What wave of change will this infrastructure of high-bandwidth, computationally powerful handheld devices drive? My money is on an entirely new kind of educational system. One that is low cost, scalable, distributed and, above all, 100% personalized.

‘Well-Rounded’ is a Myth

It’s no secret that our current school system—created in the industrial era out of industrial thinking—is failing us. The question is ‘why?’ Yes it’s expensive and yes it’s fraught with inefficiencies and bureaucracy and yes it believes pizza is a vegetable. But its failures boil down to something more fundamental: the system assumes each student is more or less the same ball of unshaped clay and that—to be successful—we must all become ‘well-rounded’ individuals. These are terribly false assumptions.

A typical American education requires students to soak up information equally across four subjects: math, science, social studies and language arts, with some visual art or music thrown in as budgets will allow because ‘let’s not kid ourselves, there’s no money in art or music.’ Cue patronizing laughter.^§ § I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Fine Art and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Interaction Design. Before that I spent five years touring with my band. I’ve done alright for myself because I devoted my life to art and music. We handle edge-cases such as special education and gifted education by siphoning students off into classrooms that move at a different pace. The model and the material don’t change, just the speed. That’s as versatile as our current system gets.

The result? Students are apathetic. They’re bored. ‘School sux.’ And it does. It sux hardcore. Being treated like a cog in a world that’s rebuilding itself around personalization and instant, contextual access to information and experiences makes our school system more irrelevant by the month.

An educational psychology professor, Donald O. Clifton, had a hypothesis: If I’m naturally poor at math, no matter how hard I work I’ll only ever be average. If, instead, I spend the same amount of time and effort developing my strengths, the benefits will be exponentially greater. After years of interviews and testing, Clifton discovered that his hypothesis was not only true, but that as an added bonus, subjects who build on their strengths instead of shoring up their weaknesses ended up happier, with a higher sense of self-worth and a deeper engagement with their work. Building on interests and natural strengths kills apathy and increases performance. Learning becomes useful, exciting.

To identify and build on a child’s strengths, education will need to become deeply personalized. I can’t imagine any conscientious educator that would argue against more personal attention for students. It’s something we can all get behind. Yet, we haven’t been able to figure out how to make personalization scale. That’s about to change.

The current generation of low-cost, connected devices, along with a few key platforms, will finally create the ecosystem in which a low-cost, personalized and scalable education can arise.

Public Vs. Private Is Irrelevant

Whether you support public education or a sweeping privatization of education, the ideal is clear: a great educational system is one that is high quality, low cost and available to everyone. Supporters of privatization argue that competition for student dollars will lead to innovations in organizational efficiency and educational quality. I agree with that. Competition does deliver efficiency, but it also delivers stratification.

A privatized system in which higher quality resources sit behind increasingly expensive paywalls and performance walls will always benefits the monied. Always. If we truly believe in creating a country where individuals can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, then we believe in equal education for all, regardless of age, wage, race, sex, or background. You can’t have one without the other.

The real problem is this: A private education will never cost $0.00, but $0.00 is exactly the price point much of citizenry needs it to cost. It’s exactly the price point it should cost.^‡ ‡ I’m a firm believer that a high quality education for everyone is the only way to continue our position as a world leader. Privatized education can’t deliver a great education to everyone. As far as the efficiencies and reach required it’s as much of a dead end as our public system has proven to be. But the ideal still remains: provide personalized educational content and coursework to anyone who wants it for as little money as possible.

Starting Somewhere: The Knowledge Commons

In order to begin solving for this new kind of education we first need a system that can amass, maintain, and deliver an incredible amount of knowledge content, while being freely accessible. There’s a model that exists for such a system: Wikipedia.^§ § I should cite the web in general here, but Wikipedia is much better for this discussion because it has a much higher signal to noise ratio than the rest of the web. I truly believe the web at large is and will be the true knowledge commons which we draw upon to educate our population.

While it has been derided in the past for playing host to a number of content controversies, on the whole this knowledge commons has proved to be an incredibly useful and accurate resource for sharing and spreading information. You can find everything from an in-depth history of the Battle of Bunker Hill to a list of corporations currently in support of SOPA.

Wikipedia generates content with greater speed, higher accuracy, and lower cost than any publisher in history.^‡ ‡ It’s a guess, but a confident one. It is a central vessel through which collective knowledge is curated and disseminated. It’s organized and throughly linked, creating a frictionless flow between content and content sources. I can’t count the number of times I’ve gone to Wikipedia to get a quick answer and found myself falling deeper and deeper down a rabbit hole of links to other interesting articles. It is a system optimized for following what interests you.

But something is missing: a higher level context. How might a student string the best content from the web and Wikipedia together to gain a real education in algebra, World War II, french literature, or programming computer vision algorithms? How do we turn the knowledge commons into coursework?

A Coursework of the Commons

To provide context, we need a platform that allows anyone to collect and categorize content. Plenty of web collection platforms already exist: Delicious, Pinterest, Gimme Bar, Svpply and Evernote are just a few examples off the top of my head. However, this platform would encourage collections that educate and inspire rather than entertain or impress.

To make an attempt at educating, it would need some distinct features. The sequencing of the content within each collection would be vital. With which piece of content should I start? With which should I end? Which content pieces are crucial and which are added insight? Assessment and achievement frameworks would be needed with each collection. Members should be able to construct and curate supersets around major subjects like biology by bringing together collections on topics like cell-division and scientific naming schemes. For a student, working through a superset might equate to finishing a year of school in the subject.

Khan Academy, Sophia Pathways, and Knewton are all attacking the curriculum problem in one form or another, but most are generating both the content and the content connections internally. It’s a good place to start as the value of online learning platforms is still being proven, but they’re resigning themselves to outmoded teaching and publishing models. They’re missing the real opportunity.

The most efficient way to source and maintain a coursework is by following Wikipedia’s model. Provide the right incentives and compulsion loops to drive creation as well as checks and balances to maintain quality content and you accomplish the end result at a fraction of the cost and in a fraction of the time. Just as Wikipedia has amassed and maintained knowledge of the commons, so too can this platform amass and maintain a coursework of the commons.

The Personal Lens

“The rise of online learning carries with it an unprecedented opportunity to transform the schooling system into a student-centric one that can affordably customize for different student needs by allowing all students to learn at their appropriate pace and path, thereby allowing each student to realize his or her fullest potential…” ¹

We’re getting smarter about data; both how we collect it and how it influences our experiences. The only way for a personalized system to scale is through intelligent use of data. It starts with a student profile that assesses what kind of learner I am. This profile would gauge what my strengths, interests and challenges are.

Once that’s established in an uniform way, my experience can be connected to the experiences of others like me, all around the world. Content can be recommended to me based on the success of others who share my profile. In turn, the content and connections I find success in can be recommended to others with similar profiles or interests. The success of one can lead to the success of many.

By building the platform around the student you can recommend learning pathways instead of dictating curriculum. It amounts to a zero-friction mechanism for students to study what they find valuable and build on their inherent strengths. It also enables some incredible new possibilities. An impoverished student, for zero cost, could follow the education of a wealthy student blessed with the world’s best tutors. An avid science student could follow in the educational footsteps of his favorite astronaut or nobel laureate.

Tying personal goals together with successful pathways to achieving those goals creates an ecosystem where students feel like they’re working toward something, not just taking exams in a scholastic vacuum. Learning becomes applicable. Visualizing the educational process provides additional motivation. By depicting the milestones passed and milestones ahead, you give students a sense of building accomplishments every step of the way. Such a system begins to tie into the powerful game mechanics that have made games like World of Warcraft so engrossing.^‡ ‡ Though earning ‘experience points’ alone doesn’t amount to a full game mechanic, it is one essential piece of the compulsion-loop puzzle.

Visualizing the totality of a student’s education gives them, their parents, their future employer and their nation a truer portrait of their skills. It shows their passions, their strengths and their weaknesses. Having such a wealth of data to visualize would help us move away from using diplomas as a stand-in for an education toward visualizing the shape and character of the education itself.

The Distributed Classroom

But weren’t we talking about the proliferation of inexpensive, connected, handheld devices? Yes, we were. Let’s get back to that.

With a personalized coursework of the commons available any time and any place, directed content and assessment can be provided outside the classroom setting. Students will be able to learn from anywhere: from the home, a public library, a place of business or from a public or private educational institution. Anywhere a sufficient wireless signal can be found, a personalized and contextual learning experience can be delivered. Awesome.

We’re nearly there, but as Devin Coldewey pointed out in his recent Techcrunch article: “Students must learn, true, but they must also be taught.”⁴ So what effect will all this have on the role of the teacher? One of the bigger challenges facing our educational system is a lack of human resources. There just aren’t enough great teachers to go around. There are a few brilliant individuals who manage to put up with the less than stellar paycheck and working conditions. But even when they do our current system tragically limits their reach: thirty students per period, six to eight periods a day. That’s two hundred and forty students a year if they’re running themselves ragged. Finding a way to scale the reach of our teachers is a daunting hurdle.

It is exactly the proliferation of inexpensive, powerful, connected devices that will finally change that. These devices will enable teachers to hold court in thousands of locations around the world, simultaneously. Apple’s iTunes U, a source of free, pre-recorded college lectures from some of the most esteemed universities in the world, has had incredible success on mobile devices:

“It seems that mobile devices have had a huge part to play in the surge in popularity of iTunes U, doubling its number of downloads in the past year… recent figures show that almost a fifth of the Open University’s iTunes U visits arrive via an iPad.” ²

In the hands of students, these portable, robust devices will allow teachers to live-stream their lectures anywhere in the world while receiving real-time questions and feedback from students listening in. Does that seem overwhelming? Well, imagine the time a teacher would save if he/she didn’t have to deliver the same lecture to six to eight classes a day. If the lecture were only delivered once, the teacher could instead focus on fielding student questions and providing one-on-one attention where needed. “When a teacher doesn’t have to be consumed with delivering content they can become a coach and a tutor to the students and help them on an individual basis.” ¹

Courtney Cadwell, a teacher in the Los Altos School District uses a “blended” teaching approach, combining Khan Academy’s brilliantly composed online lectures with various in-person instruction and tutoring:

“When the Khan Academy aligns well with our 7th grade pre-algebra curriculum, I find myself using the Flex Model by allowing Sal Khan to deliver the direct instruction via his online videos as I provide support by way of one-on-one tutoring and flexible grouping based on student needs.” ³

Such a system relieves the redundancies necessary in a closed classroom model without making teachers redundant. Talent can finally begin to scale. In such an environment, the role of the teacher will shift from recitation to inspiration. As Dr. Christensen puts it: “…Rather than everybody having to put up with crummy teachers, everyone can learn from the best.” ¹

A system like this benefits our best teachers because it’s a system that desires content shapers and connectors, not just content delivery drones. In such a system, tenure isn’t a privilege bestowed through bureaucracy, it is a long-lasting relevancy earned through incredible dedication to shaping and delivering knowledge.

At Long Last: A Conclusion

With primary education incubators like Imagine K12 and the overwhelming number of web-based education startups that have sprung up in the past couple of years, I have no doubt that the next wave in education is close. However, to truly reinvent the educational system these startups will have to confront inefficiencies across the entire bureaucracy. Industrialism in education has proved to be a corporatizing force, requiring us all to fit a particular mold. I believe technology is inherently an individualizing force, driving personalization and the empowerment of both individual students and teachers.

It’s tough to paint a detailed portrait of such a vast system in a blog post (even a long one) but I truly believe that our next educational system will be composed of the three core platforms discussed above: a content commons, a coursework commons, and a social profile serving to personalize the experience every step of the way.

Nothing is ever free and the system envisioned above is no different. There will remain facilities costs, teaching professionals to pay and IT infrastructure costs. Still, such a system would enable dramatic operational and bureaucratic efficiencies while providing clear, data-driven means for compensating teaching professionals and content creators commensurate with the value they generate. It is a system that empowers everyone to share what they know and for teachers to spend more time directly connecting with students.

Regardless of whether a single prediction I made above comes true, it’s clear that we will continue to bring more and more technology into the classroom and more and more of our classroom activities onto the web. The question isn’t really whether or not it will change the face of education. The question is, how quickly will we allow these changes to take place?

Blogography:

1. Courtney Boyd Myers. Clayton Christensen: Why online education is ready for disruption, now. The Next Web. November 13, 2011.
2. Paul Sawers. The Open University is number one on iTunes U, surpasses 40m downloads. The Next Web. October 3, 2011.
3. Courtney Cadwell. Ideas for a Fresh Start. Los Altos School District Blog. August 19, 2011.
4. Devin Coldewey. ‘If I Were A Poor Black Kid’ Inadvertently Touches On Sad Education And Tech Truths.. Techcrunch. December 14, 2011.

Additional References:

• Chikodi Chima. Education is the next startup Gold Rush, Silicon Valley will be at its heart. The Next Web. July 27, 2011.
• Hermione Way. Could Udemy give a Stanford level of education to anyone with a laptop and wifi connection? The Next Web. February 11, 2011.
• Matthew Panzarino. An educator’s thoughts on using iOS 5 features in an iPad classroom. The Next Web. June 21, 2011.
• Drew Olanoff. The future of education lies in technology. The Next Web. October 21, 2011.
• Courtney Boyd Myers. How the Internet is Revolutionizing Education. The Next Web. May 14, 2011.
• Alex Wilhelm. How Technology Has Changed Education. The Next Web. January 5, 2011.
• Patrick Gibbons. Technology Cannot Disrupt Education From The Top Down. Techcrunch. December 18, 2011.

Related Startups:

• Academic Earth: http://academicearth.org/
• Blueteach: http://www.blueteach.com/
• Codecademy: http://www.codecademy.com/
• Educreations: http://www.educreations.com/
• Edufire: http://edufire.com
• Eduvant: http://eduvant.com/
• Goalbook: https://goalbookapp.com/
• Grockit: https://grockit.com
• Imagine K12: http://www.imaginek12.com/
• Khan Academy: http://www.khanacademy.org/
• Knewton: http://www.knewton.com/
• Open Culture: http://www.openculture.com/
• Open Study: http://openstudy.com/
• P2PU: http://p2pu.org/
• Skillshare: http://www.skillshare.com/
• Sophia Pathways: http://www.guaranteach.com/
• Students of Fortune: http://studentoffortune.com/
• Udemy: http://www.udemy.com/
• WizIQ: http://www.wiziq.com/

It is a strange thing to mourn the death of someone whom you have never met. Having witnessed September 11, 2001 from the streets of New York, I can only imagine that my grief must seem—to Steve Jobs’s friends and family—as tacky and cheap as the grieving of those who were far from New York seemed to me for quite some time after that day. Still, I do mourn the loss of Steve Jobs.

There are people whose work I admire, people who’s thinking I admire and people whose behavior I admire. I am surrounded by them every day: at work, in my personal life and online. I compare my output and actions against theirs each step of the way—perhaps too often. It’s part of my nature to experience life as a competition, albeit a friendly one. The people I admire are my competitors in a daily race. They’re one step ahead. They are my “adjacent possible.” The life and legacy of Steve Jobs by comparison, has left us all in the dust.

My feelings on Steve Jobs go far beyond this kind of competitive admiration. Steve Jobs was my hero. Not because he was wildly rich or influential (I don’t think those things mattered much to him anyway), but because of the kind of creator he was. He was a creator with a vision so consistent, so simple and clear that others around him couldn’t help but see it as well. He was a creator who understood that what we make says everything about what we believe. His successes in life and business were a direct result of these qualities. The artifacts of his work taught me what it was to be a digital craftsman.

The life of Steve Jobs showed me that it’s okay to want to “put a dent in the universe” as long as that ambition is matched by an equal ambition to make life better for everyone. It showed me that clarity isn’t seeing what’s better than what we have today, it’s seeing what should have been all along. When we hear our friends say “my 2-year-old daughter knows how to use my iPhone!” or “My grandmother is 90 and her first computer is an iPad!” we see his proof that technology can make everyone’s life better. He taught computers how to use people.

I find myself in my 29th year of life, working (Finally! Praise Jesus and hallelujah!) as a digital product designer. I get to work on projects that, for better or worse, affect the lives of millions of people in whatever small or large way. I get to invent. I am extremely lucky. So, what do I take into this work from the life and legacy of Steve Jobs? Just this: be brave enough to have a vision, sharp enough to see it clearly, and stubborn enough to make it happen.

I don’t mourn Steve Jobs because I worry about the future of Apple products. The company is in good hands. I mourn the death of Steve Jobs because I get the sense that he didn’t get to see his vision through to the end. It would have been epic. Still, here’s hoping we’re all lucky enough to see our own visions realized as thoroughly as he did his.

1. Why so serious? I was inspired to think scientifically about this after watching Geoffrey West’s TED Talk on The Surprising Math of Cities. I think with a serious theory of friendship, we could potentially create more fluid, responsive social networks models.

The Friendship Theory

Friendship is an emergent property of transactions between two people. Bio-costs (such as time, stress, thought and energy) are the currency of “friendly” transactions, and the frequency of these transactions determines the strength of a friendship. A close romantic relationship where transactions occur constantly between individuals would score very high, while two acquaintances with few, short interactions would score very low.

Transactional balance is a key component to building friendship. Without a balance of bio-costs, the transaction rate is likely to slow. For friendship to emerge, transactions must reach a certain level of frequency (a “friendship waterline” if you will) for a sustained period (likely there is a “minimum viable period”) and the balance of these transactions must finish near zero. For friendship to be sustained, transaction frequency must reach periodic peaks equal to or greater than the friendship waterline.² 2. There is likely a “gray area” around the friendship waterline where, depending on the mood or last interaction with an acquaintance, a subject might respond positively or negatively to the question of whether said acquaintance is a “friend”. It would follow that the “Friendship Score” is simply a running average of transaction rate over time.

It seems important to clarify: I’m defining “friendship” distinctly from “affinity” or “affection”. The former being the emergent property of a sustained transaction level over time, while the latter two are powerful emotional qualities which can be surmised, but not entirely understood or predicted by a Friendship Score. We may dearly love someone we haven’t spoken to in years. Yet, perhaps a sustained period of high transaction rates balancing to near-zero can sustain affection over a long transaction drought while still adhering to this theory of friendship.³ 3. There are a number of people for which I have a high level of affection, but haven’t spoken to in years. However each one of these relationships began with a sustained period of intense transaction.

This model seems flawed in one particular case: that of the externally coerced, mutually disaffectionate relationship. Let’s say for example there are two business partners who share a disaffection for one another, yet are forced to interact on a daily, even hourly basis. Their transaction rate would remain high, while their balance sheet would remain near zero (remember, they each share equal amounts of stress in dealing with the other). Based on the above model for the Friendship Score, this might read like a strong friendship. Affinity seems to be the important third factor of our equation, but how to determine, quantify and include it?⁴ 4. Any ideas?

While I’m speaking of friendship here, there may be other emergent social properties which can be described by distinct patterns in bio-cost transactions. I’d love to see any research done in this area.

You know it’s a good day when you sleep in, roll out of bed to put on a fresh pot of coffee, sit back on the couch with a delicious bowl of fresh fruit and open the newspaper for a leisurely read only to find A GINORMOUS PHOTO OF YOU PRESENTING YOUR THESIS ABOVE THE FOLD!

Thanks, Peter Wayner, NY Times, and everyone who helped me put MOTIV together. I’ve drawn you all into the picture with me.

AIGA Fresh Blood

I’ve been selected to present my thesis work from the SVA Interaction Design program to the AIGA in the second annual installment of “Fresh Blood.” While an ominous name, I think it’s a good thing. Get your tickets here. Details below:

Tuesday 7 June 2011
6:30–9:00PM

Galapagos Art Space
16 Main Street
DUMBO, Brooklyn

Facebook Bound

I couldn’t be happier to announce that, come this fall, I’ll be taking a product design position at Facebook in Palo Alto. A lot of amazing opportunities came my way post graduation, but the team of designers they’re assembling as well as the problems and opportunities that lie ahead for the product made it a difficult proposition to refuse.

Jessica and I will be hanging in New York this summer, enjoying a bit of the carefree lifestyle before we pack it up and move it on out to San Francisco. If you live in the Bay Area, let’s grab drinks!

We’re both genuinely excited about what’s ahead and look forward to going bi-coastal.