Comments on: Open Source Education

By: Student

Student — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:48:28 +0000

No doubts that one applying for loans will receive more opportunities to get education

By: Kiel

Kiel — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:55:55 +0000

Having been in college for seven years (ha ha!), I can honestly say that colleges are trying to adapt, but they can only do so much.

It would be nice to move away from textbooks in their current form and move towards developing software instead. I hate reading books on screens, it just doesn’t have the same feeling for me. But, if they make it interactive, allow me to highlight and take notes, and use multi-media, I think it would be very beneficial. PLUS, think of all the trees we’d save because professors are always wanting students to “pony-up” for the next edition when nothing was wrong with the old edition.

Having a lot of family in education, I can tell you that educators are always looking for ways to improve the classroom and learning experience. Technology isn’t the end-all be-all of that, but it is definitely an EXCELLENT tool.

By: Erik Cooper

Erik Cooper — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:13:13 +0000

Great post Brad. I’ve been having this dialog with people for years, but never from a technology front until I saw a recent post from Seth Godin on this very subject. At what point is the market for a college education simply going to outpace itself? At the rate of tuition increase, the cost of a college diploma is going to eventually surpass the benefit of it, don’t you think?

But now with all the technological advancements, the question really has turned away from “will the market break,” to “how soon will it break” and what technological breakthrough will finally do it in?

The music industry is dying as songs have become commodities. The same has to be said for education. The easier it is to get your hands on information, the less value I’m going to be willing to pay someone for access to it.

As a father of 3 kids, I’m hopeful we see dramatic drops in the ridiculous cost of higher education…hopefully by 2017, the first year of college for my oldest.

By: Brad Ruggles

Brad Ruggles — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:24:23 +0000

Thanks bro. Great comments.

By: joseph

joseph — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:22:57 +0000

and by the way Brad…really good piece!

By: joseph

joseph — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:22:05 +0000

I see schools adapting fairly quickly to newer education models. And this comes from me selling technology to schools. The students are on board.

Where a big challenge lies is in that the parents are much of the time not on board or the funding is limiting proper execution. Parents not on board hurts kids a ton because most of a child’s education does not happen in the classroom. It happens at home in the form of follow up to what was learned in the classroom. If mom and dad cannot handle the tech run, it is hard to push their kids forward.

From a funding standpoint, pushing forward is a joke. Limited funds=limited tech initiatives.

No excuses from a University standpoint. They are the mountain top of waste and with a little restructuring could cure this. Heck, stop paying your football coaches 6 million a year and you build one heck of a computer lab.

Finally, we have to all remember one thing. 30% of kids learn by reading, roughly 30% by seeing and the remainder by writing or doing. Technology falls under seeing so we have to be careful not to leave 70% of our kids out.