Writing is communication, so it should not come as a surprise that good communication skills (writing) are absolutely necessary in just about any career, especially the ones where you need to influence the thinking or behavior of others. Even those who can write reasonably well, still want/need to work with someone who can do it better - providing jobs for the oodles of marketing/messaging pros out there. Coincidentally that's what I've been doing the last week, enjoying the focus on the wording of the message instead of the features of the product, for a change.
One of the top education stories this week is the recently released report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, assessing writing competency for 8th and 10th graders. The results themselves are not encouraging, only a quarter performed at the 'proficient' level or higher, but the way the test was done was definitely cheer-worthy. It not only made the test computer-based, but it paid attention to whether students used the tools available to them through computers - even basics like spell-check. Many of us have seen (among family, friends, coworkers) that the top students are often accomplished at writing, as well as math and science, and, unsurprisingly, they have ready access to tech resources (unfortunately the digital gap still persists, feeding the achievement gap). Though the fundamentals of good writing (and critical thinking) are timeless and technology-independent, the way we write has definitely changed and the person who knows how to access and use the myriad tools and services available has a clear advantage. Kids need to learn to write well, using digital tools, if they're to flourish in the jobs of the future - and it's a challenge that we can definitely meet.
By the way, the example of the 'Lost Island' test (listen to nature sounds and snippets from a diary and write about your imagined experiences on that island) appears skewed to the more imaginative among us. I personally would have loved it as an 8th grader, but I know many super-smart and successful people who would have not welcomed it that much. They'd enjoy reading Harry Potter (or Robinson Crusoe - extending the island theme), and obsessively watch episodes of 'Lost', but would get lost themselves trying to imagine something like it. Here's a report on the NAEP writing test if you want to know more details. What level of creative writing is necessary for every student? And should creative writing really be bounded ('stifled') by rules or should it flow unfettered? (You might want to check out my older post on why entrepreneurs should write too!)
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Social entrepreneurship at work
In a long ago post, I'd quoted one definition of an entrepreneur as 'one who sees an opportunity and organizes resources to take advantage of it'. Modifying that slightly, I'd say a social entrepreneur is 'one who sees an opportunity for social good and organizes resources to deliver it'.
I've recently been working with the Silicon Valley Education Foundation as part of their Step Up to Algebra program, a middle-school math outreach effort.
As always, the challenge is matching resources to goals. Expanding the program makes logistics and volunteer sourcing difficult, so SVEF turned to technology to help make that happen. In a sort of 'blended learning' approach, with bi-monthly in-person sessions, bolstered by the excellent Khan Academy content, and online mentoring on the Meemli platform, SVEF is able to deliver more help to more students, more often. (Disclosure: I'm Meemli's founder, and I'm writing this to share my first-hand experience with SVEF's exciting approach.)
Working closely with SVEF, I get to see all the challenges non-profits face, especially in public education: working with cash-strapped schools, over-worked teachers and varying environments in each district. I also see how hard it is to be innovative, take risks, work with outside resources you don't control and do it all with limited staff and funding constraints. It takes patience and a willingness to go with the flow while still reaching for the goal - things that you don't see much of in tech startups, by the way. As an entrepreneur myself, I'm impressed that SVEF is, on their own, putting together a delivery system for their program incorporating new technology instead of sticking to the proven, mainstream/late-adopter options. Not many are willing to take this kind of a leap, even in Silicon Valley - innovative risks are easier dreamed of than embraced. Kudos to SVEF for being true entrepreneurs for social good!
I've recently been working with the Silicon Valley Education Foundation as part of their Step Up to Algebra program, a middle-school math outreach effort.
- The need? Large numbers of students in Silicon Valley were entering high school with little or no skills in algebra. And as SVEF CEO Muhammed Chaudhry points out "students who study math at least through Algebra II in high school are more than twice as likely as those who do not to earn a four-year degree, and the level of math a student reaches is the most accurate predictor of whether that student will earn a Bachelor’s degree" (Adelman, 1999 & 2006).
- The resources? SVEF started the program a few years ago by providing summer workshops for students in local middle schools, using mentors from the community (usually local corporations) to provide the one-on-one support needed to help these students (typically under-resourced) get comfortable with algebra. And of course, they do secure the all-important resource of funding to enable the program.
As always, the challenge is matching resources to goals. Expanding the program makes logistics and volunteer sourcing difficult, so SVEF turned to technology to help make that happen. In a sort of 'blended learning' approach, with bi-monthly in-person sessions, bolstered by the excellent Khan Academy content, and online mentoring on the Meemli platform, SVEF is able to deliver more help to more students, more often. (Disclosure: I'm Meemli's founder, and I'm writing this to share my first-hand experience with SVEF's exciting approach.)
Working closely with SVEF, I get to see all the challenges non-profits face, especially in public education: working with cash-strapped schools, over-worked teachers and varying environments in each district. I also see how hard it is to be innovative, take risks, work with outside resources you don't control and do it all with limited staff and funding constraints. It takes patience and a willingness to go with the flow while still reaching for the goal - things that you don't see much of in tech startups, by the way. As an entrepreneur myself, I'm impressed that SVEF is, on their own, putting together a delivery system for their program incorporating new technology instead of sticking to the proven, mainstream/late-adopter options. Not many are willing to take this kind of a leap, even in Silicon Valley - innovative risks are easier dreamed of than embraced. Kudos to SVEF for being true entrepreneurs for social good!
The Tao of Steve Jobs
Just to get it out of the way, 'The Tao of Steve Jobs' has nothing in common with the movie 'The Tao of Steve' except for the first four words. That's it. This is not a book or movie or anything more than one small blog post about one amazing man.
It's almost a month since Steve Jobs died and there have been a zillion people opining about his life and legacy, as well as the inevitable detractors and tut-tutters. And just when the stories seemed to be slowing down, out came his biography and TV shows - even SNL did its best. There are so many angles to the stories too - Steve the entrepreneur, the dropout/rebel, the wunderkind who was shunned by the tech establishment and then came back to show them, the family man who was felled by cancer. Here are two widely different perspectives I liked reading: James Altucher's blog post and the eulogy by Mona Simpson (Steve's sister).
For Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs, Steve was a god. The one we all wished to be like, the fearless (and smashingly successful) entrepreneur, the tech visionary who couldn't be caught, the genius worshiped by product designers everywhere. Would-be entrepreneurs as well as famously successful ones (Zuckerberg, Page and Brin for example) desired to learn how to do it 'Steve's way'.
The Tao of Steve Jobs, as I like to call it, are all those 'core values' that define the way he did things. All these items are well known and are excellent advice not just for entrepreneurs, but possibly to anyone wishing to make something meaningful in his/her life:
A long while ago I wrote about what is important to me - create, care, connect (you can read that post here). I realize how Steve epitomizes each of those. He was undeniably creative - I've always appreciated Apple more than any other tech company as they tended to create, not copy/buy, successful ideas. Steve cared deeply about what he did (even if he did not directly show his 'care' in the traditional way for social causes). He micro-managed (and threw tantrums) because he cared so much about every aspect of what Apple built. As for connecting, he connected the dots way, way outside the box and saw possibilities others couldn't even imagine. Despite his imperfections, I admired him and what he represented - an embodiment of truth in design and the entrepreneurial fire. He will be missed, and it may be ages before another like him shows up, but, like me, techies and entrepreneurs everywhere will be inspired by the Tao of Steve Jobs for a long time..
It's almost a month since Steve Jobs died and there have been a zillion people opining about his life and legacy, as well as the inevitable detractors and tut-tutters. And just when the stories seemed to be slowing down, out came his biography and TV shows - even SNL did its best. There are so many angles to the stories too - Steve the entrepreneur, the dropout/rebel, the wunderkind who was shunned by the tech establishment and then came back to show them, the family man who was felled by cancer. Here are two widely different perspectives I liked reading: James Altucher's blog post and the eulogy by Mona Simpson (Steve's sister).
For Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs, Steve was a god. The one we all wished to be like, the fearless (and smashingly successful) entrepreneur, the tech visionary who couldn't be caught, the genius worshiped by product designers everywhere. Would-be entrepreneurs as well as famously successful ones (Zuckerberg, Page and Brin for example) desired to learn how to do it 'Steve's way'.
The Tao of Steve Jobs, as I like to call it, are all those 'core values' that define the way he did things. All these items are well known and are excellent advice not just for entrepreneurs, but possibly to anyone wishing to make something meaningful in his/her life:
- Focus.
- You can't do everything, and certainly can't do everything well. And yes, sometimes the focus is overwhelming and obsessive, but it may have to be so to get the job done.
- Simplicity.
- Not only because of the inherent beauty in simplicity, but because it ultimately produces a better product, experience, outcome.
- Excellence.
- 'Perfect' trumps 'good enough' every time.
- 'Stay hungry.'
- If you're not striving and yearning for something, if you're not passionate about it, it's not going to happen.
- 'Stay foolish.'
- Do what you believe in. Take the risk to act on it.
A long while ago I wrote about what is important to me - create, care, connect (you can read that post here). I realize how Steve epitomizes each of those. He was undeniably creative - I've always appreciated Apple more than any other tech company as they tended to create, not copy/buy, successful ideas. Steve cared deeply about what he did (even if he did not directly show his 'care' in the traditional way for social causes). He micro-managed (and threw tantrums) because he cared so much about every aspect of what Apple built. As for connecting, he connected the dots way, way outside the box and saw possibilities others couldn't even imagine. Despite his imperfections, I admired him and what he represented - an embodiment of truth in design and the entrepreneurial fire. He will be missed, and it may be ages before another like him shows up, but, like me, techies and entrepreneurs everywhere will be inspired by the Tao of Steve Jobs for a long time..
Once an entrepreneur...
We've heard of serial entrepreneurs who keep founding one company after another. It's in their DNA, they can't think of doing anything else and they are, mostly, successful at it, so it's all good.
Today's MercNews had a story on a tech entrepreneur who's starting a new company - get this - more than 40 years after the first one. It is Sandra Kurtzig coming out of decade-long retirement to launch a new venture.
The story itself focuses on the dearth of women CEOs in tech even though Sandra was a pioneer so many decades ago. And that is a point worth considering and addressing, and maybe I'll add my take on it another time. But, what grabbed me is that Sandra, apparently living the good life in Hawai'i, had an idea and was ready and willing to give it up to take on the startup challenge again. Of course, doing a startup is a lot easier for Sandra than for most of us - she's launching with over $10 million in funding from top VCs, light years away from my bootstrapping stories. Still, the funding doesn't take away from her drive and enthusiasm to take on a brand new venture. Somehow the entrepreneurial calling didn't fade away regardless of lifestyle or age (maybe there's something to this story that more than 30% of online entrepreneurs are over 50).
It is exciting to see a pioneering entrepreneur come back after so long to lead a new startup and it will be fascinating to see how she steers her company in a world that has changed so much since the last time she was at the helm. Go Sandra!
Today's MercNews had a story on a tech entrepreneur who's starting a new company - get this - more than 40 years after the first one. It is Sandra Kurtzig coming out of decade-long retirement to launch a new venture.
The story itself focuses on the dearth of women CEOs in tech even though Sandra was a pioneer so many decades ago. And that is a point worth considering and addressing, and maybe I'll add my take on it another time. But, what grabbed me is that Sandra, apparently living the good life in Hawai'i, had an idea and was ready and willing to give it up to take on the startup challenge again. Of course, doing a startup is a lot easier for Sandra than for most of us - she's launching with over $10 million in funding from top VCs, light years away from my bootstrapping stories. Still, the funding doesn't take away from her drive and enthusiasm to take on a brand new venture. Somehow the entrepreneurial calling didn't fade away regardless of lifestyle or age (maybe there's something to this story that more than 30% of online entrepreneurs are over 50).
It is exciting to see a pioneering entrepreneur come back after so long to lead a new startup and it will be fascinating to see how she steers her company in a world that has changed so much since the last time she was at the helm. Go Sandra!
Entrepreneurial diplomacy
I believe that one can bring an entrepreneurial approach to just about anything, not just to start a business. As I've mentioned in an earlier post, my favorite definition of an entrepreneur is 'one who recognizes opportunities and organizes resources to take advantage of the opportunity'. And here's an exciting example of entrepreneurship in a small social venture with lasting impact - from a diplomat, no less.
I heard about this over dinner a little while ago with J. Ravikumar, the High Commissioner of India to Cameroon (full disclosure, he's a 'cousin' in the Indian sense, which defies ordinal numeric categorization). Cameroon is a small nation, but while it is a typical African country in some ways, in others it has a lot going for it - a literacy rate of 76% for example. What Ravikumar noticed was that the rural areas in particular were limited in their access to power and that caused a variety of attendant problems, the most critical, from the villagers perspective, was the fact that they had to trek a long way and pay exorbitant amounts to charge up their cell phones.
So Ravikumar worked with others to put together a disarmingly simple but highly sustainable solution. He arranged for women from the village to go to India and get trained on installing and maintaining solar panels - middle-aged women because they would be more likely to stay in the villages and provide support vs. youngsters who would head for the bright lights in the big city. They came back and successfully got solar power to the first village - and along with solar power, the inhabitants will get three critical items: a light (so kids could read at night), a stove (so they could stop chopping wood) and a fan to keep the mosquitoes away. Best of all, they can charge their cell phones right in their village! With success at this site, the model can be repeated in other areas.
To be sure, there are other goals being met through this project - not least of which is the furthering of Indo-African ties (read about that aspect here). The fact that Ravikumar has a business background probably had a lot to do with his seeing an opportunity and pulling together various resources (local and Indian governments, United Nations Development Programme etc.) to fill it. Still, is is extremely encouraging to see how an entrepreneurial mindset can make 'foreign relations' more relevant and productive, and to deliver so much potential for future entrepreneurship for the women who're now trained solar panel installers, as well as all the people in the village who are now em'powered' - couldn't resist the pun ;)
Kudos to Ravikumar and the multi-national team for their innovative approach!
I heard about this over dinner a little while ago with J. Ravikumar, the High Commissioner of India to Cameroon (full disclosure, he's a 'cousin' in the Indian sense, which defies ordinal numeric categorization). Cameroon is a small nation, but while it is a typical African country in some ways, in others it has a lot going for it - a literacy rate of 76% for example. What Ravikumar noticed was that the rural areas in particular were limited in their access to power and that caused a variety of attendant problems, the most critical, from the villagers perspective, was the fact that they had to trek a long way and pay exorbitant amounts to charge up their cell phones.
So Ravikumar worked with others to put together a disarmingly simple but highly sustainable solution. He arranged for women from the village to go to India and get trained on installing and maintaining solar panels - middle-aged women because they would be more likely to stay in the villages and provide support vs. youngsters who would head for the bright lights in the big city. They came back and successfully got solar power to the first village - and along with solar power, the inhabitants will get three critical items: a light (so kids could read at night), a stove (so they could stop chopping wood) and a fan to keep the mosquitoes away. Best of all, they can charge their cell phones right in their village! With success at this site, the model can be repeated in other areas.
Kudos to Ravikumar and the multi-national team for their innovative approach!
There's more to it
About three years or so ago everyone was getting excited about the new solution to closing the educational gap - OLPC, the One Laptop Per Child, initiative with a low-cost, sustainable, easy-to-use laptop that any child could use. The idea was so compelling that there were for-profit competitors to the non-profit OLPC and there were plans to blanket the entire world with these devices.
It didn't quite turn out that way. While these devices are still being made and still being distributed, there came the next big thing - netbooks - and the buzz was all about how these low-cost laptops would change the world. After all, their retail price was just a couple of hundred dollars more than the OLPC unit and they could do so much more.
Netbooks are still around, but they stopped far short of world-changing. Smart phones did that though, as they can handle much of the routine interpersonal and Internet requests and still slide easily into the pocket of your jeans. Kudos to Apple for kicking off this revolution with the iPhone, and following it up with the iPad, for of course, now the new, new thing is the iPad and competing tablets.
Going back to the education issue, there continues to be great deal of talk on how digital solutions will fix every problem. Just in the past day I read two articles, one in HuffPo titled 'The Future of Education is Mobile' and the other a news item about the eG8 Forum with Rupert Murdoch calling for education to move out of the "Victorian age" and go digital. Interestingly, Murdoch's holdings were recently enhanced by the 90% acquisition of Wireless Generation which enables personalized web and mobile learning - for sure, the education tech industry is growing bigger every year.
I am all for it. I believe that technology, and specifically access to the Internet, can make a huge difference to the education of all children who are old enough to use it - my belief is strong enough to make it my business. (Caveat: I also believe that it is people who deliver the difference, technology is just a tool, albeit a future-shaping one.) But it is not enough to access the Internet only at school as students, especially teenagers, do a lot of studying at home - it is greatly empowering for a student to have access as and when they need it. For sure, they'll play and chat, but that is fine, they will also learn, and sometimes playing and chatting is how they learn. So it is disappointing that even after so many years of talk, the students who need access the most still don't have it. While there are novelty news stories of iPads in kindergartens, I'm finding many underserved high-schoolers without Internet access at home - in the heart of Silicon Valley. It is kind of embarrassing to see this in an area where so many of us boast multiple Internet-enabled devices per person in the household. Worse, the organizations working with these students have no idea where to go to fix the problem; understandably it is just not a priority when there are so many other pressing challenges to be handled. According to a survey done last year, 40% of the homes in the US do not have broadband or high-speed Internet access and 30% have no Internet access whatsoever, which is about what I'm running into, in my own small samples. You can expect that if they can't afford Internet access, they're unlikely to have smart phones with data plans either.
Desktops, laptops, tablets and smart phones - they would all make amazing educational tools, but if you cannot connect to the Internet they're little better than calculators and typewriters (remember those?). And unless every student can connect from home, the digital and education gaps will stay unbridged. We have the technology - devices, software and network - we just need the collective will, and/or a driven social entrepreneur, to ensure that every student has affordable Internet access from home - sometime soon would be nice.
It didn't quite turn out that way. While these devices are still being made and still being distributed, there came the next big thing - netbooks - and the buzz was all about how these low-cost laptops would change the world. After all, their retail price was just a couple of hundred dollars more than the OLPC unit and they could do so much more.
Netbooks are still around, but they stopped far short of world-changing. Smart phones did that though, as they can handle much of the routine interpersonal and Internet requests and still slide easily into the pocket of your jeans. Kudos to Apple for kicking off this revolution with the iPhone, and following it up with the iPad, for of course, now the new, new thing is the iPad and competing tablets.
Going back to the education issue, there continues to be great deal of talk on how digital solutions will fix every problem. Just in the past day I read two articles, one in HuffPo titled 'The Future of Education is Mobile' and the other a news item about the eG8 Forum with Rupert Murdoch calling for education to move out of the "Victorian age" and go digital. Interestingly, Murdoch's holdings were recently enhanced by the 90% acquisition of Wireless Generation which enables personalized web and mobile learning - for sure, the education tech industry is growing bigger every year.
I am all for it. I believe that technology, and specifically access to the Internet, can make a huge difference to the education of all children who are old enough to use it - my belief is strong enough to make it my business. (Caveat: I also believe that it is people who deliver the difference, technology is just a tool, albeit a future-shaping one.) But it is not enough to access the Internet only at school as students, especially teenagers, do a lot of studying at home - it is greatly empowering for a student to have access as and when they need it. For sure, they'll play and chat, but that is fine, they will also learn, and sometimes playing and chatting is how they learn. So it is disappointing that even after so many years of talk, the students who need access the most still don't have it. While there are novelty news stories of iPads in kindergartens, I'm finding many underserved high-schoolers without Internet access at home - in the heart of Silicon Valley. It is kind of embarrassing to see this in an area where so many of us boast multiple Internet-enabled devices per person in the household. Worse, the organizations working with these students have no idea where to go to fix the problem; understandably it is just not a priority when there are so many other pressing challenges to be handled. According to a survey done last year, 40% of the homes in the US do not have broadband or high-speed Internet access and 30% have no Internet access whatsoever, which is about what I'm running into, in my own small samples. You can expect that if they can't afford Internet access, they're unlikely to have smart phones with data plans either.
Desktops, laptops, tablets and smart phones - they would all make amazing educational tools, but if you cannot connect to the Internet they're little better than calculators and typewriters (remember those?). And unless every student can connect from home, the digital and education gaps will stay unbridged. We have the technology - devices, software and network - we just need the collective will, and/or a driven social entrepreneur, to ensure that every student has affordable Internet access from home - sometime soon would be nice.
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