As a part of the Kauffman Foundation’s Global Entrepreneurship Week, we were invited back for a demonstration of our progress since we last presented in June.
As always, we had a great time and are very thankful to those at the Kauffman Foundation putting all of their time and effort into providing us entrepreneurs a place to grow and share our stories.
For those who didn’t get to see, here is a direct link to our talk by Keith Entzeroth i where we are introduced around the one minute mark.
The importance of search in today’s world is undeniable.
When’s the last time you went a single day without searching the internet for something?
Google is working hard to provide teachers with resources to incorporate search into existing coursework and lesson plans [1].
If you haven’t seen it, they’re offering a handful of lessons on how to build up a better understanding of search. Then, you learn how to use search to accomplish meaningful tasks. There’s also a section for “Google a Day” challenges that help to incorporate search into a typical curriculum of history, geography, math, etc…
What Google is trying to do here is great.
Let’s get more of the connected world’s important topics into the education system.
Is searching the web important enough that it should be its own course?
-Keith
I read a nice post in the Harvard Business Review today about the ever growing problem of people having their eyes on their cell phones instead of the events going on around them…like driving or getting married!
This made me think: Does having all of the students in a class take notes really provide any value?
Are all those laptops, tablets, phones and notebooks hurting more than they’re helping?
In classrooms, I am never a good notetaker so perhaps this is just part of my skepticism. In the business world, we typically either assign a notetaker or just take pictures of whiteboards when we’re done, but in the education world, it was the complete opposite.
Are there any teachers out there who have experimented with this topic?
Does outlawing student note taking result in better engagement and higher information retention?
-Keith
“Learning is not done to you” - a great quote from Seth Godin’s free book from ”Stop Stealing Dreams”.
Take a second and think about that. ”Learning is not done to you”…the learner needs to be actively involved in the pursuit of knowledge.
There’s a major problem in the education system of the US today. Students are not interested in what we are offering. It’s just a system where the winners ultimately end up with the good jobs.
To get back on top of the world and produce the next generation of innovation, we need to address this issue.
We Are Here —> Industrial Factory Schooling
Today the US, and pretty much all of the world have fashioned their school systems in such a way that their ideal purpose is to serve the industrial factory.
Students are still taught to memorize in bulk and respond with facts on demand.
The facts are meaningless because the student is not passionate about the subject and could easily look the fact up. In this new world, where information is easily accessible over the internet and even the most difficult of concepts and coursework are being made available by the likes of Khan Academy, the 24 hour cram and forget student examination cycle will quickly becoming irrelevant.
Directions to the Future —> Empowered Passionate Schooling
The great news is that teachers out there are already paving the way. Since watching a lecture can now be the homework, teachers can use classroom time for group learning, hands-on instruction, or even completely different lesson plans altogether.
For example, in Oregon, a projects based curriculum full of gardening, raising tilapia and beekeeping has transformed Al Kennedy Alternative High School from a place struggling to engage students ( 23% attendance ) to one with a nearly 200 student long waiting list [1].
Technology is the great enabler here. Because information is now freely available like never before, more time is being used to let students work on things that would never before have been included in a common education.
Students are passionate when they’re working towards their dreams
To make an even greater impact, school systems could take up a strategy similar to Google’s 20% rule, and give students a structured format to spend a large amount of their time working towards a dream that interests them. Some schools out there are already trying this with great results[2]!
Depending on interest, let students choose projects like “Change your oil”, “How to buy a car”, “Dealing with debt” and the more advanced dreamers will impress us with their ambition. Allowing students to work on real world topics and concepts they dream of solving will bring passion back into the classroom.
I’m excited just thinking about the opportunities that exist for teachers and students today. I wish this stuff was going on when I was in school!
-Keith
[1] - http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2012/04/18/projbased_or.html
[2] - http://www.happysteve.com/blog/gat-project-google-20-rule-in-school.html
For many years now, the US News “America’s Best Colleges” rankings have compiled a single aggregate list of universities in the United States.
Many have written about the problem with the college ranking system, but none quite so well as Malcolm Gladwell in “The Order of Things”.
Can universities be ranked?
Any system of ranking is going to favor certain factors over others and the US News rankings are no exception. They are favorable to private, wealthy institutions and fail to take into account many of the factors which are more important to the majority of parents and students.
Gladwell points out that “at a time when American higher education is facing a crisis of accessibility and affordability, we have adopted a de-facto standard of college quality that is uninterested in both of those factors.” In other words, the US News rankings don’t favor quality schools that are affordable and easier to get admitted to.
Universities Keep Competing for Rankings
Despite the flaws in the US News ratings, universities around the country continue to invest in improving their spot.
Is the time, energy, and money spent worth it? Should universities continue to mass broadcast out applications with the intention of increasing selectivity? Should deans promising higher spots in the rankings be taken seriously?
Higher education should stop wasting time and effort on improving its US News rankings and instead focus on improving quality while reducing costs.
-Keith
Every university should be providing a nice clean avenue for prospective students and parents to get the full admissions experience on mobile and tablet.
Mobile and Higher Education are taking off. Colleges and universities have updated their web properties to the point that schools without a great mobile experience are playing catchup. The early adopters have moved on to tablet and native for things like the viewbook.
There’s been some great discussion you should catch up on if you’ve missed it:
Leverage this new investment. Spend the time to make sure that everything a student would want to do in order to learn about applying is available. Most importantly, make sure they can apply. “Repeat after me: mobile users will do anything and everything desktop users will do…” — @brad_frost The end goal here is to convert mobile visitors into applicants.
Attract students you couldn’t before. It makes sense to start driving traffic to these new investments being made by higher ed. Couple the additional capabilities of a smartphone or tablet with the fact that people have their devices with them nearly all of the time and the opportunity to create strong ROI in this advertising market is apparent.
How can we get more qualified students visiting those nice responsive mobile & tablet admissions based web apps?
How can we increase the ROI on the marketing spend going to mobile and tablet?
- Keith
