Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed (2011)
I've told this story before: Back when I was in college, I had a summer internship at a place that was a service center for the K-12 schools in a large county. Microcomputers were the big new thing. We had a facility with one of each kind of computer (Commodore, Apple, Radio Shack, etc.) and all the software we could lay their hands on. Teachers could come in and try things out.My impression was that the "educational" software was extremely crude and one-dimensional, basically glorified flash cards. Today, the "educational" software is Web based, and more flashy, but still retains that lack of breadth. It's hard and expensive to write interactive software, so a lot of the apps are basically one or two templates, with different sets of data / parameters for different lessons.Here's a picture. Move your mouse around. When something lights up, click on it, and a little box of text will pop up for you to read. I kid you not. This is real. Today.Now I have two kids who are in high school. We have acquired (can't say bought in most cases) piles of educational technology, yet little or none of it was "EdTech." The most glaring example was Microsoft Office. The kids used it to create reports, presentations, drawings, etc. It has been supplanted by Google Docs, which they now use heavily, including for collaborative assignments.We've played with Jupyter/Python. My son is learning solid modeling using some free app. One of them uses DuoLingo daily, as does my spouse.Some of their educational technology is still in the analog domain: Musical instruments. ;-)I think the take-away for me is that we are providing our kids with technology that supports their education, but it isn't written for kids. It's the same stuff that grown-ups use. Jupyter/Python is an example -- it's my primary computing tool for my job. Another common feature is that these are creativity tools, not consumption tools.