It’s Past Time

Wayland, Massachusetts
22-Dec-2008

It’s the morning after nearly 3 days of continuous snow. The day dawned golden in the tops of the red pines, and the play of shadows now spills across the contours of drifts. It’s a perfect time to give breath to an idea that’s been kicking around inside my head for months.

Suppose a data system existed and was available via an API as a web service to foster the entrepreneurial innovation needed to transform education and learning.

What we need now are more people who will build new products, services, and organizations. We need the chaos and tumult of new markets around learning. Only then will viable alternatives evolve and adapt.

My own belief is that learning should be free (as in gratis) for everyone throughout life (see Imagining Tomorrow’s University). Talking about it and writing about it are fine, but for free learning to actually happen people need to build it. And the same is true for every other innovative idea. Research & development, conference presentations, scholarly articles, blogging, and twittering may all be necessary but they’re not sufficient conditions for systemic change. We need to take things beyond incubation and let them thrive or wither in markets. My idea for free learning may be naive and impossible, as most of my friends signal with blank stares, but I think it would be incredibly hopeful for the future if this idea and thousands of others had a go at making a difference.

So the thought behind the web service is to avoid betting on winners or losers, but rather to make it easier for any learning entrepreneur to sandbox his or her ideas. Let’s support the underpaid itinerant adjunct lecturer who would like to open her own learning center. Let’s support the student disaffected with traditional learning who wants to explore and learn on his own. Let’s support the stay-at-home parents who have a little extra time and the talent to mentor learners. Let’s support the people who would like to create a project-based learning community around a topic of common interest. Let’s support the educational designers who want to customize individual learning paths for people. And let’s support the dreamers … who want to craft more meaningful tokens of certification than represented today by degrees; or who want to make transparent the information people need to make better decisions about their learning; or who believe learning should be indistinguishable from life; or who see other futures entirely.

Of course this avoids one minor detail. Could any web service(s) foment this kind of innovative activity?

I’d welcome your thoughts, particularly if they’re strong and negative.