I am a big fan of algorithms – is it socially acceptable to say that? I’ve spent the last 3 and a half years building and operationalizing products at a company focused on building a world-class algorithm to make billions of decisions in seconds. When I first heard about Knewton a couple years ago their product really piqued my interest because it was just like what MediaMath was doing but instead of advertisers you have students and instead of advertising campaigns you have curriculums.
It made me excited that there were companies out there that were using big data on something like education because I believe that there are two things that are the biggest multiplier in the quality of life: technology and education. If you can invest early and often, in education, you will be reaping the dividends for the rest of your years. And even better than investing money, you can’t run out of the knowledge you’ve gained and it’s automatically re-invested. The more you learn, the more you learn to learn.
To go back to finance, there’s a plethora of SaaS technology that have algorithms that plug in your goals and risk-aversion to customize your investing strategy.
Knowledge is truly power specifically because it opens up doors and helps you find doors to open. If you believe the argument that knowledge is more impactful to your life than money, then you will also find it quite backwards that the current education system approaches learning in a one-size fits all model which is archaic compared to the investment world. If your brain doesn’t learn within the often outdated curriculum and teaching style of your classroom you’re out of luck and take a loss on the education multiplier.
Which is why I am excited about what Knewton brings to education. Knewton is automating the feedback loop that pushes to their learning algorithm that then produces a customized curriculum based on each student’s strengths and weaknesses. I am optimistic for students that are entering school in the data age. This is what the education system needs – a more scientific approach that relies on feedback loops. I know that I would have benefited from algorithmic-based curriculums or at a bare minimum, customizable curriculums. I personally learn way better when I am hands-on. I call my learning technique the monkey-see-monkey-do model where I like to watch someone else perform the skill I want to learn, I’ll then mimic it and then when I feel like I have a good grasp I will create something on my own that flexes that skill. That is what I did when I taught myself how to DJ and am using the same model to teach myself how to code. If I can go back to my undergrad business courses, I would have learned way more if we spent less time in theory and more time in practice. I’m sure a lot of folks in the class that learned best from auditory and visual lectures, but that doesn’t work for me nearly as well as if we had a “business lab” where I could put what I learned in the classroom to work.
Excited to see where Knewton takes education and also what other companies in other industries are doing to bring algorithms and big data to improve lives.
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