hacking education

Earlier this month Mashable published a post titled: 7 Fantastic Free Social Media Tools for Teachers

All of the sites they featured looked resourceful, well thought out, and most fairly well developed. Some, like edublogs leverage the well developed tools of blogging (Wordpress) for education; others, like edmodo leverage the basic principles of social networking (similar to Ning) for education. 

A little nod was given to Khan Academy--the fabulous online video learning library.

Great resources all. 

But most striking of all... is how similar they all sounded/looked. The principles of social media are becoming well established and proven in other arenas and many are looking to leverage those "efficiencies" within education.

But I see the wheel being reinvented by each new player in the space. And for as good of an idea as any (or all) of them are, education is yet to be disrupted or revolutionized by any of them. The "coming revolution" in education seems, so far, to be marginal at best.

Why is that?

In my opinion, it is this. The only sustainable marketplace for educational entrepreneurs to sell their wares is within the established (and largely broken) education system. They are dependent and subservient to the system they seek to revolutionize.  No one can take a big bite out of the problem, because if they agitate the system too much they will get turned down and turned off by the edu powers that be. So, they nibble at the problem, bringing small and marginal improvements to lay at the feet of their master.

Until there is a new system (maybe charters, maybe online schools, maybe something else) that will embrace and help to sustain fast and large innovation I anticipate that we will see more, and more, and more, and more of the same innovations inch the current education system forward. 

What would textbooks look like if we reinvented them from the ground up?

Inkling brings the world’s best content to iPad with interactivity, social collaboration and simple ease-of-use. No more heavy, expensive textbooks to carry around campus. Inkling textbooks are more interactive, more flexible and cheaper. Download Inkling today and try a free chapter. It’s an entirely new way to learn.

I love the pricing is per chapter.

Unit'izing education will continue to happen. Across the board it is such a chunky process--2 yr, 4 yr, Masters, PhD. The poor kids who attend for 3.5 years but never finish their last semester are given almost no credit for their achievement even though it is only marginally less than those who study for 4 years. 

Check out their site for a great video demo.