

Silicon Valley and the Edtech Revolution - sama
http://www.imaginek12.com/blog/silicon-valley-and-the-ed-tech-revolution

======
jnbiche
If someone wants to create a start-up that will really help teachers to teach
tech, they'll find a way to help teachers bypass their local IT departments in
an acceptable manner.

I know of multiple school districts that are absolutely plagued by overzealous
IT admins, including the director, who lock down teacher and student computers
to the point where they're unable to install or use the software they need to
learn or login to all these cool educational services that use Google or
Facebook login. Watching educational YouTube videos? That's not even open for
discussion.

They're totally blocked from learning. Funny thing is: the kids all know how
to get around these blocks, but the teachers don't dare do it for fear of
losing their job.

This on top of the fact that these schools' LANs fail on a regular basis,
including when students are taking computer-based standardized tests.

So teachers spend hours each week filing bug reports and calling IT to get
these sites unblocked, software installed, or LAN/wifi back up. Most people
here wouldn't _believe_ what is going on in many school districts because of
overzealous and incompetent IT admins. It's a structural problem in at least 3
states I'm familiar with (all of them low-performing states on standard
tests).

Maybe build a "screened" portal to educational sites (including ones with
YouTube videos) and software? But it would have to be accompanied by some
serious lobbying towards the IT folks to whitelist it.

~~~
MarcScott
I have an excellent technician at my school who manages to be as flexible as
possible, while keeping within the bounds of school policies.

We've now setup OpenStack on a server, and are in position to give every
student in the school their own Linux VPS next year. They'll ssh in using
putty, have full admin rights to their instance, be able to apt-get whatever
they like and all of a sudden the IT policies of the school no longer apply.

I'm suddenly really looking forward to teaching Computing next year.

~~~
jnbiche
>I have an excellent technician at my school who manages to be as flexible as
possible, while keeping within the bounds of school policies.

You're very fortunate. I'm guessing you're probably in a high-performing,
relatively well-to-do school district (please correct me if I'm wrong).

>and are in position to give every student in the school their own Linux VPS
next year.

The IT depts at the schools I'm familiar with (through friends, I'm not a
teacher myself) wouldn't even know what OpenStack is. They're 100% Microsoft
shops. And the idea of giving a student root access to his/her own virtual
instance would simultaneously blow the IT staffs' mind, terrify, and enrage
them.

~~~
dublinben
> They're 100% Microsoft shops

I think this is a bigger problem than most people realize. Expensive
proprietary software has no place in education. It is antithetical to the
students' interests in learning, and it inherently prevents them from
tinkering. Techies with children entering the public education system really
need to push for a wholesale transition to open source. If it's good enough
for the office, it's good enough for schools.

~~~
jnbiche
I absolutely agree. At the _very_ least, students should have access to Linux
computer shell accounts via Putty or the like. That at least would eliminate
the struggles of HS computer science teachers to get the necessary dev
environments set up on their classroom Windows machines.

------
MarcScott
I get extremely frustrated by the plethora of Edtech initiatives, all
purporting to solve some problem but in reality simply making more work for
teachers.

In my school we have an MIS that seems to have evolved from an Access Database
created in the 90s, that manages all student data, but has no API. We also
have a VLE that was designed to look pretty, but offers almost no
functionality and has a UI that is tortuous to use and actually lengthens the
time it takes to mark work and record results.

Every teacher I work with has a different way of operating. Some write
assignments on the board and take in hard copies. Other's use the official
VLE. Some use email or shared network drives, and others Edmodo or whatever
platform is flavour of the month.

Work is marked and fed back to students, and then inevitable placed in an
Excel spreadsheet, exported as a CSV or transcribed into a paper mark book,
only then to be then double entered into our MIS at a later date.

The system is a mess, and every new Edtech tool I see just adds to the
confusion - another URL to remember, another username, password, interface. I
wonder how many Edtech startups have founders that were actual teachers, or
bring teachers on board at an early stage. Judging by the tools on offer, I
would guess that it's not many.

There are a couple of exceptions. EdX, I think, is an amazing platform, but
even though it is OpenSource, it is well beyond the capabilities of most
schools to set up an in-house platform. Codecademy seem to genuinely want to
engage with teachers (in the UK at least) but where are the Codecademy
startups for Geography or French or Science.

In my own teaching I find myself increasingly shunning new Edtech tools, and
now barely bother clicking on the links I receive in my inbox every day. Until
Edtech startups really engage with teachers, rather than just treating them as
beta testers, I really don't see anything in the future other than increasing
fragmentation and frustration.

~~~
teachersuzy
Marc I totally agree with you. I am a teacher from Ireland and now live in San
Francisco. Thus I am surrounded by EdTech tools and products that claim to
answer every problem they 'think' us teachers have!

I am part of and see daily the frustration that teachers have being bombarded
with tools clearly untouched by teachers and where teachers have never been
asked for their opinion and have certainly never been engaged or approached in
the early development stage.

In response to this massive problem, I created a platform where EdTech
developers can actually collaborate and share their products with our
community of willing teachers. They get real time feedback and expert eyes on
their products in the early stages. In your words, we hope that there will no
longer be an excuse to not 'engage with teachers.' You can check out our site:

[http://tinkered.co](http://tinkered.co)

We have 500 teachers onboard and they are taking on paid jobs for the summer
to Tinker with new tools and take part in meaningful interviews and user
testing studies. Their input leads to iterations of Edtech products that meet
real classroom needs and solve real problems. It is a lot of fun and rewarding
to both sides of the community, both teachers and EdTech entrepreneurs.

~~~
rbatty
I just want to say that this sounds like an amazing and much-needed service. I
totally understand where the comment from MarcScott is coming from, but from
my brief experiences in the edtech world, it definitely seemed like teachers
were the ones largely uninterested in helping developers make a better
product, not the other way around.

At every edtech or digital learning meetup/conference my developer colleagues
and I went to, it was all other developers, non-profits, and edtech startup
people, but almost never any teachers. And yet, all of us were dying to
connect with classroom instructors! We understood of course that teachers were
super busy, but edtech is a two-way street. Teachers have to meet developers
at least part of the way if they want edtech products to improve, right?

Anyway, I'm really thrilled that you're finding those teachers who are willing
to give feedback and beta test and putting them in touch with developers. I
wish this had been around a few years ago.

~~~
teachersuzy
Thanks for your comments.

I have done lots of research in the field and found the 3 top 'no no's' and
why the disconnect can still exist:

EdTech developers (not all) make the mistake of talking and forgetting to
listen once they finally get in touch with a teacher.

Teachers are tired of being told "we have the BEST tool for ...." Let them
make that judgement.

Giving teachers your sales pitch instead of a 2 way collaboration process.

I hope that with TinkerEd we will continue to narrow the gap. As you say it is
a 2 way process and it is exciting to see some great advances from all
parties.

------
brianstorms
Why is this getting coverage in HN?

It's an infomercial, full of Silicon Valley patting itself on its own back, by
a former YC partner. Recursive much?

Sometimes you guys have to stop chugging from the SV Kool-Aid fire hose.
Especially when it comes to educational technology.

~~~
taber
I'm learning useful things from these comments. A lot of times I don't even
click on the OP for obviously link-bait TC type stuff but I nevertheless find
HN comments interesting.

------
jonhmchan
I'm curious what proportion of edtech is geared towards teaching how to code.

It seems that a lot of companies in the space (or at least the ones I hear
about) are geared towards this one topic, and only a notable few are tackling
other areas of academia or infrastructure issues around education. On surface
it makes sense - tech companies geared towards education are probably going to
focus on technology as the subject. It's also relatively cheap to source
material, employees have first-hand experience in the field, and there's high
demand with straightforward business models available.

I certainly noticed all these things when I launched Bento
([http://bentobox.io/](http://bentobox.io/)), and I still think about it
today. I do try and maintain a healthy skepticism though: is the edtech being
referenced in this article still largely in the narrow band of technology, or
are we seeing it expand?

~~~
gravity13
I think you just have higher exposure to 'learn to code' \- there are a
tremendous number of other companies, see
[https://www.edsurge.com/products/](https://www.edsurge.com/products/) for a
great index.

~~~
jonhmchan
Excellent - yes, I was hoping I was simply getting a higher exposure to 'learn
to code' companies.

------
codingdave
I don't think we are at "revolution" yet. We are dabbling. We are giving
teachers new tools. We are creating content for kids who can already read
fairly well, and content for pore-K kids, but failing fairly miserably at the
1st-3rd grade level.

We are tooling up the industry, but not revolutionizing it. We are the same
old industry, with shiny toys, and online classes that supplement schooling,
but only replace it for a very small minority of very clever children.

The investors don;' signal a revolution. They signal a market opportunity,
which is not the same thing. When parents start pulling their kids out of the
public schools, because the online options surpass the local school district
at a functional level for lower income working families, THEN we have a
revolution on our hands.

------
quarterconfig
"The idea that great education was never for the few and should always be
available to all led to the creation of MOOCs, Massive Open Online Courses,
led by Silicon Valley companies like Coursera and Udacity"

This is presented as a novel idea, but governments have been subsidizing
education for a long time because of this long held value (see: student
loans).

"You know a revolution is happening in Silicon Valley when the money shows
up."

Correlation does not equal causation? Money does not a revolution make.

~~~
vertex-four
> This is presented as a novel idea, but governments have been subsidizing
> education for a long time because of this long held value (see: student
> loans).

Not only that, but the UK has had the Open University since 1969 which
provides mass long-distance learning, with grants and loans being easy to find
for those taking less than 120 credits a year. They've been using computers
and the Internet since they were first accessible to people (using TV and
radio for broadcasting lectures before that), and have been releasing some
free course material since 2006. The OU also provide a degree track, giving
out degrees that are (theoretically) on par with brick-and-mortar unis.

Of course, MOOCs are interesting in that the course material tends to be free,
but they're also far behind the Open Uni in most other aspects.

------
jonbischke
I'm super psyched about this but, as a former ed tech entrepreneur, also a bit
concerned.

The concern lies here. The blog post references a record $509 million in ed
tech financing in 2014. However, in the last 10 years I believe we have only
seen two companies go public (2U and Chegg). Both trade at modest multiples to
invested capital and neither is focused on the K-12 space. And those are the
success stories. Other than those two, I can't think of a nine figure
acquisition other Wireless Generation.

My concern is that, unless we start seeing large exits soon, we'll have a lot
of investors fleeing the space similar to what happened to the "e-learning"
companies in the wake of the dot com crash.

I sincerely hope that I'm wrong though. I'm a big fan of ImagineK12 and many
of the companies referenced in the blog post. I'd love to see a number of IPOs
and big exits which will drive more capital towards innovation in this sector.

~~~
c4mden
There've been a few nine-figure acquisitions of companies that help
traditional colleges expand online, with John Wiley buying deltak.edu for
$220mm, and Pearson buying EmbanetCompass for $650mm, both in 2012.

~~~
jonbischke
Sorry, should have clarified. Of the new wave of ed tech companies, there
haven't been any big acquisitions. Both Embanet and deltak were founded in the
90s.

------
WalterBright
The thing is, there is no way to automate learning. Learning is a lot like
exercise - it takes work and effort to get stronger. Nobody has succeeded in
making effortless exercise, and nobody has or will succeed in making learning
effortless.

The Khan Academy and Coursera do not automate education, they simply are the
modern version of correspondence courses.

~~~
jshute
It's a bit more nuanced than the no-pain-no-gain attitude toward exercise,
too. We are fond of the saying, "worksheets don't build dendrites" around
here.

I think many institutions are set up as human proof-of-work verification
machines, when they should be set up as human brain debuggers. Debuggers show
you counter-examples to your mental model. You set the goals and drive the
process.

------
bfwi
How effective are MOOCs really? I'm not saying that they're not effective, I'm
simple asking the question.

Are people getting hired based on a resume of a MOOC education? Do you know
anyone who really learned a subject by taking a MOOC? If so, that's fantastic.

~~~
acbart
My takeaway from Learning@Scale, the first big CS Education conference to
focus on Learning Sciences and Computer Science "at scale", is that the people
who succeed at them are the people who already have some higher education and
are driven and motivated. I don't think most of the serious researchers are
convinced they'll be THAT useful in the long run. I'd dig up the research
papers, but I'm supposed to be working :) I recommend a quick glance over
their latest issues.

~~~
_delirium
> people who succeed at them are the people who already have some higher
> education

At a conference I was at, one of the speakers claimed that a disproportionate
number of the successful students in the group they were studying not only had
some college, but had actually finished college and had a degree (though not
always in the same area). It'd be nice to see some more solid stats on that.
Their interpretation was that where MOOCs are most successful, so far, is as
"continuing education" for people who already finished conventional higher
education. Those people can use MOOCs to keep up to speed in their field, or
broaden by taking a few courses in other fields that they didn't get a chance
to study at school.

