A post by Jose Ferreira

“I started Knewton to do my bit to fix the world’s education system. Education is among the most important problems we face, because it’s the ultimate “gateway” problem. That is, it drives virtually every global problem that we face as a species. But there’s a flip-side: if we can fix education, then we’ll dramatically improve the other problems, too. So in fact, I started Knewton not just to help fix education but to try to fix just about everything…

Okay, yes, that’s crazily ambitious. But we have a vision of how it will happen and a plan to get there. It won’t be easy and maybe we won’t accomplish all of our goals. But whatever progress we make will be extremely positive.

So if I had to give one piece of advice to a budding entrepreneur, I would say: aim big. Go after a giant problem, one of the great problems of our time, a problem that, if solved, would usher in an era of large-scale transformation across industries and nations. It won’t be easy. The really BIG PROBLEMS, like education, are big problems for a reason. But there are already too many entrepreneurs and venture capitalists going for the easy and obvious stuff…”

We all know that big data is going to change the teaching profession. But what exactly will this transformation entail?

This article explains how analytics will 1) reduce administrative burden 2) address the diverse needs of students 3) improve engagement levels 4) increase flexibility:

“One of the biggest challenges facing schools and administrators today is the growing diversity of the students within their population. A greater diversity of students means a greater diversity of needs to consider. Some struggle because English is not their first language; others have difficulty with focus or organization. Others may be particularly weak in some area but possess unusual strengths in another (which the existing curriculum may not take into account).

As every teacher knows, classroom management is a consummate juggling act. To remain attentive to the needs of all students, teachers must engage the more advanced students while helping the struggling ones catch up. At any given point in a lesson, a teacher must decide whether to move through the material aggressively and add more challenges and twists to the problems presented, or build in more of cushion for those who are confused. Any one of these strategies, including “teaching to the middle,” is bound to leave some students feeling bored or confused.

Blended learning solutions that offer a sophisticated analytics dashboard give both students and teachers more freedom in this respect: students move through coursework at their own pace and teachers retain control over the classroom while gaining insight into the learning process. A teacher might discover through analytics that a student who is weak with math word problems is struggling because he has difficulty with reading comprehension; that teacher can then direct him to material that improves his grasp of syntax and vocabulary. Another student who understands mathematical concepts but has trouble with carelessness in arithmetic can receive feedback about how to develop stronger estimation abilities or check work once completed…”

Ever wondered why some students get trapped in a negative cycle in school while others only seem to become smarter and more motivated? This article explains why success breeds more success in the school environment:

“Self-perception, social expectations, and previous experiences shape our academic ability more than we realize. Just think: how many times does your belief that you are gifted at something combine with positive external validation to help you overcome challenges in that area, increase your confidence, and lead you to explore that area more thoroughly and take more risks than others might?

Similar dynamics apply to school. Students who perceive themselves as ‘smart’ tend to be more resilient and show greater perseverance in school, which ensures that they perform better academically, continue to put themselves in situations that require cognitive work, and so forth. Success breeds more success. On the other hand, many students dislike school because a combination of factors lead them early on to believe that school is ‘not for them.’ This results in poor performance and negative feedback, which further reduces student interest in school as well as the likelihood of future academic exploration and exposure.”

An invaluable resource:

“Technology continues to change college life, and each month The Chronicle’s Tech Therapy podcast offers analysis and advice on what the latest gadgets and buzzwords mean for professors, administrators, and students.

Join hosts Jeff Young, a Chronicle reporter (left), and Warren Arbogast, a technology consultant who works with colleges, for a lively discussion—as well as interviews with leading thinkers in technology.”

“In the middle of one of the hottest and driest summers on record, twenty Austin, TX, area high school students showed up for school everyday for four weeks. While the four-week project took place inside a school, how the students worked, the roles they assumed, and what they produced was a total redesign of school and what it means to be a learner. Their mission: create a casual video game for AMD that highlights the green architecture that earned the company’s Lone Star Campus (based in Austin) a gold certified Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) honor.  A local game development company was recruited to evaluate the games and select one to be featured on AMD’s website.

Over the four weeks I spent several hours with the students, attended some of the fieldtrips that were arranged for them, and followed the evolution of their games from mere ideas, sketches, and paper prototypes to playable demos. I observed how digital media, peer-to-peer learning ecologies, student-centered processes, and immersive, open, and playful educational environments can transform the lives of schools and, most important, the lives of young learners.”

How important is “play” to brain development?

“Mathematics is a language, a way of thinking, a set of disciplines that help us in the endless, infinitely challenging job of creating a life. We haven’t really learned Pi, until we can think about Tau, and have fun with it.”

The piece examines 6 different types of failure with examples of each…. seems like there are some implications for education…

“Most of the time, I’m in complete agreement with this sensibility, but what concerns me is that in this counterintuitive embrace of failure we may be conflating different kinds of failure, and doing so at some risk. Perhaps all this is a necessary antidote to capitalism’s “success at any cost” mentality. But I have a creeping sense of anxiety that the rise in the rhetoric of failure dovetails in troubling ways with a shift toward esteem building in child raising and general education — in other words, trophies for the last place team, too. And not to sound like a hard-driving, unforgiving “tiger mother,” but I do wonder what this ubiquitous positive vibe surrounding failure really means for a nation in decline on almost every measure of productivity, achievement, and social equity. Coincidence?”

Major facts and figures:

• Milestones in e-Learning: In 1971, the Open University in England began broadcasting lectures on television and 25,000 students enrolled. In 1993, six years before the term e-Learning was coined at an educational seminar, William Graziadei III outlined a set of criteria to identify e-Learning systems. They must be easy to use, portable, replicable, scalable and affordable, he wrote.
• Online education is a $34 billion industry.
• At 250,000 students, the Open University, which teaches a majority of its courses online, is the largest university in the United Kingdom. It’s twice the size of the University of London.
• The for-profit University of Phoenix is now the largest university in the United States, enrolling more than 500,000 students. That’s about 13 times larger than the University of Arizona.
• There are currently more than three million online-only students in the United States. That’s more than the total number of college students in France.
• Use of online education has been growing at an astronomical rate, and it isn’t stopping. Seventy-five percent of public higher learning institutions have online learning in their long-term plans. By 2019, it is estimated that 50 percent of all classes taught will be delivered online, and many of these will be available for free.
• Almost half of college students take at least one class online.
• Nearly half of online students are 26 or older.”