out what teachers already do and slash the time required to do it.

Re: Request for Education Startups

#83

Post by gnicholas »

Interesting that learning science is not represented in the categories — something along the lines of:

"There's lots of research on ways in which material can be presented that makes it easier for kids to learn. We would encourage companies that have relevant expertise and the ability to bring research-backed technology to market."

Or is there not an interest in something like this?

Re: Request for Education Startups

#84

Post by shanev »

Naval Ravikant's tweetstorm today is highly relevant to this [1]:

1/ If the primary purpose of school was education, the Internet should obsolete it. But school is mainly about credentialing.

2/ Schools survive anti-educational behavior (i.e. groupthink) due to symbiosis between institutions that issue and accept credentials.

3/ Employers looking past traditional credentials can arbitrage the gap. @ycombinator made $Bs doing this for young founders.

4/ The more meritocratic an industry, the faster it moves away from false credentialing. I.e., the MBA and tech startups.

5/ A generation of auto-didacts, educated by the Internet & leveraged by technology, will eventually starve the industrial-education system.

6/ Until then, only the most desperate and talented students will make the leap.

7/ Even today, what to study and how to study it are more important than where to study it and for how long.

8/ The best teachers are on the Internet. The best books are on the Internet. The best peers are on the Internet.

9/ The tools for learning are abundant. It’s the desire to learn that’s scarce.

10/ Educational credentials are badges that admit one to the elite class. Expect elites to struggle mightily to justify the current system.

11/ Eventually, the tide of the Internet and rational, self-interested employers will create and accept efficient credentialing...

12/ ...and wash away our obsolete industrial-education system.

[1]: https://twitter.com/naval/status/912220382450524160

Re: Request for Education Startups

#86

Post by sagefy »

jpereira wrote: post #31

These all seem to be assuming the institution-teacher-student model of education we have today. Even the "New school models" section is assuming a delivered experience, which has an institutional bent. I think biggest area of disruption in education would be in building fundamentally new architectures for educational systems, based on networks and social communities instead of funnels and institutions. The latter hav…

The institution-teacher-student model, or the top-down approach, is based on two things: 1) a specific, predetermined set of knowledge each learner must know at each level and 2) tying those requirements with specific ages. This results in one of two problems for the individual learner. Either they are mastering the content faster than their peers, or they need more time than the specifications allow. And, at least here in the US, there isn't much room for the learner to choose their own path. I know I often was frustrated in the classroom as a kid, either repeating information I already had down or jumping ahead without mastering the fundamentals first.

Much of this stems from economic concerns with education. We simply can't afford to have one teacher per student all day long at a systematic level. We know from years of research that 1-on-1 tutoring is almost always going to be the most effective model (combined with some social and problem-based learning).

We live in an exciting time. Technology can help remove some of the economic barriers to individualizing learning. I've been thinking about this problem for several years. If anyone's interested to see what I've come up with... I don't have all the answers, but (shameless plug) https://sagefy.org

The article in the parent looks pretty great! I've scanned it but I've got it down in my TODO list to read through. Always interested in hearing about different thoughts about the problem.

Re: Request for Education Startups

#87

Post by philipps »

ontouchstart wrote: post #85

A lot of great ideas and important issues on Education startups can be found in this 5-hour long video "Technology In Education: Witnesses testified on technological advances in education." recorded on OCTOBER 12, 1995. https://www.c-span.org/video/?67583-1/technology-education

I second this. The panel includes true visionaries like Adam Kay and Seymour Papert. Seymour's comment about kids learning french in France remains one of the most compelling suggestions for the type of technology-supported learning we should be focusing on. The comments above contain many of the reasons why change is hard and slow, but education needs more of these kinds of big ideas rather than incremental improvements of the current system. I also find it useful to distinguish between the process of learning and the system of education.

Re: Request for Education Startups

#88

Post by philipps »

Mz wrote: post #52

Something I don't see on the list: Homeschooling related startups Big companies can be a unique resource for small, independent operations. In k-12 education, some of the smallest and most independent are homeschooling families. They need to comply with state laws. They sometimes need to accommodate 2xe students. They need to prove their children actually received an education. There are no doubt other areas where th…

Homeschooling is the right entry point for disruptive change. The new home schooling community (as opposed to the traditional religion focused home schoolers) is large and growing and much more open to new ideas than the education system.

Re: Request for Education Startups

#89

Post by philipps »

jpereira wrote: post #31

These all seem to be assuming the institution-teacher-student model of education we have today. Even the "New school models" section is assuming a delivered experience, which has an institutional bent. I think biggest area of disruption in education would be in building fundamentally new architectures for educational systems, based on networks and social communities instead of funnels and institutions. The latter hav…

I always suggest the Learning Web chapter of Deschooling Society to anyone interested in ideas for technology enabled learning ventures. It's brilliant. It also helps to skip some of the more political chapters as they are likely to turn people off from his compelling vision for learning societies.

Edit: spelling

Re: Request for Education Startups

#90

Post by anonymous5133 »

hdctambien wrote: post #73
jfaucett wrote: post #23

I've been slowly working on an idea in this area for a while and and would love to be able to work on it full-time, part of its a software problem and that's the only part I've been working on thus far. I'm not doing this for monetary reasons at all, and don't really see how VC would ever be the right solution and lawmakers probably wouldn't allow it to happen either. But anyway I'll put the gist of the idea up here.…

You have to imagine a school full of children like a room full of hackers that will work harder to break your system than they will to follow it. On this forum people say "all you need is a library card" to learn Computer Science, but you also need to read those library books. How does your system deal with students that just refuse to do anything?

Only punishment mechanism I can think of is the parents have to make sure the kid is actually doing his students. The software could have some some alert system that sends an e-mail saying "junior didn't turn in homework 3/5 etc."
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