Disqus - Latest Comments for Jon Bischke

Re: Amazon Soon Opening DRM-free MP3 Store

Jon Bischke — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 13:45:35 -0000

I wonder if Amazon will do DRM-free audiobooks as well. We currently sell a pretty large selection but there are many publishers who haven't been willing to sell their content DRM-free.

http://www.learnoutloud.com/Downloads

Re: Open Sourcing the Start-up

Jon Bischke — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 21:03:00 -0000

My first reaction (and keep in mind I've been doing this for all of about 90 minutes) = Starting your business in the "public eye" makes you very aware of your decisions and how you spend your time.

Re: The convertible vs. equity trade-off

Jon Bischke — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 01:25:54 -0000

Depends on your situation. If an entrepreneur can get a high valuation in a seed round then that's a great option. You can always protect the investors with provisions so if there is a down round they don't suffer.

Re: Turning Teachers Into Rockstars

Jon Bischke — Sun, 06 May 2007 04:31:40 -0000

Great post. I think what's interesting is to tap into the latent potential of all the people who would love to teach but don't because they currently can't achieve the lifestyle they want as an educator. My guess is that for every teacher out there there's probably 10 or even 100 times as many people who would have considered teaching if the economic incentives were different. That's both a shame and a tremendous opportunity.

As for certifications, I personally think that is an area where there will be considerable upheaval in coming years. Think "open source" here and you'll have a sense of where this will probably go. In other words, it's highly likely that someone could come up with an exam that does a much better job of determining college aptitude than the SAT. If there were an economic incentive to create this (hint: there is) and if it was technologically feasible to administer this at scale (hint: it is) then something interesting will emerge.

Stay tuned...

Re: Turning Teachers Into Rockstars

Jon Bischke — Thu, 10 May 2007 19:26:25 -0000

Great comment Jody. One example of an "Edu-star" might be Al Gore. If I want to teach my high school class about global warming I could go out and do a bunch of research on the subject and read a lot of books, etc. At the end of the day, I'm never going to be able to teach the subject with as much authority or passion as Gore.

So I think a great alternative is to do the following. Rather than me teaching the subject I bring Al Gore into the classroom (through the magic of video) and let him teach. But I don't just stop there. What I do is spend my time and energy developing an environment around Gore's teaching the deepens the learning experience. For example, I foster discussion about the movie, create innovative assignments (such as having the students compute their C02 impact), etc. I become a facilitator of learning rather than the sole source of wisdom.

I went to b-school at UCLA and saw this happening there all the time. Professors would bring in guests who would teach from their experience and usually had much deeper knowledge in that area than the professor. We see the opportunity for this to happen on a larger scale through tech.

I think an ideal course on entrepreneurship would consist of Michael Dell or Bill Gates sharing their thoughts via high-definition video while a classroom teacher facilitates discussion, creates assignments and gauges mastery. I think that's the paradigm for education that we'll move closer to while certainly not entirely abandoning the existing model.

Re: Turning Teachers Into Rockstars

Jon Bischke — Thu, 10 May 2007 19:27:57 -0000

P.S. I think your comment about stepping away to allowing students to become stars is bang on.

Re: Interesting convertible note question

Jon Bischke — Mon, 14 May 2007 00:12:16 -0000

We ended up going with a 2/3 majority to be able to amend terms of the note. We feel that this gives adequate flexibility to make changes that could more easily lead to a Series A while at the same time decreasing the likelihood that one or two note holders could dictate their interests on the rest of the group.

Re: Welcome to Online Learning circa 2002

Jon Bischke — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:53:02 -0000

Amazing responses all. I'm blown away by how passionate people are about this subject!

Ranjit – Spot on. T-shirt coming your way one day. Video...what a novel concept? How many of the Top 100 Alexa sites are video-related (answer = lots?). How many online education-related websites have meaningfully incorporated video? Other than a handful of the YouTube clones out there (5Min, VideoJug, ExpertVillage) the answer is pretty close to zero (although I like what Sclipo is doing a lot).

Tom – Hilarious. :) Yeah, I've heard of this thing called online gaming as well. It's pretty interesting. T-shirt your way as well. However, they do mention text chat so we can't give you two t-shirts. ;) In fact I think my favorite quote of the article is this one:

“...an advantage with online stuff is that because people have to type, you have to think more about what you say before you say it. So you usually end up with a lot more intelligent conversation.”

It says a lot about the state of traditional ed that people think one of the advantages of online learning is that it dumbs down the communication mechanisms. LOL.

Alex – Yup. Webcam is definitely an answer. I think Ranjit kinda beat you to it but we'll hook you up with a t-shirt anyway.

Mike – Exactly. Wouldn't it be great if someone decided to do that? ;)

Josh – Awesome follow-up. My favorite in fact. :) However, I do disagree with one of your statements:

“Curriculum is not irrelevant, but bad implementation has quietly changed the purpose of education from creating citizens who are passionate about their world, to accounting for how well human widgets can mirror that curriculum back in a way that is objective, but entirely disconnected from its roots in the living world.”

I'm not sure that the way the education was developed that it was ever to create citizens who are “passionate.” From my studying it seems that education as we know it developed primarily to at least partially discourage people from being inquisitive and viewing the world as an inter-connected system. After all if the line workers start doing that it could definitely cause some disruption on the factory floor right? I think that's one of the biggest problems with edu as we currently know it. It developed during a time that is much different than what we currently live in. Totally agree with you on the need to re-imagine. :)

Jason – Would love to hear more. While I agree central authority is good in some circumstances I feel that in most cases it actually doesn't produce an optimal result. Or even the most accurate. Wikipedia is a great case. Despite some inaccuracies, a number of studies have concluded that Wikipedia is at least as accurate or perhaps more accurate than Brittanica and other “authoritative” sources. And it's only going to get better as more people participate. So I'm not entirely convinced that central authority is best...

OK, my offline time for the day is about to end so I gotta bounce. Looking forward to seeing more comments!

Re: TeachStreet…I likes

Jon Bischke — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:44:25 -0000

Public launch it is. Although based on your business model I think you have a stronger incentive to launch publicly as you can than we do. ;)

Re: Open-Sourcing the Start-up: Unaccredited Investors

Jon Bischke — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:45:30 -0000

Good points Jonah. This is definitely a topic where good legal rep helps a lot. Unfortunately most start-ups don't get that at this stage...

Re: One Laptop for You, One Laptop for a Child in the Third World

Jon Bischke — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:46:02 -0000

Me too. What a great idea!

Re: What do eBay, Google and Facebook have in common?

Jon Bischke — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 22:56:38 -0000

Great comments all! All of you offered some interesting theories. The one that's closest to mine (although not necessarily best of course) is Peter's. eBay and Google made it easy (or easier) for people to earn a living online. Hundreds of thousands of people make a living (part time or full time) selling goods through eBay. I don't know the number of people who make a living from AdSense but my guess is that it's similarly high.

Facebook hasn't entirely succeeded yet but I think it's a pretty fair bet that no small part of their recent $15 billion valuation is due to what's happened with the Facebook Apps which was driven by a ton of people thinking they might be able to make a living through Facebook.

MySpace, Yahoo and others never really gave people a chance to make a living on their platforms (although that's changing).

Economic empowerment is huge (HUGE!). When you can give people the ability to earn a living doing what they're most passionate about (e.g., selling Beanie Babies or blogging about sports cars) you have a tremendous opportunity in front of you.

This is pretty much what I think about 24/7. :)

Thanks again for all the comments. And please feel free to keep 'em coming!!!

Re: The Launch of MySpace Music and What It Means to the Future of Education

Jon Bischke — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:10:36 -0000

Totally true. I think what makes this shift bigger is the magnitude. MySpace gets around 5x the traffic of Imeem and many more times that of Last.fm. Plus, I’d argue that Imeem and Last.fm are music sites while MySpace is broader in scope.

So yes, you’re right. But I think this is a bigger deal for several reasons, the primary one being that they’re MySpace.

Re: The Launch of MySpace Music and What It Means to the Future of Education

Jon Bischke — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:42:22 -0000

Yup, ad-supported and yes, artists get paid royalties for each stream.

Re: The Launch of MySpace Music and What It Means to the Future of Education

Jon Bischke — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:55:09 -0000

Great follow-up to this here:

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/09/...

"Maintain an incoming flow of attention and money will follow."

Exactly.

Re: Enter the Idea Board

Jon Bischke — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 18:51:14 -0000

Hi TirlCrina. Are you looking for search on the Ideas Board? Or on our forums?