Disrupting education- Beyond the facts of Education

This week I moved my oldest daughter into the dorms as she started her college journey.  When this happens to you, you'll find yourself doing a lot of reflection.  One of the questions that get asked a lot is college expense worth it, is it still the right way to educate people today.  Additionally, there's no lack of startups trying to disrupt the education space these days.   CodeAcademy, khanacademy, iTunes and all the open courseware projects are some of the more popular ones.  When I was taking part in the founder institute it seemed as though fully one third of the people there had ideas that revolved around education.    There's nothing more important to a society, country, worlds future than the education of the people.  Democratizing the information is ONE step in helping provide an education but the more I think about it I'm not sure it's the most important one.   

The following is a list is a think "traditional" based post secondary education does better. These are problems that need to be solved by those who want to change education. 

1. Having the information available doesn't mean it's going to be learned or even consumed.  

I think this is the biggest misnomer about education available on the internet.   Libraries have always provided people a way to educate themselves.  No, That's not video, and it's not interactive and there's lots of things libraries aren't but the information is there to be consumed.  Having the information out there just means I can learn that skill, task, subject TOMORROW because there's always tomorrow.  However, what's missing is  the public commitment, hard deadlines and social aspects of going to school help to provide social pressure to finish what you start.  Not everyone will finish but there's a very public aspect to enrolling and telling people that you can't go out to dinner because you have class in the morning.   There are people to be accountable to, classmates, teachers, family and friends and your bank account.  You've made a public declaration and dropping out means admitting that to people.  Dan Ariely has done a significant amount of work in this area ,  what he found it is students perform much better when they have NO say about what deadlines there are,  perform a little better when there are self imposed intermediate deadlines and worst of all when there's no deadlines.  

There's a lot that paying tuition, being required to show up every day and having your course of study planned out for that's unaccounted for today in the "you can learn everything free" startup culture.   This can't be overlooked, or understated.  Think about how many times you've liked to learn how to do something but haven't even taken the very next step.  Now imagine you did take the next step and find the online class that would teach you that but there's no fee, no one knows and there's no deadlines?   There's better chance than not it never gets completed.  There are many instances where people have successfully taught themselves things but this tends to be for those highly motivated, highly passionate people, not those in the fat part of the bell curve.   

2. There's more to being successful than book knowledge. 

One of the advantages is all the "intangible" aspects.  There's the learning how to deal with different people from all different walks of life, ages, belief structures and locations.   There's is the being exposed to all different subjects, topics and teachers.   It's about transitioning out of your parents house and into adulthood within the "safe" boundaries of an institution.  Are there other ways to do this? Without a doubt, however it's a benefit of post secondary education regardless. It's about learning who you are, what the world is like and developing your own style to deal with all of the above. 

3. Sometimes we need individual attention .  

If "the information is out there" why don't we just sit preschool kids down with a television and let them learn from that, then move them to a tablet and internet connection.  Why?  Right now current  environments provide ways to measure and identify students who need help or need things explained in a new way(although not as well as they should).    There are  still occasions when you have questions or don't know you SHOULD have questions.  Individualized training is still needed.   Teachers are there to answer those questions or to provide help when they see students struggling.  In a post secondary environment usually that help is greatly diminished inside the classroom but is still available elsewhere within the institution, during office hours, peer groups or tutoring labs. Many people give up in the process when they were really close to the answer.   Individualized training isn't well accounted for today on the internet.  It works great if you understand right off the bat, it doesn't work well if you don't and have few other resources.   I'll restate from an earlier paragraph, the people in the top quartile of the Bell Curve in a given subject don't need this help, but I'm talking about everyone else. 

4. Facts change- 

I heard it 10 times during orientation last week, facts change, what we teach you will change.   I think a topic based learning isn't really preparing people for jobs that require problem solving which are increasing in our workforce.   Teaching students to problem solve, work together, dig for information and assemble facts to arrive at a conclusion is something that we have to make sure we are doing.   It's fairly common to hear people say "the stuff I learned in college don't apply to my job".  There's still value in the process though, hopefully through the institution they learned how to learn, learned how to problem solve, and learned about all the things outside of facts that will help make them successful.    Yes I can go on the web and learn how to solve for X but I need to be able to apply that.   

The above isn't in defense of the status quo, in fact quite the opposite.  If people don't have to spend $50,000 to receive an education we'd be better off.  There are those that can't, won't or don't and for those cost is probably a contributing factor.   I say that the above are problems that need solving.  I think that there are great opportunities  now with technology to provide a wealth of choices there were never available before, also in the right setup you can have hyper individualized training because we are no longer bound by location.  In fact I think that the only way to "fix" education is to completely re create what it means   Most importantly how to create social pressure for people to both start and finish an education, then help them through the process along the way.   No we shouldn't just keep doing things the way they've always been done, and create a barrier to success.  We need to think beyond just the facts based part of learning. 

Productivity and Software

I read an article about 9 months ago in the Wall Street Journal that has stuck with me.   The author was Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape, title Why Software is eating the world.   The title is one that is very sticky and the concept is easy to understand.  The Internet combined with Software and cloud or cheap computing is literally changing the world at a staggering pace.  The recent acquisition of instagram  reminded me of this, while much has been written about the price,  the fact that the team was made up of  less than 12 people that served more than 30 million users though hasn't been talked about enough.

I can not think of an example in the history of the world we could have such a small number of people provide goods or services to millions of people.   Software scales like nothing else the world has seen.  A good developer can write code that can serve 10 users or 10 million.   What's more is that through cheap distribution, on app stores, social media, and the web companies can be built with little capital, or at least very capital efficient.   All this comes together so that "software begins to eat the world".   Who today would like to invest in a CD or DVD printing business, or a company that does the printing of books or magazines, what about a travel agency, and the list goes on. Even brick and mortar retailers are downsizing their footprint as shopping moves online. Every day little by little software is replacing labor or physical goods in our economy.

Productivity has increased more than 4X since 1950.  That means that a worker today would just need to work 10 hours today to produce the same level of output of 1950.   I expect that pace will accelerate as more things that were once done in the physical world transition to online, shopping, banking, and even socializing. What's interesting to me as that it's probably imperceptible to most people.  Every day we are able to get more done with less and we don't really see it.   Most of the productivity gains can be attributed to technology and the software that runs it.   This is why it's important to have the best developers you can get, a good one can easily to the work of 5 average ones, and because the work scales there's lots to be said about getting the right people.

Increased Productivity is the key to our success as a country and as humankind and our economic standards of living.   It can "solve" many of our financial issues and provide a better quality of life day to day.   I'm hoping soon that things like software that drives our cars will come into existence freeing up hundreds of thousands of hours a day for people to work while commuting (assuming they need to commute in the first place).    So while software may be eating the world, it will be to our benefit.

In defense of tracking cookies

Recently there has been much concern about letting advertisers track you across websites to provide relevant ads.   Let me start by stating in NO WAY is it okay for google to bypass the user's setting in the browser to display ads.   Now that's out of the way my question is what's wrong with tracking cookies?   Especially if they are anonymous but even if they aren't .  Why wouldn't you want the most relevant ads displayed to you?

If I am planning on making a trip to Las Vegas, some relevant ads might be appreciated.   If I'm looking for a new refrigerator then coupons or offers related to refrigerators are something that I would like to see.   I'm in no way interested in diapers or strollers (our kids are grown) nor as a male would I be interested in cosmetics.   Those ads are pointless and annoying to me.    Yet an ad for the latest documentary movie I'm probably going to watch.   If you happen to be a fan of apple products you'd probably like to see apple ads.    

This is not only important for me it's important for the advertisers.   Ads and marketing are built in to the cost of the goods and services I use.   If those advertisers become more efficient with their ads  then those savings ultimately passed on to me through lower prices or better products.   It's great for the advertisers since they aren't wasting money.  It starts to put an end to the saying that "Half the money you spend on marketing is wasted you just don't know which half". 

  

For decades we have received either no charge or discounted services because of advertising.   Google provides many things I use every day for no charge,  search, gmail, chrome browser.   Every social network relies on advertising, and just about every service people use on the internet.  Even before that we received "free" television,  "free" radio, and discounted newspapers.   Even sporting events and and concerts are subsidized by advertisers.   In these traditional  media sources advertisers had to spend money on people they KNEW weren't interested in their product just to reach those that were.   Now with tracking cookies I can spend that money on those people who are likely to be customers.    Better for the advertiser, better for the customer, better for the site.   The internet will even to accelerate taking dollars from traditional media the more targeted the ads can be.  More advertising pouring into sites means more services can be there and be there for no charge. 

There is little reason that people should be concerned about this, quit being scared about the concept that some guy is looking at your site history and wants to come to your house to sell you something.   Tracking you across sites improves the internet. 

I finally cracked it

For more than a year now people have been speculating on an apple TV.  Not the plug in box but an actual display.  There's lots of reason for the speculation, the fact that they have been dabbling in this space with the apple TV set top box, they sell movies and shows on itunes and it's the last phase of the "digital hub" that  Steve Jobs envisioned.  To me though the most compelling arguments though is that if apple is going to continue to grow it will have to enter gigantic markets.   Given apple's size creating niche products won't move the revenue needle at their scale, and since no one is speculating they build cars, televisions make a lot of sense from a market size perspective.  Finally, jobs said in his recent bio that he wanted a TV that was easy to use and that he "finally cracked it".  

So what could apple do that would be a game changing?  My prediction is that they will partner with a one or two cable providers, let you connect your apple TV directly to the coax and eliminate the cable box, cable remote, DVR, DVD, and every other setup top box.  Other than power and cable it would not have ANY OTHER INPUTS.  Want to play games, use your ipad.  What about your DVD/Blue Ray player? Itunes. 

Here's why I think this will happen.

1. Apple doesn't have enough content to make a device without inputs so they'll need content from somewhere, most people aren't ready to completely give up cable.  I can't see an apple TV that has the same legacy connections today, since that's one of people's largest frustations. 

2. By partnering with 1-2 providers they can get the out of the box experience very "appley".  Plug it in, turn it on sign onto itunes and your done.

3. Limited rollout (think iphone) will create scarcity and thus people will want what they can't have.  Providers will fight to get the appletv, consumers will be asking their providers.  

4. Cable, internet, IPTV, music, games, will all be delivered seamlessly, you won't know/care if it the content is being delivered from the cable, internet, locally recorded, or via apps.   

5. Cable companies get to maintain the "status quo" of getting you to pay $100 and maybe more with easy subscriptions.   They can deliver content in the traditional multicast way or IPTV without you having to know or care, maximizing the value of their network.   Since this TV will only work on their system, you'll be locked in (again think cell phones).  Possibly they could even subside the sale of the device with long contracts.

6. It will create a differentiation for those providers who have it.  My guess is since AT&T did the iphone they'd do this deal, especially since they aren't the incumbent cable provider in most areas.   DirecTV is national but seems many apple fans wouldn't/couldn't put up a dish, therefore might not be the best first choice.

One device, one remote (your iOS device), no inputs, all Apple.

Early adopters left behind

Becoming the uber expert is fun.   Everyone at one time has been so good at something that  it seems they can answer any question related to it.  Over time though newer ways to do the same thing emerge, and the expert contends that they suck.   The old system is better, they say.   They move to discredit these improved methods claiming it's lacking in function, form or price.

As a new technology begins to emerge early adopters begin to gravitate to the latest "thing".   Home brew, hobbyists, and fans tinker around.   In fact almost all things that we now use as consumers were first part of the hacker culture.   As more and more people use the technology the methods to make things happen need to be lowered to make room for those who are less technical.  Usually for these advances raise all boats, meaning most everyone can benefit from the addition of tools that make it easier for the fat part of the bell curve to understand and adopt the technology.   Some of the best examples of this is transition from text based computers to graphical ones, special query languages (think google and their operators) to an easier to use interface, physical keyboards to a virtual one,  typesetting vs word processing and printing, content management systems vs html files only, farming vs going to the store, turning the crank on the car vs turning the key, oral tradition vs written words. 

Initially, early adopters shun this new way.  It's usually not better at first, but more importantly it's part of their identity.  They have become the go to guy/gal for how to make the complicated system work.   The early adopters become great at their craft, they become experts.  They have A LOT invested in learning all commands, systems, and specialized operators.  Only a select few, or chosen ones, can do the things they do.  While everyone else was ignoring the future they were investing in it.    In a way this stands to threaten their status as a gifted wizard of the technology.  They want to hold on to their way of doing things and their status, it's a defense mechanism.  

The early adopters say that the new system at usually lacks all the things that made the old system great, and to a point they are right.   The keyboard is better than speech recognition but slowly things are added that make it better and better.  Little by little bit by bit the new way begins to catch up with the old way, maybe even begin to pass it.  Now not everyone needs an expert to be proficient on this new technology, they can get by without an expert. The once uber expert might even be looked at as old school or out dated in their approach.   

At this point the expert can do one of a few things,  they can continue on in their old ways because there will always be someone who still needs an expert who remembers how to do it the old way.    They can reinvest and take what they know and adapt it to the new system becoming really valuable with a good historical grasp of things, or just learn something completely new.   The point here is that almost without exception despite how much they hate the change, society is better off.   The world is better off we all still don't have to grow our own food, can create their own website, and find things on the internet.   Progress has happened thanks to the efforts of the "geeks" but sometimes the geeks get left behind.

I miss Andriod and can't leave iOS- Tales of a flip flopper

I probably need a dual boot phone so I can choose the OS that I like at the moment.   As a way of background I've had both major smartphone platform in the past 3 years and several blackberries prior to that. I used the EVO for 15 months and the 3G iphone for 2 years prior.   With the introduction of the iPhone 4s last week a moved back to iOS for a while to see what's changed.   Peter Rojas had a great post the other day on why he doesn't use an iphone and summed it up best by saying there's a reason they call it personal technology.   So just like Peter, how I use my phone might be different than how you do and thus what's important to me won't be important to you.

The tl;dr version is best summed up from this comic 

http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/tech-fun/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/iphonandroiddifference.png

Now here are my thoughts.  

Touch - iOS feels just like liquid under your fingers.  I can't describe it but both the accuracy of the touch and scrolling is just better for me.  Winner: iOS

Widgets-  I loved this about Android, there were widgets for everything but most importantly I used a widget called Pure Calendar that would show me an agenda view in 3 lines for upcoming days.   iOS 5 does a little better with notifications than it used to but nothing beats a widget for this.  Winner: android

Notifications:  The new iOS notifications are almost exactly stolen from android however they have improved upon them.  Now I can see things like sender, subject, and what the notification is about.   Android had something called "ongoing" notifications for things like music that was running currently that I liked but the amount of info available in iOS notifications is just better now.  Another thing that android accels  is infinite configuring of notifications, make the light blink, vibrate, don't notify all app configurable infinite ways it seems. Winner: iOS

Camera: It's impossible to know how every camera performs but the 4s 8megapixel takes much better pics than my EVO and the gallery is much faster and easier to navigate than the EVO andriod  Winner: iOS

Google integration: This might seem like a loaded, item but if you depend on google services like gmail, google voice and google suggest, it's just better on android as you'd expect  Winner: Android 

Physical aspects:  Android comes in about every size you can imagine.   Big screens are a plus for me.  It's the hardest thing about going back to an iPhone for me.  I miss a 4.3" screen.   You can have a physical keyboard if you want.  Some of the phones are heavier and some are lighter than the iphone.   All that said there's something that just feels "right" about the iphone.  It's got a great build quality, the glass and metal make it very nice to hold in your hand.   TIE

Apps:  The apple app store is just better, there's better apps and the apps have more polish.  I don't know if android is just more difficult because it's so flexible, the amazon app store is better than the native android marketplace, but without question, the experience, the apps and all things third party are better in apple's app store.  The only plus to andriod  is I can install whatever I want where apple has a tight control on their apps so you as a user can only install what apple has approved.   Winner: iOS

Multitasking: Android by a landslide.  iOS has some fast app switching things but with android I can leave one task to run or download, switch to another and know it's going to finish.  Switching is better on Android too, just hold down the home button and your last 8 apps show up to switch too.   Winner android

Battery:   Unknown but with Android it varied  A LOT day to day, and varies a lot person to person, device to device.  I'll know more in a few days but Android probably gets a nod here to having a replaceable battery in most units.  My experience with the EVO was really bad though in the until the last format.  Edge: android

Sceenshots:  I have no idea why google hasn't added this and it frustrated me at least once I week that I couldn't do it without rooting the phone.  Winner iOS

Reliability:  FOR ME, iOS is just better, I hardly ever have to reboot.  There were times I was rebooting at least once a day on android.  I formated my phone 3 times in the 15 months I had it due to lockups, battery issues, etc.   The one thing (first world problem) that drove me crazy was bluetooth.  I have bluetooth in my car and if I was connected to wifi and left my garage the bluetooth would disconnect.  I also couldn't use my address book in my car, it was a small thing but was a big pain almost every day.    Apple has a small number of devices and controls what can run and when on the device so it makes sense it would provide a little more reliability: Winner iOS

Storage:  Well the great thing about android phone is that most of the time you can buy a cheap SD card to expand your storage vs paying outrageous prices for apple's memory.   The downside is you have to manage what's installed on your SD card.  Apps can be installed on your SD card but many times I got a low disk space warning because I only had 512mb on the phone and many apps have to run in phone storage. So managing the disk space was annoying.  With iOS I don't have to manage it.  I have 16GB to use anyway I want.  TIE

Downloads: Better on andriod in every way.  I never had to worry if I was connected to wifi to do something like with iOS.  Download whole system updates over 3G, podcasts, audio books, ANYTHING.   I hate getting the message in iOS this is too big for cell data. Winner: android

Sharing: iOS touted with version 5 they had deep twitter integration.  That doesn't even compare to android's share button.  With android any app could tapp into the share function, email, evernote, facebook, twitter, g+ and every obscure social site you can think of.  All sharable from almost anywhere.  Winner Android

Cloud: iOS brought us iCloud.  It can store backups of my phone, apps, calendar, documents, photos and just about anything.   After formatting my Android phone 3 times, I can't tell you how frustrating it was to have to reload most everything and the marketplace only seemed to keep track of my purchased apps not my free ones.   It just wasn't seemless and you'd think that it would be.   However google based things worked pretty well, contacts, calendar, email.  Also the auto upload of pictures to G+ was a great cloud feature  Winner: iOS

Voice: Android has had voice actions for a long time.  Given I have a long commute I would use it a lot.   I  was amazed how good it was the first time I used it.   You could give it simple commands like "send text to" "search for" and of course speech to text.   Siri is just better though.  I can ask it questions and it will talk back to me.  Add to that iOS's new location based reminders and it's a pretty powerful combo.  I think it still has a ways to go since I have to think about what I can ask it but, the fact it reads things back to me and has more action items than google voice puts it in the lead for me Winner: iOS

It looks like the score on these things is 8 vs 6 which is why I have such a hard time picking a platform.  My wife might take this phone from me in March and give me a chance to reconsider platforms as google releases their answers to iOS 5 and the 4s.

Feed the Borg, start talking to your phone

I remember being promised my computer would understand me since I was a kid.   The first software I really remember testing for this  "speech recognition" was called voice type dictation from IBM.  It required a Pentium 90Mhz computer.  What do I remember about it?  My boss tried to show someone in the office and he said "This is an example of voice type dictation."  The computer promptly placed on the screen the text "I'm going on a boy's pike vacation".  Laughter ensued and an inside joke was born .   Many other attempts were made including our CEO who heard the dragon naturally speaking software combined with a digital recorder could replace his admin assistant and insisted I order one right away.  As you can imagine soon after he threw it into my office, claimed it was useless and another attempt at getting my computer to understand me was lost. With every try the promise of software makers were that if we only had X fast processor it would get better.  It never did.  

Enter goog-411. Goog-411 was a free service launched in 2007 to offer a free directory look-up service from your phone, eliminating the need for a costly information call to get a number.  Why did google do this?  To gather voice samples.  Data was the key, not only processing power.  This was the holy grail of speech recognition.  By gathering samples of people's voice and then having the user select the correct listing Google gathered endless data points. Google used that data then to launch their own voice products including andriod actions and promptly discontinued goog-411 3 years later. 

Talking into your smartphone via these apps has yielded a real leap in the ability for my computer to finally understand me.  Now we have Siri, apple's new personal assistant.  Siri not only promises to understand what I say but also translate that into actions.  It seems almost too good to be true. What's the weather today?  How do I get home?  What are the markets doing today?   Not only that but Siri will translate your words into emails and text messages.   


With every word spoken into your android or iPhone you give the system one more data point to understand you better the next time.   Over and Over, all around the world by using data points people are making these systems better.   The cloud + mobile phones have brought in a few years what couldn't be done in the previous decades. Acceleration will happen exponentially with millions of people with accents, lisps, and different pronunciations will feed the system making it better for each of us. 


My question will be how much will I need to think about what I can ask these systems?  When will I be able to say "Siri what's my daughter's grades?"  "How much money is in my account less what bills I have left to pay this month?",  "What were our sales this month?"  Being able to send a text message or get the weather is great. However, I'm looking for the friction to reach zero.  In order for voice recognition to become mainstream it's got to be able to answer almost anything I can ask it, having to consider what I can and can't say to my phone probably means other than if I'm driving I won't use it.   IF however I can ask it anything, and the barrier is low enough then voice systems can really make my life easier and help me get things done.  I real personal assistant.  I'm sure that our phones will teach us to speak to it just as it learns what we are saying.  My hope is that by feeding these systems more data and adding API's soon I'll be able to not even worry if my phone understands me.