IN DEPTH: Defying the odds

30.09.2011

We have a pilot in the American state of Indiana, called the Power of You, and students are assessed every day and receive curriculum and content in different modalities and they're scheduled to different teachers based on how they teach. What's interesting is in this pilot, we used kids that hadn't progressed for three years and in six weeks were able to bring them up to their peers in maths. I believe we have an opportunity to help kids master content, but also uncap the categories of learning that we've pre-defined.

RP: I think at this point, they're trying to figure out what are the tools that they need to pull together and how do they create this eco system of learning because not one person has the answer.

RP: With the University of Denver, I'm working on the learning progression for teachers and students, and the algorithm that will drive learning. I'm working on a Gates-funded project around augmented reality in the Colorado school district. There are some cool things happening in the augmented reality space and that's becoming an area of growth. I've started conversations with gaming companies because you can do some interesting things. Not just getting kids on a cool platform, but what if you could build a model so you provide cognitive coaches in potential problematic areas where kids are going to fail or have problems, you have a cognitive coach to get them through that area. I'm also working on a project - a content tagging scheme, involving partnerships between Google, Bing and Yahoo, so we can better expose open content that we can pool into school districts, states and countries to be able to use.