Throughout my career as a teacher and administrator, I have pursued the goal of facilitating student-centred learning. This included a progressive adoption of the new BC curriculum prior to mandated implementation as well as forming a professional development promotional company aimed at the same goal. In fact, my decision to enter the MET program at UBC was mainly due to this same reason. I have always felt that the highest aspiration of educational technology was to personalize learning to a degree that takes into account our unique complexities and individual learning styles.
One of the topics within educational technology that has always fascinated me was adaptive learning. While wary of the pitfalls of inflated expectations described by Gartner’s Hype Cycle (2020) I remain cautiously optimistic about its potential for positive transformative change for all students, particularly those struggling with learning disabilities and a lack of motivation caused by repeated negative experiences that leave them to believe they are incapable of success.
As a long-term ex-pat who has lived in three different countries over the past 10 years, married to a Korean citizen, language learning has also been of particular interest to me. While both my daughter and wife are bilingual I have struggled with language acquisition my entire life. It has never been for a lack of effort as I have studied quite diligently in both a traditional classroom setting and with applications in my own time. I have always been able to acquire technical aspects but have never achieved fluency in the real world. I could always score well on tests but this never translated into true fluency. The explanation for this can largely be seen in the research I did in preparation for this project. Both the classroom and traditional applications lack the authentic “in the wild” experiences that translate into subconscious assimilation needed to communicate effectively in day to day interactions.
So, while I am an educator and certainly not a business person (Even with my Pro-D company, profit was never a consideration. It was motivated by a desire to create learning opportunities for international teachers), I started this venture pitch with a topic that is of great interest to me. Using the feedback I received from assignment one and the framework provided by the instructor I set out with the goal of designing a fictitious company based on real-world technology currently in development. While the concept of adaptive learning is not new in language learning companies, they have yet to achieve the level of efficiency of other subjects. With this knowledge, I attempted to use what I knew about the complexities of language learning acquisition and apply a conceptual approach that could lead to a solution.
While aspects of the assignment were well within my comfort zone, learning the art of the pitch has been a challenge. With that said, while I initially questioned how much the course content would aid me in my career I found that entrepreneurship is a skill set that can be highly useful. Having good ideas is of supreme importance when you are an administrator, but articulating and “selling” those ideas to others is also critical if one is to achieve their vision.
With the above said, the process of constructing a formative sales pitch based around a topic I have a sincere passion for was a very rewarding experience. While I unfortunately do not have the connections the fictional version of myself had to elite software engineers and marketing people I can envision the pursuit of education business ventures in my future. Just as we try to use the passions of students to build upon and motivate the learning of other content and skills, it is important as educators we apply this to ourselves. Life-long learning should be the goal for all of us and through this assignment, I do feel like much of what I learned will open doors to possibilities I had not yet considered.
One of the topics within educational technology that has always fascinated me was adaptive learning. While wary of the pitfalls of inflated expectations described by Gartner’s Hype Cycle (2020) I remain cautiously optimistic about its potential for positive transformative change for all students, particularly those struggling with learning disabilities and a lack of motivation caused by repeated negative experiences that leave them to believe they are incapable of success.
As a long-term ex-pat who has lived in three different countries over the past 10 years, married to a Korean citizen, language learning has also been of particular interest to me. While both my daughter and wife are bilingual I have struggled with language acquisition my entire life. It has never been for a lack of effort as I have studied quite diligently in both a traditional classroom setting and with applications in my own time. I have always been able to acquire technical aspects but have never achieved fluency in the real world. I could always score well on tests but this never translated into true fluency. The explanation for this can largely be seen in the research I did in preparation for this project. Both the classroom and traditional applications lack the authentic “in the wild” experiences that translate into subconscious assimilation needed to communicate effectively in day to day interactions.
So, while I am an educator and certainly not a business person (Even with my Pro-D company, profit was never a consideration. It was motivated by a desire to create learning opportunities for international teachers), I started this venture pitch with a topic that is of great interest to me. Using the feedback I received from assignment one and the framework provided by the instructor I set out with the goal of designing a fictitious company based on real-world technology currently in development. While the concept of adaptive learning is not new in language learning companies, they have yet to achieve the level of efficiency of other subjects. With this knowledge, I attempted to use what I knew about the complexities of language learning acquisition and apply a conceptual approach that could lead to a solution.
While aspects of the assignment were well within my comfort zone, learning the art of the pitch has been a challenge. With that said, while I initially questioned how much the course content would aid me in my career I found that entrepreneurship is a skill set that can be highly useful. Having good ideas is of supreme importance when you are an administrator, but articulating and “selling” those ideas to others is also critical if one is to achieve their vision.
With the above said, the process of constructing a formative sales pitch based around a topic I have a sincere passion for was a very rewarding experience. While I unfortunately do not have the connections the fictional version of myself had to elite software engineers and marketing people I can envision the pursuit of education business ventures in my future. Just as we try to use the passions of students to build upon and motivate the learning of other content and skills, it is important as educators we apply this to ourselves. Life-long learning should be the goal for all of us and through this assignment, I do feel like much of what I learned will open doors to possibilities I had not yet considered.