Disruptive Innovation in Education
August 24, 2008
This article is excellent. I particularly liked the section on social networking!
Within a few more years, however, two factors that were absent in stage 1 that are critical to the emergence of stage 2 will have fallen into place. The first will be robust platforms that facilitate the creation of user-generated content. The second will be the emergence of a user network, whose analogues in other industries include eBay and YouTube. A user network is a type of business model in which customers exchange with each other. For example, telecommunications is a user network because we send information to you, and you send it to us.
In education, this will mean that the tools of the software platform will make it so simple to develop online learning products that students will be able to build products that help them teach other students. Parents will be able to assemble tools to tutor their children. And teachers will be able to create tools to help the different types of learners in their classrooms. These instructional tools will look more like tutorial products than courseware initially. And rather than being “pushed” into classrooms through a centralized selection process, they will be pulled into use through self-diagnosis—by teachers, parents, and students who don’t have access to another tutoring option.
How to Build a Social Mesh in Education
May 3, 2008
Many people in the education world are fascinated with the idea of online virtual learning communities to share best practices and increase collaboration. This is the main focus of great thinkers such as Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson.
Marc Canter (my new favorite blogger) takes the idea of social networks, and abstracts it to a significantly improved conceptual framework. In a nutshell, Canter believes that open networks, open IDs, open standards, structured content, and open APIs are the best way to tie all of the networks and data together in a meaningful way.
He recently posted 10 blog posts describing his entire philosophy. Canter’s writing style is concise, opinionated, and visionary. I believe that any designer of social networks - particularly in the field of education - should use Canter’s advice when creating their networks.
The 10 sections of Canter’s posts are:
[1] - ID, Personas, Social Graphs and Groups
[2] - Persistent Ubiquitous Content
[3] - Structured Content (and shared servers filled with that stuff)
Canter even specifically mentions educational content in a social mesh:
Educational objects are also a way for intelligent folks to make money. Imagine encapsulating some course, tutorial, advice, guidelines, how-to-guide in an object which can get you PAID for your work and intellectual property! Educational objects would fit seamlessly into the open mesh and be compatible with many DIFFERENT People’s Marketplaces.
This comes at a particularly relevant time for a company such as SchoolNet, which is in the preliminary stages of creating an education “niche social network.”
Our digital age is moving in the direction of better organized content, open standards, and social networks. It is of paramount important that 21st century businesses, media, government, and education become plugged into these trends to maximize their relevance in the future.