Creating the Asian Autonomous Learning Industry - Is it the only way to solve the Asian and African education crisis? I think so...

My goals isn't to improve the edu condition, it is to ultimately solve Asian and African education crisis once and for all by creating the autonomous learning (AL) industry that will make schools and teachers mere accessories to learning and not requirements for learning. How we do this is simple... we create a multiple eSingularity Prize for Autonomous Learning Innovation to reward the innovation and creation of the AL technology that will radically transform global education and learning. This innovation or prize will NEVER come out of the West because it would be squished my Big Publishing and the extremely powerful teacher unions who will not allow AI in Western education out of the fear it will eliminate jobs - which is nonsense.

So I propose is that we work together on this... read http://bit.ly/50esKL My position is we run a pilot in KL, Malaysia... then we leverage KL success. The simple fact is, if we can raise $50m in KL, Malaysia for a Prize for AL, how much do u think we can raise in Dubai, Singapore, India, China? US investors would fund it too. Can we leverage the $50m into a $500m or higher Prize and as part of the requirement we have rights to use the IP that is developed and ultimately become the dominate group behind a yet to be established AL industry? The real money is not in the free public AL education I want to make available globally, but in the private AL industry that will completely change HR, workforce dev, certification programming etc... do you get it?

We need some little $$ to make this happen, I can raise the $50m, if I can meet with investors face-to-face. I am an experiences capital campaign director and I have a system in my possession that has raised over $1.6 billion for npos in the US using a feasibility/face-to-face solicitation system. With the right help we can move this in a massive way and you can either be part of it or watch it happen... if you know serial angel I want to talk to him.

Thoughts

Michael

eSingularity "education 3.0 autonomous learning (tm)"

Recently I presented at Barcamp Orlando and Sarasota. Both times I talked about education 3.0 the paradigm shift it will bring about. So what is education 3.0, the education singularity or eSingularity for short?  What will cause it and when will this moment happen? The paradigm shift that has to happen is this... we must view school and formal teaching as accessories to learning and not requirements for it. That shift is happening in the "At Home" movement that is sweeping across the US.  But the real innovation is set for Asia because the reality is they have an education crisis, not a problem like in the West. They can't build the needed schools or train enough teachers not meet current demand let alone future demand. So what is Education 3.0? It's a transition in to autonomous learning (tm).  Whats autonomous learning it is when a device becomes both your school and teacher. The iphone can become an autonomous learning device using Siri software. I should be able to tell Siri software what app I want and it should deliver it to me. It should also take into consideration my age and learning ability by asking and me responding to some simple questions. The age for autonomous learning is just around the corner and with it, provide the right folks develop it, eSingularity can happen. The opportunity is to make all learning free and accessible to all by funding the eSingularity Prize for Autonomous Learning that seeks to bring about 1000s of autonomous education solutions for a new global education paradigm that is built on multimedia content delivered and aggregated on wikitube.tv.

We are a nexus and the e3o-Tsunami or e3o-Sputnik headed our way will be far bigger in impact than 1000 industrial revolutions because it will mean for the first time human history that education becomes a natural right afforded to all and not just a few!

Reflections...

Reflections on being kicked out of TED Global 2010

 

TED is a forum for ideas worth spreading and in my opinion there is no better idea worth spreading than the idea of free education for all. The time has come to put it on the global agenda and bring it to pass. The fact is we have the technology, the connectivity and the content to deliver free math, science, and language arts education autonomously to anyone with connectivity. The things is, what I am proposing is a revolution that could very well sake up and bring down the global educational complex.  What I am proposing is taking education out of the hands of the few and putting it in the hands of the many. What I am suggesting is a radical shift in power and control. Ask yourself what would it mean if anyone could get a free 8th grade education in math, science and language arts autonomously? Because the reality is, if we can provide education autonomously to 8th grade we can provide it for all subject matter to any level. All of a sudden the $4.2 trillion educational complex that is built on controlling and selling knowledge has just lost its footing and is set to collapse. You see my idea is a radical solution that can irrevocably upset everything in society. Recently I found some great videos on education. Stephen Heppell talks about this approaching paradigm shift and how global education is set to be shook up in way we can't even imagine -- he is making the same predicament as me. Only I am tell you what the exact technology will be that will cause it.  Yong Zhao talks about how standardization just doesn't work, something I have been saying all along, and that what we need to do is allow individual communities to decide on the content. This is something that the solution I envision for global education will do. Alan November talks about redefining schools and what he proposed is dead on except we can take it further. A handheld autonomous mobile learning devices will be the immersive school of the future that will link global communities and allow collaborations way we are just now starting to explore.

So what did I do to piss off TED and in particular Bruno? Here is my point of view... I had applied to attend and was accepted to attend TED Global 2010 at a hefty cost of $4500 for a three day conference ticket. My thinking was if I am going to shell out $4500 I might as well campaign to get The eSingularity message out and do what all great athletes do and that is visualize doing it -- thus my video talks. My thinking was that even if I didn't get to talk folks will at least be educated to the reality that "And Now The Good News... We Can Educate the World." My gorilla self promotion and marketing approach wasn't appreciated by blue blooded TEDster Bruno, who saw me merely as a groundling using my TED invitation as a way to bring attention to my idea and share a message about global education that I think is important. He further didn't appreciate making his emails public. The reality is even TED isn't ready to present and share an idea that seeks to completely redefine the global education complex and they probably didn't appreciate my innovative way I am using to get the word out. 

 

Will my ejection from TED Global 2010 have any affect my efforts to bring about eSingularity? No. But, I can hope that maybe others will seriously look into my planned solution and that some media outlets might find it interesting enough to write a story about it and in the process provide me a venue to talk about how easy it is to flatten global education and provide everyone with connectivity with an autonomous education in math, science and language arts -- our beta. Bruno calls my action "a conspicuous breach of trust."  I call it open access to information. When I founded the Southern Shakespeare Festival as a college student, an event that attracted over 30k its inaugural year, I used every means possible to get the vision of the festival out.  In the process I pissed off powerful Florida State University, because I was trying to pressure their involvement in the festival, because I thought it was their duty to support it -- they didn't appreciate my heavy handed approach. Just as I think it is TEDs duty to support and promote the vision and scope of eSingularity and to bring the idea to a new level of exposure. I can't help the fact they are short sighted to see what it is I am seeking to do, and instead just are focused on silly me. All I can do is put eSingularity in their face and let them decide how they choose to handle it. The one thing I always regretted with SSF was that I never left a trail of bread crumbs on how I did what many saw was impossible for an undergrad to do with no experience in producing or raising money. My adventure to flattening global education is far more important and I plan to leave a ton of bread crumbs for anyone to follow. The thing is, eSingularity will happen, my goal is to bring it to pass far sooner than it would naturally occur, because a lot is at stake and in reality making all learning a natural human right for all is the only way that we will have any hope in saving humanity from ourselves. 

 

INDIA e3.0 Prospectus -- Building India's Educational Future

    © 2009 EDUIT, Inc     

INDIA e3.0 Prospectus -- Building India's Educational Future

draft 2.1 e3.0 India committee

Imagine... A world where every kid participates on a level education system, 

challenging themselves and others, and achieving rewards and prizes for applying themselves, 

no matter what their social, economic, or geographic disposition. 

We can...

and we will build it. 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

"A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes. " I believe that India is uniquely positioned to achieve a significant competitive advantage in the world economy by being among the first to implement a flat education system for all its people before the end of the next decade. This goal can be accomplished by partnering with EDUIT to develop a complete free open source education solution for its people and peoples of the world. Global learning can be flattened through providing equal access and opportunity to all learners, including the mentally and socially disadvantaged, who can benefit from 21st Century educational technologies for leveraging academic achievement. We at EDUIT believe with UNESCO and India and the People's Republic of China that access to educational opportunities is a basic human right for all, not just a privilege for the few. Regardless of one's status or location, all people should have access to the best education the world can provide. And we believe that the technology already exists to accomplish this goal--so together we can change the world.

For over 3000 years the "sage on a stage" instructional approach offered by the Education 1.0 model has dominated human culture. Education 2.0 is now emerging as schools, teachers and students have begun to utilize social networks and Web 2.0 tools in education. But it doesn't go far enough. Media 3.0 technologies now being developed and researched will emerge over the next few years as perhaps the most disruptive technology in the 21st Century. It will emerge as Media 3.0, where social networking and distributed multi-media converge to unite disparate and disconnected education systems into a single global learning platform, which I call the education singularity event.

Current instructional pedagogy is tied to task allocation--a cornerstone of industrialization. Since the mid-19th Century, training has followed the prescription of task allocation and delivered education to students believed to be socially and mentally standardized groups. Yet, this historical disconnect between the standard and the needs of differentiated learners is now being felt more profoundly than ever. Factors such as ethnicity, gender, class, nationality, language, environment, and culture all combine to create a student body that is incredibly difficult to homogenize. Today's students demand information to be delivered on demand from the best minds more quickly and in more emotionally stimulating and contextually relevant formats. What is the methodology through which we will develop tools to bridge these divides? The answer lies in nature's oldest and most successful learning tool... Play.

You may be wondering... who are we to flatten global education? Good question. We are not a Google or Microsoft, but a global consortium of the best and brightest minds in technology and education brought together under my leadership to form the eSingularity initiative to meet the needs of all learners. I am just one individual who has dedicated the past eight years to solving this problem. As a disadvantaged learner myself, I struggled in elementary school because of a learning disability, dyslexia, that seriously limited my ability to receive an adequate education under the Western model, which was ineffective in meeting my needs to fully realize my academic potential. I decided to forego a comfortable well-compensated executive position at a great company, run by my best friend and colleague, to move to Japan to become an elementary school English teacher of modest means and focus completely on my dream for global education--like Siddhartha wandering off into the wilderness to contemplate existence. For four years I have meditated and watched technology and the web evolve, waiting for the right time. And the time is now. The good news is that I have accomplished the impossible before. As a college student, I founded one of the most successful free Shakespeare festivals in America. An estimated 30,000 people attended the festival its inaugural year. I accomplished this against all odds. No one believed I could do it except one man, my mentor, Dean Emeritus Richard G. Fallon. He taught me that anything is possible if you stick to it, believe in it with all your heart and keep walking the walk and talking the talk. Back then I had no idea what that meant. I have since added a lot more skills to my toolkit. I raised millions as a capital campaign director at NCDS and worked as the vice president of an unsuccessful IT start-up. I have seen a lot of failures, but I am committed and determined to changing the world.

I recognize that I may fail in leading this effort without bringing together leaders in government, technology industry and education into a collective mission dedicated to realizing the vision of 21st Century learning for all. The outcome we seek will benefit millions, if not tens of millions, in India and elsewhere throughout the world. Although it may not turn out like I originally envisioned, and may be discounted by some as nothing more than a Quixotic tilting at windmills, if we are successful then think of the global honor, respect, accolades, and prestige that India will enjoy as a result of elevating education to be equal and accessible for all the world's population. In essence this is a continuation of Gandhi's struggle for equality and fairness for the people of India. Together we can make access to education free and available to all people.

We look forward to partnering with India to realize the vision of eSingularity.

Michael J. Trout
Chief Evangelist and Founder
EDUIT, Inc

THE PROBLEM 

The challenges facing India's education system may be one of the biggest challenges facing any nation in the 21st Century. Faced with the fastest population growth and poor technical infrastructure in rural regions, India must find a cost effective solution for educating its people. The traditional education 1.0 bricks and mortar solution isn't going to be adequate to overcome the educational challenges it is facing. Under that model, India would need to build new schools, train and retain teachers, buy books and collateral supplies, keep these materials current and put in place more bureaucracy, that leads to ever escalating costs at the sacrifice to education. A technological solution for all of its people needs to be identified, actualized and implemented. And most importantly how can we do it for less than it is currently costing India?

The challenges facing India's education system can be summarized by EDUIT board member Umashankar IAS as follows:

1. The present Education system in India is designed to overload the pupils with too much 'knowledge' and the focus is to enable them to improve their memory skills rather than enabling them to be innovative/creative.
2. The present system is designed to create a hierarchical society, with only a small section scoring very high marks, the remainder get fed up with the monotonous and irrelevant education system, forcing them to discontinue their studies.
3. India has made great strides in the field of telecommunication. There is hardly any village in India which is left out from this exciting technology. This technology has not touched the education system to provide 'remote teaching' facilities or online knowledge sharing. Access to uniform teaching content, especially video and multi-media content will enable removal of disparities. This will neutralise the ill effects of absentee teachers (which is also a major problem in rural India).

THE BENEFITS TO INDIA

We believe the eSingularity initiative could significantly help alleviate many of the stresses facing India by putting a complete education solution in the hands of every student, young or old. Our complete education platform isn't limited to a particular region or age group. Imagine being able to learn anything, anytime, and anywhere from multiple authorities from the comfort of your home from any web-enabled device. Imagine being able to play enticing e-games that reinforce the topics key points you just watched or listened too. And as you do, earn and spend reward points for achieving goals and milestones, or completing assignments and connecting with others in virtual classrooms. Imagine the benefit if you could identify brilliant global students living in rural India, just by how they interact within an intelligent e-learning environment. Have you ever pondered how many great minds have starved to death, or been killed in ignorant conflicts? This is just the beginning... there is more, much more. E3.0 will have an impact on all of humanity, much of the impact lies on the other side of the new educational paradigm, making them invisible for us to see at this time. All that I have just described is achievable with today's technology. Its just a matter of sitting down and getting down to the task at hand.

New role for schools -- Can you imagine the end of frivolous assessment tests, grading, and tedious administrative duties, the demise of the bloated and abusive certification industry? The end of proprietary software in education. Where schools and universities become places for networking and applying knowledge and operate more like fraternal mentors competing for top students like professional sport teams do for top athletes. We will change the fundamental idea of how schools and colleges operate by changing he very way people learn. 

New role for teachers -- Teachers will become more focused on teaching problem solving techniques, critical thinking skills and social and interpersonal skills. They will no longer need to be experts in subject areas. Instead experts will be delivering their thought and ideas directly to the students. Teachers will become more like mentors and guidance counselors to their students. As a result India will be able to train more teachers faster, and retain them, helping to increase the teacher to student ratio in classes. 

Centralization of curriculum and instructional development -- Our solution will make it easy to create and deliver a complete open course-ware online education media solution to any web enabled device. It will provide tremendous efficiencies by allowing a global community of enthusiasts, teachers and practitioners to develop open course ware. It will eliminate the need to repeatedly create lesson plans, and local and regional control of educational content will become a thing of the past. Just as communities of writers sort out topics on Wikipedia a community of global educators will sort out the order in which learning should progress for every subject. Subject material will not be limited to just k-18, any type of open course ware can be added. Such as job training and professional training programs that traditionally were limited to specialized organizations. Over time all knowledge base skills sets will exist on our education 3.0 platform. 


THE SOLUTION WE OFFER -- eSingularity platform (eSp) , a brief overview.

What we are proposing is a radically new way to learn and deliver educational content. The solution will be an open source media 3.0 platform that delivers concise multimedia open course-ware that is reinforced using fun games. A user won't need to be able to read or write to learn. The user will have their own virtual guide to direct them throughout the process. If the user can watch, listen, point and touch they can learn. Simple as that. There are three parts to the design of the solution. The first is "The Tool" the interface that a web user connects too and used to build the content; the second "The Content," what will drive the course-ware development and the third is "The Experience" the environment the user plays and interacts within. Our beta goal is that every student will be able to access a complete math and science learning solution via any web accessible device. The device type the student is using will determine the type of learning experience they will have. 

The Tool: this is the interface that will run The Experience. The Tool, an open source project, will be built by bringing together some of the latest technologies in intelligent, distributing computing, mutual media video and others. The new kind of media 3.0 open source video engine will sit in the heart of the plug and will be a multi touch platform that will be used to create exceptional educational learning content by using cutting edge media mixing technology. GuiGame another open-source module that we will create will allow content developers to create fun elastic games that will reinforce the content to learning objectives. And there is more...

The Contents: We are going to let the global community mash up the best educational content from over 70 years of educational television. A learning objective unit will never be longer than three minutes. We will slice 70 years of global television content up like Swiss cheese and meta tag it using a open source multi-touch media 3.0 player and a combination of other technologies and global labor. We will employ 10,000 Indian citizens and assemble over 100,000 volunteers to do the meta tagging job for math and science. We will accomplish this by creating a global movement behind eSingularity called the eRevolution Movement. We will establish partnerships and pay for access rights to the last 70 years of television content from the BBC, NPR, Discovery etc... and by using our media 3.0 player and the global community of educators we will make it possible for anyone to create highest quality open course ware. Once the content is meta tagged users will easily be able to, among other things, overlay karaoke subtitles voice overs and lots more... 

The Experience: It's fun -- a cool multi-touch education "play" platform the user interacts with. Its easy -- A unique competitive advantage over all existing educational interfaces, it is not reliant on the students reading or writing ability. If the student can watch, listen, and touch he or she will be able to learn. That simple. It will automatically track student progress, test the student and reinforce learning objectives using games and rewards. When they are in The Experience it is assumed they cannot (read or write). Any child two and up will be able to use and learn on it with little assistance. They will learn to read and write just by using it. And there is a lot more...

Is the eSp concept simple and easily understood by the public? 

Sure it is... Imagine a cheap tablets, slates and touch like devices that interacts with the user using AI technology similar to what Lionshead Milo. AI that monitors your attention using Emotiv software EEG technology. The platform will know when you are having fun, what kind of learning games you are good at, what subject matter you enjoy learning etc... Based on this meta data it will push learning objects in an intelligent way to the leaner. It will ask a question and will not need to understand your response because it will know it just as fast as you can say it. The platform will seem sentient as it will respond to you before the thought enters your mind. I will use modified tech from the Cerego Learning Engine and will automatically cues up OpenEd content that has been created by remixed any Open Education Resources or 60 yrs of global TV by a global community of educators and individuals that have already been assembled via Moodle, MIT OCW, SEE, Curriki, Sakai, Second Life, Edufire, Smart.fm and many others. The learning system will be the simplest of learning cycle that we all used as a kid "watch > play (evaluate) > (fail) repeat or (succeed) next." If you have issues your learning assistant avatar will step in and assist you. If you are getting bored it will step in and engage you. The software continually monitors your every move--think of it as an educational Big Brother. You walk away, it powers down. You come back, it powers up and picks up where you left off. We minimize/eliminate the choices... the platform does all the pushing of content based on learning parameters set automatically by your ability, region or parents desires via the learning engine -- Its very simple. Everything I describe we can do easily and the reality is there a lot of tech that I don't know about that will do things I want to do even better. For example your device wouldn't work for anyone else. It will say "return me to eSingularity Academy." Imagine what leading systems architects will be able to do! Any software engineer will be able to add to it because it's FOSS -- a Free Open Source Solution.

Is eSp practical and achievable? 

Sure. If we can move a cultural paradigm to embrace the idea of education as a free natural right for all we will build it. The fallout on the global educational complex will be massive but necessary. Understand, we are not trying to sell net books to everyone or develop cutting edge hardware -- both are being done. The mobile hardware that we will use was all the rage at the 2010 CES. What we are interested in building is a easy to use FOSS software platform that I am calling the eSingularity platform for global education, a platform that will run on any operating system... iPhone, Symbian, Android, Mac, Win, Linux etc... It's FOSS so any deveopers can customize it, improve it, so it can work with their platform. We will all of a sudden be able to say "here is the well of free learning, go to drink from... all you need to do is turn on the tap. Oh, and any tap will work." 

What are the steps you are going to take and how long will they take? 

1) We need an IN Angel investor or sponsor, 2) We start the building and submit patents 3) We run the Feasibility Analysis to test whether $15m can be raised 4) We raise the remaining funds via the BUILDING INDIA'S EDUCATIONAL FUTURE campaign. We will not need VC funding or other investments to build it. Ultimately, It all depends on how badly do we want a solution for global free education.  We could have a beta up in as little as 6-8 months, it all depends on only one thing and that is how much money are we willing to invest in a world changing solution that bring all the OER & 60 years of global television together and outputs it to any web enabled device. There is some tech that doesn't exist, so we have start our EDUITu.com social TV startup to develop it. We are not looking for investors at this time. 

Who are the benefactors of eSp and will the improvement be significant? 

Think about it. Over 80% of the world has connectivity. Over 2 billion make less than $2 a day. Over 50% on India's are illiterate. How many people in that 80% connectivity zone would want a 8th grade equivalence education? India is where eSingularity is poised happen because of its juxtaposition of crisis, talent and money. NO OTHER SOLUTION WILL SOLVE INDIA'S CRISIS. Broadband (BB) is optimal and we will focus our pilot project on the 5% with BB access and then scale out. But BB isnt a necessity because we will be building on OLPC wifi networks tech and BitTirrent p2p tech to share and deliver content -- nothing will be live feed. Also, in regions with no connectivity we will use cheap satellites wifi hubs. In fact every Sugata Mitra "Hole in the Wall" PC station will become a wifi hub for us -- they are building the infrastructure as we speak. Satellites connectivity will work fine because we wont need a big upload, we will be just sending back small analytics packets on the learner and network content requests. The eSingularity platform will learn how the learner learns and adjust to their needs or demands.  

BUILDING THE SOLUTION 

We will assemble a team of the top technologists from India and the world to design and ultimately build eSingularity platform. Some of the team is already in place but a large part of the team and partners are still to be identified. These individuals and companies will be made up from India's top IT companies. Keep in mind, that just as it was impossible to describe how the technology used to age Pitt backwards in the making of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button would work -- a film Hollywood has wanted to make for more than 50 years. We will be faced with the same challenges. For the last 50 years people have been professing a next great fix for global education, but it hasn't come. So why now? Good question. My response would be that only in the last few years has the distributed, artificial intelligence, media, and computational strength technology been developed to flatten global learning. Its very important that we keep in mind that its impossible to describe exactly how the solution--eSingularity Platform will work because it will ultimately evolve in the creating process from developmental input from brilliant team members. However, with the right people, funding and support we know it can be be developed and have it in place for India in 24 to 36 months from time of funding. It will take another three to five years to fill out all the K -18 subject areas. Just as it took Wikipedia to do so. There is no technological barrier to prevent us building a complete solution for India education. The current lack of connectivity will also not be an issue. Once the word is out that a complete education solution is available communities and companies will work together to get the connectivity for the children to learn. Flatting education in India will speed up IT infrastructure development significantly throughout India, because connectivity will mean instant access to complete education and every rural governor and provincial leader will want education for their constituencies. 

THE MISSION

"To mold existing and emerging technology into a vessel through which learning is made freely accessible to everyone in the world."

THE VISION

eSingularity^(TM) - the moment all learning is free and accessible to all.

HISTORY

Founded in 2001 EDUIT, Inc. is a 501c3 education not for profit whose headquarters are located in Washington D.C. EDUIT stands for Education Information Technology has been researching and waiting for technology to evolve, in order to set in motion the e3.0 project to flatten global education.

OUR LEADERSHIP and ADVISORY BOARD


PROPOSED PLAN OF ACTION FOR THE PEOPLE OF INDIA.

We would like India to fully invest in this open source project that will give every Indian citizen free access to an education that is equal to or better than what is being offered in the west. 90% of all research and development will occur in India using India's technical talent. How much will it cost? To be honest we are not sure, $100m? $200m? We are now estimating it may cost as little as $15m to build the platform, but we will not know until we start working on it. In the a detailed conversation with a leading CTO we realized that my earlier figure of $150m was based on 2000 software production costs and that software development has radically changed over the last five years. There are many variables that could potentially escalate costs but the real question should be, what will it be worth? Your funding support will allow EDUIT to organize eSingularity think-tank/research projects, assemble a global team of the best and brightest minds to tackle the challenges at hand. 

KICK OFF ANGEL INVESTMENT

Presently EDUIT is looking to secure a private $250k investment/donation from an Angel. This funding would be used to:

• Finalize collaterals. The business plan, technical documentation, ROI docs
• Conduct an NCDS like feasibility study to test weather corporate support is available to fund the remaining cost. 
• Set up operations India, Including Kick Off event. 
• Hire legal and patent attorney to secure the intellectual rights to the work
• Produce a 15 minute movie that demonstrates the technology and how anyone will be able to learn on it.
• This individual will be given equity in our for profit company and special "Founder" credit on the eSingualrity Initiative and will play a key role in the project. Their immortal Avatar will also play a unique role in The Experience as the role of the "Oracle", They will be establishing themselves a legacy as the one who set the ball in motion. This can be a either an donation or investment. Contact mjtrout@gmail.com for more information.

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Comments email to mtrout@eduit.org