This made me think. Despite common perceptions, innovation never happens in smooth progressions, it happens in step changes, followed by periods of calm and I sense we’re about to see just such a shift in the way we educate our children. Here’s a few reasons why:

One: the emergence of clever, education focused applications. I’ve blogged before about the heaps of cool start-ups focusing on education and the US VC’s that have been backing them with money.

Two: the device. Up until now, the target platform has been the PC/Mac, but there’s a couple of reasons why a tablet is a much better idea in the classroom. It weighs less; with all the books and PE kit they have to carry, adding a laptop would be the straw that breaks your children’s back. Its more appealing. Its less unwieldly. Who’s got space on the average desk for text books (they won’t be going away soon), exercise books, pens and a laptop. It plays music.

Three: money. You wouldn’t risk your child taking a £600 iPad, Macbook or laptop to school in their rucksack, no matter how cool they thought it was. But plenty of kids take their iPod Touch. So why not a £120 Android based tablet?

Three: a generational change in attitudes. From the dawn of time to the days until my days at school, education hadn’t changed much. My children think that’s because I was educated at the dawn of time, but the reality is that a couple of millenia didn’t really change much. But as the Horizon Report shows, the current “Facebook Generation’ don’t really understand why they have to travel back in time whenever they enter the classroom. They’re hungry to use the cool stuff inside the classroom as well.

So we’ve been taking a good look at Q&A 2.0, or more like Q&A 2.1, and I’m really please to see that’s it’s a lively area of development on the web at the moment, with our friends at Aardvark, Hunch doing some really interesting things. As is so often the case, simple problems are sometimes the hardest to solve and we’ve been really grafting hard to produce something that’s as simple to use and robust as possible. Usability is everything. We’re more than interested to talk and share with anyone in the field, so feel free to get in touch. As usual, our starting point is education, tutors and tutoring, but we don’t expect it to end there.

Academic Earth (these guys certainly like the grand names!) is a startup coming out of the US that pulls together open courseware from  a number of top universities and displays them according to topic with the option to comment and converse around the videos.

So far so good, however Academic Earth is a business and as such has commercial aims for its site which is pretty firmly against the Creative Commons terms that some (not all) of these videos have been released under and some of the institutions involved are unlikely to sit back and allow their content to be reused in this manner.

This is likely to be an interesting test case as I think alot of people are eyeing the increasingly high quality education audio and video content coming out of universities like MIT, Stanford, the Open University etc and wondering how they can spin a money making opportunity out of this increased open attitude.

It would be a pity if these academics started to retreat into their ivory towers if they felt their content was being misused but it also opens up the possibility of a consortium of universities with strong open access models pooling their resources and building their own web based repository of content with community elements.  That would likely shake this space up quite considerably.

To be fair to the team at Academic Earth they seem fully aware of the tightrope they are walking and are trying to work with the institutions so as not to step on anyones toes while still retaining a business model.  I think it will be quite the achievement if they pull this off!

The growth of the open learning is undoubted (with the UKs own Open University a leading player with initiatives like OpenLearn and its iTunesU content) but despite the claims in the article I believe peer-to-peer learning remains unproven in many ways (though I do believe it is a useful concept and one that will only become more popular over time) and the reliance of a mish-mash of retired professors, MA level students and volunteers as a kind of virtual faculty does not sound hugely thought out as yet (though there is probably a workable solution in there somewhere) .

Mr Resef does have a history of running successful education themed web businesses, including his current start-up Cramster.com an online homework support network, so he well placed to have the skills and contacts to make this happen.

I’ll be watching this one closely as its an idea I’m really interested in and I think there is a business to be built around the rise in open education that also widens access to higher education, I’m just not quite sure this is it yet.

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.

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!

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!

It is of particular interest to a start-up like us here at Jiva as it is particularly looking to work with people with interesting digital projects and particularly those that are looking to provide some public benefit – which with our focus on education and our development of a new very cool top-secret service sums us up nicely (IMHO!).

All told the initiative has a budget of £50million (not all of it Channel 4 money – much of it is from partnerships with Regional Development Agencies etc) and will launch officially in October and I think it will immediately become a hugely important player in the digital social entrepreneur space currently best represented by Social Innovation Camp.

Channel 4 are also the major investor in School of Everything and while that predates 4IP I think it shows 4s commitment to this space and the sort of thing they are likely to be interested in; new solutions for old problems.

Tom Loosemore, most recently based at Ofcom but probably still best known for his work at the BBC leading much of the innovative work on the BBC website, is leading the project and Ewan McIntosh, a prominent edublogger and conference speaker on social web and education, is the first digital commissioner to be announced.  Ewan gives an interesting interview on this weeks Guardian Tech Weekly podcast about 4IP and the sort of thing they will be looking for.

My only slight early gripe is that the South West, West and Wales seem a little poorly served by the geographical locations of the commissioners but hopefully that is something that can easily be overcome.