Employers pay big money to find employees. Students pay big money to get educated to get a job.
Hackers roll in with apps that allow students to do courses for free on the smartphone/tablet, sell the info of the students to employers, who then hire the students. Everyone wins. Hackers are proclaimed heros.
A free app.
The data points of the app users are sold to employers.
If you can show employers that your app truly tests useful abilities they would be lining up. The current education system fails at producing workers with the right skills and employers are always complaining abou this.
See, what is Khan Academy really lacking at this point? Is the hard part their website with youtube hosted videos? Are they really just jonesing for some mobile developers? Or is producing quality content with broad coverage and depth their bottleneck?
Making an app is the easy part. Education is not failing for want of an app. Certainly not for want of a gamified app.
But hey, I can't stop you. Knock yourself out. Hell, pitch it to YC; I hear they are doing non-profits now.
Khan academy is definitely not it. They teach traditional curriculum which is isn't useful to business.
The app is definitely isn't the easy part - it is basically the whole part. The current education system is a failure for 2 reasons
- unanalyzed teaching
- unmotivated students
Apps solve both problems, every user interaction recorded and analyzed, gamification.
You can turn it around even and starting hiring those students yourself and create your own megacorp with the best employees and make megabucks.
2) An app that teaches people things but doesn't have anything to teach them is worthless. Of course the software is the easy part...
If you really think a for-profit Khan Academy that teaches... nontraditional... curriculum, but doesn't actually have any content since you seem to be completely ignoring that problem... is what the world really needs, then pitch it to YC as a for-profit startup. I ain't stopping you...
I think your argument comes from the traditional 'liberal arts' education angle.
I'm coming more from vocational type place. More of a rentacoder/odesk done more comprehensively.
Anyway, adios
I'm just wondering how you think making an app would be the difficult part of teaching thermodynamics or fluid mechanics to people.
Same with the app. It needs to be excellent, something Steve Jobs would be proud of, and it will make dent in the universe.
This is big, heady, stuff, and we'll kill the ed business with it. I like nothing better than to see government jobs disappear.
http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2012-11/teenage-gamers...