The biggest problem is from the age of 2-13. The world's culture is still "coding isn't cool for girls". Look at the difference between the ways boys play in a room vs girls. Girls are encouraged to play princess and house...yes...still!! Boys on the other hand are more likely to invent games, or build things. My sister is 13 and laughs at the idea of learning programming as a girl. She's a super smart girl, but the social pressures are too much to overcome. By this age most of you successful programmers already had some sort of "builders" mindset.
I say we need to address the problem at it's roots. Mentorship, and shining the spotlight of success on women like Adora could potentially be the most important part of our battle here. GO ADORA!!
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Game changing. Humans are creatures of habit, and we need to be able to recognize these habits to successfully control them
Schools aren't just going to disappear. It's natural for technology to take over a sizable chunk of the teaching process, handling inefficiencies as technology has always done best. It's probable that most of the world's population won't need to interact with professors, but a select few will always have the privilege of face to face learning. I believe there are too many niche studies for professors to be entirely replaceable. Not to mention the indirect benefits of attending a school campus.
Definitely give it some breathing room. Goodluck trying to different levels of equity right now, could be very sticky.
- Put people's feet to the fire with a money, and time commitment. (60, 80, 100hrs/week)
- Then just work on it for a few months and see who's keeping up the commitment
It's easy to float on your recent win, and pretend like everyone is equally committed. People will start dropping off in levels soon enough. Or maybe not, and you have 8 amazing founders :)
The same as anyone else in Bitcoin, I think. Obviously I want to maximize the market capitalization of my product. If I keep the bitcoin, I risk devaluation, whereas if I cash it out, I risk losing out on potentially huge market gains. I want to encourage the market, in any case.
How about bringing teachers better tools for their classroom? I'm working on this project because I feel like education is the solution to most things in the world. Over 1.2M student dropout of high school yearly in the US alone...we're working on taking the load of teachers, so they can focus more on the art of teaching and engaging their students. http://studysoup.com/careers
I disagree. Kno was not focused on making education better. They were focused on making a bad business model a bit lighter, and more attractive on an iPad. This could be a nice business, but does not represent the type of mindset that would offer VCs the payoff that they need.
Textbooks as we know them are a bad business model in today's education system. Useful, but wasteful. Teachers assign an expensive book. Then students are only required to read 40% of it. Right there, you can see a serious disconnect and waste of resources.
Thanks! Yes, she's a huge reader so this could be a good route. I've heard that project based learning is the way to go - I just have to think of a project that might catch her attention. She's been a bit turned off by the idea when I brought it up in the past.
