Never ever say Uber, Spotify, Netflix……

by reestheskin on 09/10/2016

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Michael Feldstein writes about ed tech companies and Pearson:

1 Never, ever, say that you want your company to be the Uber of education, the Airbnb of education, the Pokemon GO of education, or the insert name of tech darling of education unless you really enjoy being a recluse (or you are secretly a double agent for your employer’s direct competitor).

2 If you absolutely must say something like the above, then do not say you are the Netflix of education. Honestly, Netflix isn’t even great at being the Netflix of movies. The last time they recommended a movie that I actually wanted to watch was…uh…never.

There is a recurring cultural fantasy that “solving” the education “problem” consists of creating a customized playlist of little content bits. So really, more like the Spotify of education, if you want to play that game. This idea enrages educators because it trivializes what they do. Nobody who has taught believes that proper sequencing of content chunks is the hard part.

“We’re starting to meta-tag all the content so it can be chopped up into component parts and reassembled on the fly for each user,” explained Hitchcock………

Feldstein adds:

We’ve gone from Netflix to Google Ads. Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Can we get a spamming algorithm analogy just for good measure?

Worth a full read.