As someone who spent 5 years working for an agency that was supposed to connect educators with technology, I feel quite qualified to say:
HA HA HA HA!
I read quotes like:
In a bow to the “Edupunks,” Sullivan explained that Virginia is incorporating student habits into its pedagogy. For example, the university is experimenting with “flash seminars.” Just as “flash mobs” summon young people to engage in some simultaneous bizarre act in a specified place at a specified time, the “flash seminars” alert students to an edgy topic -- no examples of how edgy -- that will be discussed in a professor's living room. To raise the hype level, only the first 25 students who show up are allowed to participate in this non-credit-bearing activity.
and I think of the endless papers I've seen on how social networking/ipads/location based services/mobile computing/cloud computing/whatever was hot in the tech sphere six months ago is going to revolutionize education. I'm continually reminded of cargo cults (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult: A cargo cult is a religious practice that has appeared in many traditional tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced cultures.)
Education systems have huge budgets, but they are always run by such second rate people that the money is never used as a lever to get what they need. Education systems are quite happy to spend millions of dollars on consultancies and studies, but because the focus is on risk avoidance they never actually achieve anything.
(And yes, there are a few exceptions. Having destroyed myself trying to achieve anything in that sector I applaud all the more for those who have managed it.)
For anyone considering doing a company in this space, read all the warnings you hear about doing enterprise software, and then take away the fact the most enterprises are at least rational (if slow). Then also remove the fact that enterprises pay people well, so they are usually a few decent people who you can deal with. Then add in politics, the election cycle, unions, teachers, lectures, "duty of care" considerations. If you are still considering that sector, then good luck!!
I'm fascinated by your comment. Would you mind going into more detail about your comment - "Having destroyed myself trying to achieve anything in that sector" - I'm on my way into that sector and would love hearing how you "got destroyed", and for what reasons?
I am just getting in to this sector. It would really be great if you could write about your experiences in this domain. Those would help people like me avoid making some obvious mistakes, and also help us learn a thing or two for our ventures.
Your obvious mistake was going into this sector, unless you are targeting either pre-k or graduate students. Otherwise get out now, unless you're just doing lead gen or something.
So let's say you have some software that legitimately creates $30-100 dollars of value per student. In order to sell that software to the school, it's going to take 8 months and $20,000 dollars. That means you're going to have to sell it for at least $125,000 dollars to make it worthwhile. That you're A) reading HN B) asking this question suggests that you probably won't be able to make this sale. And even if you can, you'll essentially just be conning the schools out of money because your software is worth vastly less than what you're selling it for, so you're essentially just depriving kids of things that would actually help them learn.
From your profile it looks like you are building a Student Management system. My comments probably don't apply so much there, because presumably your system doesn't really have much contact with students (and probably not too much with actual educators - it's mostly for administrators, right?). In that case I think you'll find its probably borderline-sane - no worse than any other enterprise sales thing.
Just stay away from doing anything that attempts to change education itself.
Yes, eduOrbit's audience is primarily school administrators.
I have braced myself up for enterprise'y' sales cycles, but one small advantage I might have is that am based in India. I personally see a huge opportunity in making a dent with educational institutes here that have not adopted technology too much and the enterprise 'rot' has not settled in them yet. Of course, that brings in another set of challenges, but hey I don't wanna die wandering without giving it a shot.
Thanks a lot for your comments. Really appreciate them.
Having helped build tmedweb.tulane.edu as a student, I was intrigued to read:
> As Tulane University President Scott S. Cowen put it, the conference offered the potential for a “group therapy session,”
I agree with nl, the resistance to change is overwhelming, and it's bizarre to hear the fat cats can go to conferences for group therapy.
I think "edupunk" is at once too narrow and obviously a bit double-edged. More broadly, there is a profound resistance to consumers creating their own tools. Except in software. In software, it's celebrated. Developers have awesome tools for developing. But the students who want to develop a CMS for their school will be pushed around by "concerned" faculty until they graduate. Doctors who want to develop a better medical records system are locked out by pre-existing contracts and non-cooperation in the name of privacy and security.
A huge issue is that we aren't teaching everyone to write code. We don't need everyone to be a erlang systems programmer, but we need to give people the tools to become the innovators these university professors want. Why are we making every high school sophmore sit through geometry and learn binomial expansion when learning some basic python and sql would be a hell of a lot more applicable for anyone who actually wanted to do something done in today's economy?
HA HA HA HA!
I read quotes like:
In a bow to the “Edupunks,” Sullivan explained that Virginia is incorporating student habits into its pedagogy. For example, the university is experimenting with “flash seminars.” Just as “flash mobs” summon young people to engage in some simultaneous bizarre act in a specified place at a specified time, the “flash seminars” alert students to an edgy topic -- no examples of how edgy -- that will be discussed in a professor's living room. To raise the hype level, only the first 25 students who show up are allowed to participate in this non-credit-bearing activity.
and I think of the endless papers I've seen on how social networking/ipads/location based services/mobile computing/cloud computing/whatever was hot in the tech sphere six months ago is going to revolutionize education. I'm continually reminded of cargo cults (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult: A cargo cult is a religious practice that has appeared in many traditional tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced cultures.)
Education systems have huge budgets, but they are always run by such second rate people that the money is never used as a lever to get what they need. Education systems are quite happy to spend millions of dollars on consultancies and studies, but because the focus is on risk avoidance they never actually achieve anything.
(And yes, there are a few exceptions. Having destroyed myself trying to achieve anything in that sector I applaud all the more for those who have managed it.)
For anyone considering doing a company in this space, read all the warnings you hear about doing enterprise software, and then take away the fact the most enterprises are at least rational (if slow). Then also remove the fact that enterprises pay people well, so they are usually a few decent people who you can deal with. Then add in politics, the election cycle, unions, teachers, lectures, "duty of care" considerations. If you are still considering that sector, then good luck!!