Edtech, it's failure or yet missing success | Hacker News Reader

Edtech, it's failure or yet missing success

5 pointsgslaller4 comments

Arguably, YouTube (YT) is the best education technology platform on the internet, yet it is just a non-creative successor of the VHS/TV and not even CD(which had the menu, breaking the linearity of the frames). The bits are transmitted over switches and routers instead of a cartridge with a magnetic tape, improving the latency for the end-user and YT also has the recommendation system which is usually a hit-or-miss. YT has definitely the largest educational content to offer, though it can be difficult to find or even search for it. And it's lacks interactivity, has the comment system of 1990s. Khan Academy overcomes some of YT's deficits, but adds too much friction to the user interface and user experience and is a one-man show. Is there any innovation happening in this field, and what is your opinion on the future of this education technology?

I've been quite impressed with Brilliant's tech in that domain, they invented a compositional graphing language to build interactive educative snippets, it's quite cool.

Strange Loop talk about the language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT9Xu-ctNqI

Brilliant's website: https://brilliant.org/

The content is certainly more interactive, but the interaction among users is still not given and the production also requires more resources to produce(I presume). Can hardly see that this kind of service will become the future of edtech.

You're right about YT. I think it's only a matter of time before an accredited "Youtube University" appears. For now I think interactive branching video commenting will soon gain prominence. Something similar to interactive fiction. All media (movies, videogames, TV, novels) seems to be converging into one big interactive soup, which we're still trying to understand and grapple with.

Is the value of accreditation that high, making it an USP? i.e. should an edtech go after the universities and school as a source of certification or more after the engagement of their user on their platform? I prefer the latter.

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