Group items tagged

there simply aren't enough expert teachers with enough time to bring every child along

If the 21th century is to be a time of progress, education must continue to expand. This makes it even more difficult to provide individual instruction for all the world's students.

That's the promise of the Internet, which excels above all else at scale: scale of information, social interactions, geographic reach.

The acid test I apply to every new initiative is: to what extent does it bring us closer to the old system of individualized, personal, expert instruction, except with scale?

Online tutoring is an example of a promising Internet-driven innovation. Companies like TutorVista and Smarthinking let hundreds of thousands of students get on-demand personal help in their homes at a reasonable cost.

online systems that can "diagnose" individual students' strengths and weaknesses and dynamically generate a tailored curriculum.

Other innovations lie somewhere in between the two

It's important to remember that many of the most important education innovations lie outside the Internet.

But the Internet will also disrupt. Textbooks, for example, can't continue in their present form

two principles: first, invest in Internet innovations that bring us closer to the vision of universal, personalized instruction; and second, champion those designed to complement, rather than replace, traditional academic institutions.