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While Los Angeles has had Startup Weekend competitions before it has never had 54 hours dedicated entirely to education tech, like it will on January 24th. Organizer Kevin McFarland, a student at UCLA Anderson School of Management and a co-founder of education tech startup Smartest K12, said the idea to bring Startup Weekend Education to LA came to him when talking to teachers about the latest education technology.
“We asked them, ‘Would you rather learn about different options in classroom tech or would you like to learn about how to make your ideas reality?’” said McFarland. The teachers overwhelmingly said they wanted to learn about implementing their own ideas.
“This is indicative of what we have been seeing,” said McFarland “Teachers are experimenting in their classrooms all the time.” The framework of Startup Weekend Education provides an opportunity for teachers, and other professional interested in education to learn how to implement their ideas.
Competition judge Mike McGalliard, who heads non-profit Imagination.is, said the event should also be a place “to give some kind of vision and coherence” to the greater Los Angeles education innovation movement. “Currently, there is a sense of innovation in LA around education. It is very patchwork though, and I think this is a step in the right direction,” said McGalliard.
And direction is important because the Los Angeles education technology movement has had trouble recently, most infamously with its $1 billion plan to give all of its 600,000 students iPads. The school district ran into difficulties when expenses ballooned, students unlocked the iPad’s Internet browser, and the contract for the matching curriculum did not balance with expectations.
“The entire problem was an implementation issue,” said McGalliard. Unfortunately, LAUSD’s troubled iPad initiative has made some people skeptical of technology in education.
McFarland of Smartest K12 doesn’t think the rollout was overly problematic but believes there are lessons to be learned, lessons that perhaps can be gained at Startup Weekend Education. “Hopefully, it will become a bit of a feedback loop,” said McFarland.
Feedback is needed because software developers and educators lack collaboration with each other. “I traffic in both worlds, they don’t communicate with each other,” said McGalliard. And that’s a difficult way to operate when “education tech is a very confusing space because it is so fresh. Its like a swamp, it’s alive with activity, but it is very confusing.” Startup Weekend Education could offer an opportunity for these usually separate groups to collaborate.
In addition to creating new education products for the classroom, McGalliard said he hopes the event creates “models that don’t rely on the school district.”
The Internet has changed education drastically. “The amount of information children have access to today is exponentially greater than when I was a kid,” said McGailliard. For students “what’s most important is that they know how to find information.” Education technology needs to cater to this new reality. It’s all that much more important that students have an ability to learn new technology and to search the Internet: “these so called soft skills aren’t so soft anymore,” said McGalliard.
Better access to technology and information were a few of LAUSD’s goals when it began purchasing and issuing iPads to its students. With the practical knowledge that comes from events like Startup Weekend Education, hopefully next time around the school district will be able to realize its goals and Los Angeles tech will serve as a cutting edge example to educators everywhere.
