At Jiva we all get the advantage of having 10% time to explore projects a little off the beaten track from our day-to-day work. As I’m not a developer this presented a bit of a challenge for me initially but after a brief rant on my personal blog that struck a chord with a couple of people I found myself with a little project to occupy those spare moments (and my weekends and vacation time as it worked out!)
Bettr is an unconference primarily for start-ups with an education focus but also open to all manner of folk with an interest in this area. We are co-hosting the event with School of Everything and it will take place at DEMOS on the 14th January. The format of the day (in true unconference style) is a bit up in the air at the moment but already more than 30 people have signed up (with a capacity of 60) so it promises to be an interesting get together.
I have hopes that this isn’t just a one off event and that it grows into something more regular and more ambitious that supports innovation in education and the social web much the way Social Innovation Camp is doing in the wider areas. SI Camp is very much an inspiration in the long term but for this first event my expectations are a little more grounded! A smooth running event that allows people to do a bit of networking, listen to some short, interesting presentations and maybe enjoy a beer to finish the day would be a success in my eyes.
Not for the first time the guys at EduFire have written a thought provoking and timely blog post that I thought I would point to and make a quick comment on.
6 Reasons Why Online Education Will Boom in the Bust is a welcome ray of sunshine amongst the gloom of the global financial meltdown – which it seems that the tech blogs are now covering even more than the mainstream media! At a time where pretty much all you read (or see, or hear) is about how hard the coming months/years are going to be and how companies are shedding staff its good to see that someone is looking for the silver lining!
At Beanbag we are particularly interested in #5 – Larger number of highly-qualified teachers. As more and more people potentially look to supplement (or replace) their income by offering their specialised knowledge to learners then Beanbag becomes a prime route to achieve that. Then as we create more vehicles to connect with the learner community around the Beanbag brand we can offer increased opportunities to connect learners to teachers in different environment, strengthening that connection all the time.
Amongst all the gloom and doom there is one consistent message – any company that comes through these difficult times intact will be in a strong position to push on in the future. EduFire have helped reaffirm my belief that those of us working around education will be well placed to do just that!
Between the 5th and 7th of December the second Social Innovation Camp will take place in London and hopefully Jiva will be at the event to both contribute and learn from the other attendees.
According to the ‘About’ section of the SI Camp website it is “an experiment in creating social innovations for the digital age” which is something we here at Jiva fully support – in fact its an underlying principal in our work on Beanbag.
The first SI Camp took place in April and was won by (the very impressive and worthy) Enabled by Design and Visiting Prisons however there was one project I was particularly interested in. On the Up (as it became known after the event) was a clever idea about building a kind of online, personal, ‘record of achievement’ or ‘development plan’ based on goals users (particularly young people) set for themselves and activities they undertake to achieve those goals. I have been in touch with one of the leaders of this project after I mentioned it elsewhere and while its currently on hiatus it is hoped that it will start up again. Its my hope that something at least as interesting with an education focus comes up again this time (in fact I have one or two ideas myself).
It is a great idea and something that I think appeals to alot of people in and around the web community so I was really pleased to see that there is going to be another one in the same year thanks to support of the Young Foundation and Nesta.
The folks over at EduFire wrote an interesting post yesterday that pointed me to the Union Square Ventures blog for an especially enlightening insight into the sort of areas they, as early stage venture capitalists, are interested in getting in to.
Union Square have invested in an impressive portfolio of web companies in recent years and count Twitter as one of their investments (this was bound to impress me as I love Twitter despite all its teething problems!) and they have quite clearly set their stall out to look into how education can be transformed by web technologies in a way that so many other things have been.
I particularly enjoyed the following;
“With access to course materials, ability to watch lectures and even tutor at a distance, we believe that we are only at the beginning of the web’s impact on the fundamental structure of education. We expect much of that change to be away from the existing educational institutions and towards empowering individuals and newly-formed groups.”
Not surprisingly this chimed with us here at Jiva Towers as we have an avowed interest in using the (social) web to enhance education – and while we fall more into the use technology to enhance the current system camp rather than the throw it away and start again team we firmly believe that there are alot of opportunities in this space and it is gratifying to see that we are not alone in thinking that.
Over at the EduFire blog again they talk about Teacherpreneurs and I love this idea of a combination of education and entrepreneurism – something rarely seen but increasingly sought after!