Curriki

On Twitter I just recevied a reply from @Curriki who mentioned that most of what I wrote about in my post is actually what they are doing right now. The site is curriki.org; worth taking a look. I browsed little bit and will look in detail later. Also, other links I’ve stumbled upon while following #hackedu are;

Union Square Ventures #hackedu meeting: The transcript from the meeting. I’ve found it interesting that education can now be disaggregated, broken into pieces giving each piece to a different group, person. Right now educational institutions give the education and a degree (credentialing) at the same time; however credentialing could be given to someone else perhaps, and teaching could be peer-to-peer. Rob Kalin’s story was great too. In art school he makes himself a fake ID and goes to MIT classes next door. If you think about it that way, education is really free. He just didn’t get credentials for it. His credentials are his companies he built after he got that free education. So, who cares?! Great stuff.

Why Don’t Students Like School?: Great article on the psychology of learning. The theory that we do not actually prefer “thinking” if we do not have to, was an interesting theory. Most people prefer “remembering” an earlier solution for a new problem. Here my 3rd Wave brain was screaming in my head “and/but almost all problems are new problems now due to arrival of new technology”. The changes in this day and age are just too great to rely on old solutions. So we have to think more. Education needs to reflect this.

Some Reading related to #hackedu

Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst? Damn. That really is possible. Why shouldn’t wee see education just like any other part of the economy? If so then, yes, here is a “way” of doing things that is clearly overfunded, highly subsidized, hence forming a bubble, and it can burst! I hope it does (soon).

Old Education, Old Research: This is not related to education per se, but it’s sister subject: Research. Does old way of research encourage unethical behaviour? Good question to ask.

US Public Ed Like GM in the 80s: No kidding. Similar to the “bubble” analogy above, this great article questions why education isn’t more personalized. If iTunes can suggest you new songs, why can’t your education offering be more personalized according to your style, habits, and skills? Great slam on the existing educational system, and I thought the GM analogy which was an industrial era giant itself, was very apt.

Hacking Education by A VC: Just a great article. I am going to be re-reading it soon.

What Would Google Do? Google University? Why not? The sentence cracked me up too; like “what would Jesus do?” :) It shows the status attained by Google in the tech-world I guess.. The article was full of great ideas.