Education is teaching the love of learning

When I finished my graduate school and joined a startup, I thought I was off to a good start.  I thought my degree afforded me to push my idea.  I thought my graduate degree was a proof that I could think analytically and gave me an endorsement to pursue my ideas with little or no collaboration.

I was dead wrong.  Not only did my degree mean very little in terms of working at a startup, but also I realized that my ideas were often wrong.  And it took me repeated failures over many years to see this fact.

Now that I look back at my first 15 years of my career, I can say that one of the biggest mistakes that I made many times was not collaborating more with people around me.  Somehow I had mistakenly thought that the most creative thoughts happened when I was alone sipping my coffee at my desk.  Wrong again.  It turned out that creativity and innovation are a collaborative process, not a light bulb flash by single stroke of genius.

Where did I go wrong?  Why did I have to relearn to work with my coworkers?  It was simple.

Why equity works in learning

I am very interested in process of learning.  I believe the only way to be truly relevant in changing work environment is to learn new things.  Not being afraid of making a mistake and learning from trial and error are essential tools for learning anything fast.  Once we give high cost to failure, we are effectively discouraging learning from taking place.

When I watch my 3 year old son, that's what I see.  He's not afraid of making a mistake.  One good example is that he repeats anything that hears whether it makes sense or not.  Often he picks up some foreign language and utters out his best impression of what he just heard.  When that happens, instead of him, I am the one who feel the need to explain the situation to onlookers.  My son, on the other hand, does not care whether someone is overhearing or not.  He just does it.

Nicholas Negroponte: Teach kids how to learn with OLPC

Nicholas Negroponte is the founder of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC).  He has been working on OLPC project for the past 7 years.  Just as the name suggest the idea of OLPC is to give one laptop to each child.  His audacious goal is to get the child to learn from the PC who does not get to school.

Negroponte described his vision at Solve for X forum last February 2012.

Why I believe college education is ready for disruption

I believe that college education is ready for disruption in the next 5 years.  The disruption will force colleges to drastically change how they attract their future students and the way they educate them to prepare for the fast changing work environment.  Here's why:

Future of textbook

California Governor Jerry Brown signed the California Bills SB1052 and SB1053 into laws this week.  Thanks to the laws, California will have $10M to fund the Open-Source Textbook Library starting with 50 of the most popular lower-division college courses.  Once books are chosen and digitized, they will be available online for free and printed format with nominal fee (for $20 or less).

This is a good start.  It means more and more students with tablet computers will be able to access the 50 most popular textbooks for free.  It will help ease the financial burdens of rising college tuition placed to students and their parents, and also allow instructors mix and match content from several sources to create a custom-tailored material.  It has been estimated by 20 Million Minds Foundation that about $162M dollars can be saved by California undergraduate students by creating publicly available digital textbooks.

Source: http://www.thetextbookguru.com/2012/09/20/infographic-free-textbooks-in-california/

But even with this effort, California is just keeping up with countries like South Korea.  South Korea has been working on a plan to digitize the entire school curriculum by 2015.  That is starting from elementary school, South Korea will offer all course works through computers and allow students to interact with each other via digital communication.  That's just 3 years away.



Once American education system was the international gold standard.  It is hardly the case these days.  There are way too many high school students without basic reading, writing and mathematical skills.  Ultimately it's due to lack of investments by public sector and commitment from parents to ensure that our children are learning.

Digitizing textbook is just an example.  We must invest more on our future generation by providing the best possible tools to learn and solve tomorrow's problem.

Learning is not just about English and Math score

This American Life had an episode 474: Back to School.  It talked about how non-cognitive skills are crucial to achieving life-long success.  English, Math and Science scores don't measure a child's capability to learn and succeed.  It also has just as much to do with resilience, soft skills, and self-control.  A student with repeated traumatic childhood experience is more likely to have trouble building these non-cognitive skills, and also shows stunted brain development.

One interesting point made in the Act Two of the show was that there are ways to counteract the harmful effects of childhood abuses.  Parents and adults around the student can work with him to instill a belief that cognitive capability can be improved and there is indeed a hope.  Parents can also provide extra support by connecting with him in a meaningful relationship.  Listening to him and encouraging him can make all the differences in his capability to learn and develop invaluable non-cognitive skills.

Korea vs Finland: Stark differences in education system

I grew up in South Korea.  I spent my first 17 years in Seoul, completing up to my high school junior year in intense South Korean education system.  Students are expected to put in 16 hour day 5 days a week to study.  School curriculum work ends in late afternoon, but immediately following students head to after-school academies called 'hak-won' to continue studying.  All these studying is driven by parents' zeal to see their children advance to prestigious universities in and out of country.

It's a system motivated by intense competition and fear of falling behind.  Competition to get ahead gotten so bad that South Korea government had to institute a policy to outlaw hak-wons to close its door after 10 PM.

Tony Wagner: How to educate future innovators

Tony Wagner is the first Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard.  He spoke at TedxNYED event last April about how to educate future innovators.