Yesterday I spoke on a panel on technology in education at the Cyberposium at Harvard Business School. I believe that much of the new investment in education through technology is directed toward improving the productivity (return on investment) in the classroom or in improving traditional education methods. This is the focus of Microsoft, Intel and many other companies.
I advocated, on the other hand, for startups and companies to focus on using technology to develop new methods for children to learn. This approach recognizes that technology is making education much more student centric and therein lies the opportunity for new ways of learning to be adopted. Reynol Junco, a professor at Harvard, shares this view in an article on Venture Beat entitled "Most ed-tech startups suck! Here’s where they’re going wrong". Junco states:
"Indeed, it’s not the technology that generates learning, but the ways in which the technology are used."
Essentially Junco and I are advocating for disruptive innovation in education by focusing on how children learn. As Junco makes clear in his article, the basis for innovation in education should be directed toward understanding child learning and not focusing on traditional methods of education.
I also made a few other points in my remarks:
- As children are adopting technology at a younger age (2-4) due to the popularity of smart phones and tablets, this will place increasing importance on schools for how and when they deploy their technology.
- This early adoption also suggests a very large market for software that offers new ways for these children to learn pre-school.
- The market for educational technology is a consumer market and not the traditional government market as parents look to supplement the public education system (at least in developed markets such as the U.S.)