twosigma

I had the chance to attend the Startup Lessons Learned conference last week, a day of talks (videos) by entrepreneurs who have been using the Lean Startup approach to help navigate a path amidst uncertainty. The model, elaborated by Eric Ries over several hundred posts on his excellent blog, has been gaining traction recently in my part of town (and today in the NYTimes). Startup face the unusual challenge, he argues, of having to find a solution to a problem when neither the solution nor the problem is entirely known at the outset. The structure and behavior of the startup should be optimized for learning, and for learning fast: One part of the company focuses on understanding the problem, while the other part focuses on learning how to build a solution to the moving-target of a problem. The two parts coordinate through a unified feedback loop (build, measure, learn), which should be repeated as rapidly as possible. The goal of the Lean Startup approach is to maximize the likelihood of figuring things out before exhausting the available resources.

Our own startup has taken this model to heart, and it very much characterizes my day-to-day experiences there. As my research has been focused on how to construct productive social learning environments, the lean startup has been a fitting (and fascinating!) context in which to engage in this work. In some ways, I see the pair-programming process adopted by our engineering team as a model for the type of learning environment that we’re building in order to support collaborative learning online. The knowledge sharing that happens through interactions among peer learners also happens among our developers while pair programming. I wonder about the extent to which this is a useful parallel to draw, and am curious if the strengths and limitations inherent in the one suggest corresponding strengths and limitations in the other. Are purely-Agile teams averse to taking on technical challenges that cannot be solved through verbal discussion? Does this in any way affect or characterize the software that results? For as much as I believe in the power of learning as a social process, I think there is always a need and a place for slowly grappling with thorny problems, both for students and for software developers.

The upcoming New York Maker Faire hits the NYTimes Bits blog today (The Robots Are Coming to Town):

If you’ve never been to one of these events, you’re in for a surprise. A Maker Faire is the home to mind-boggling contraptions built by robotics hobbyists, amateur rocket scientists and electronics enthusiasts. In one corner of the fair, you can see a 3-D printing robot next to a giant robotic spider, turn a corner and you’re faced with fire sculptures and a giant life-size version of the children’s game Mouse Trap.

The Maker Faire is but one of many great contributions that the O’Reilly empire has made to informal STEM education. My experience at the Bay Area Maker Faire last year was memorable and inspiring. In a time when our concept of education is increasingly tied to standardized testing, it’s refreshing to see that this sort of event is so popular. Will it be the kids who master all of the standards or those who grow up with the Maker Faire and Make Magazine who will ultimately build the Next Big Thing?

I’m not sure it’s necessarily two distinct groups. My sense is that the kids who “Make” have a reason to pay attention in their math and science classes, and their test scores may (or may not) reflect this.

Miles Berry suggests in Open Source Education that textbooks, lesson plans, and curricula are the “source code” around which some educators are building communities:

The communities of practice which grow up around open source projects could have much in common with the networks and communities of educational, curricular and pedagogic ‘developers’ which school leaders and teachers have the potential to become, if given the necessary encouragement, opportunities and freedom. Loose communities of teachers working together to develop educational resources, schemes of work or other educational innovation would foster creativity, ownership, and the legitimate peripheral participation [ref] necessary for professional development, as well as being a highly cost effective way of producing some great educational benefits over and beyond education technology.

I’ve recently started following a few different open source projects on GitHub, and enjoy seeing these communities at work. The interdependent and interconnected nature of code commits requires a level of coordination among developers that I’m not sure is necessary to get value from using a repository of peer-contributed educational resource. To what extent do educators those using sites like Curriki engage with one another, in practice? Is there interest among educators in forming richer communities of practice online? GitHub — with its notions of forks, watchers and committers — may prove to be a surprisingly relevant model…

Speaking of “communities of practice” and “legitimate peripheral participation”, Etienne Wenger just spent a week fielding questions on the Networked Learning Conference discussion board:
Making sense of the difference between network and community”. Looks like a discussion that I should have read before posting…

(discovered via the P2P Foundation blog)

In San Francisco… ccSalon SF (5/3/10): The power of open education

… At next month’s salon, we’ll be gathering together three preeminent individuals involved in shaping the future of education and harnessing the power of the internet and digital technologies as forces for good in this field. Each participant will give a brief presentation on their respective projects, followed by an informal panel/discussion period where we’ll explore more in depth the issues, challenges, and opportunities emerging in the field of education.

In NYC: New York City’s First Digital Learning Meetup – May 18, 2010

The longer mission is to provide New York City’s vibrant population of entrepreneurs, innovators, developers, technologists, hackers, researchers, educators and digital media thought leaders with a vehicle for driving this transformation toward a new future of learning. At this first meetup, you can expect:
- A presentation from the organizers of Startl
- A discussion with Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures, a leading venture capitalist interested in education and learning
- A couple of sucessful digital learning startups telling their stories

If you haven’t already, it’s worth checking out these recent NYC edtech happenings: Hacking Education, TEDxNYED, Startl.

Has there been a recent uptick in interesting local digital learning meetups, or did I just start paying closer attention? Is there really more interest in NYC than in SF?

I’m a slow writer and an even slower thinker, so it’s in my best interest to keep these posts short. My goal here is to simply share some of the highlights that pass through the educational and technology section of my feedreader. I’m hoping to keep this a cut above a RT @u bit.ly sort of thing. The format that I’m going to try out initially is still pretty simple: a link, an excerpt, and a question. Nothing more. We’ll see how this goes…