The Road Ahead For Education

About a year ago I had lunch with Henry Kaestner of Bandwidth.com about micro finance in developing countries. As a part of that lunch, I shared with Henry my ideas around changing education for the better in the next 5-10 years.

My ideas during the lunch were based primarily on the book ‘Four Hour Workweek’ by Tim Ferriss. If you have not read this book, I highly recommend it. The premise is that the world of working at a desk for 40 hours a week, driving to and from work, etc. are going away as barriers drop away. You work when you want to work, where you want to work from as long as your work gets done.

I use this discipline every day at my job, and I have found it to be very liberating. There are days when I work 15-16 hours a day, and days when I work 4 or 5. By work, I mean actual work on getting tasks done required by my employers. Most days I am working far more, learning new things, etc.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand. When I met with Henry, I said “Wouldn’t it be cool if five years from now you could take a class from whomever you want at the times you want, and have it be credited toward your education. It would not matter what level of education you were currently in, there would be a way to track into the things that interest you.”

I am now proving out this theory as I take a class online from Stanford University. I am taking a class on iPhone Development. I am taking it thru iTunesU thanks to a recommendation from Anders Brownworth. The teachers of the class are two Apple developers ( who better to take class from? ), is a legitimate Stanford University CS class, and I get to take it for free.

Do I get a grade? No. Am I officially enrolled? No. But, I get all of the benefits of being enrolled in the class. It is not a far leap to think that the same class could easily be offered to only online students in a similar environment for far less than the enrolled students are paying at Stanford, and to think that I could take the class at a time that is convenient for me.

I am fired up about the class, and about the change it represents