Mark,
I noted your last comment, but I have to admit I still can't quite get the ideas, which make lots of sense at 30,000 feet to understand what you see on the ground. I checked out the entrepreneurial schools openworld set up and supports around the world. Amazing work. Congratulations!

From what I've seen so far, it sounds just right for bottom of the pyramid HS dropout factories in the States. But I need a little help to better understand your strategy regarding edu. I think I know - on an abstract level - that it has to do with games and trust or time based currency. From what I understand I agree. But if you could share your vision on how this might play out on the ground, specifically for dropout factories, it would help me alot.

FYI - I'm starting to use twitter to find on the ground entrepreneur dna at the BoP High Schools. It's just a couple of days, but I think I'm starting to see the path to get it work better.

A work-study project Openworld funded maps a path for P2P learning. Kids in a rural farming village in Sri Lanka shared ideas here on how the Lancaster System can be updated for the 21st century - http://j.mp/b9qnk0 .

Students today might earn reputation/karma points by co-creating eLessons and text books rated well by peers and by subject matter experts, as well as via F2F peer learning. Social currencies (or personal currencies, on Doug Rushkoff's model) might provide a way offer rewards.

SuperCoolSchool.com is interested in seeing students as co-owners of new learning ventures, too. These ventures could get students to create and share Youtube clips, narrated Powerpoint slides, Junto chats and Lulu.com-published books. Bjoerne and Steli at SCS might welcome ways to have kids earn social currencies (and cash) from their efforts. (Already, lots of US schools have set up school-based currencies - this ABC news report gives examples of the precedents - http://j.mp/7yBehE )

We might respond be setting up a site for kids in new learning ventures to print out "gift certificates" of time contributions to good causes (could include telementoring and F2F tutoring, textbook writing/editing, and eLesson creation). Recipients would give reputation-building feedback points (like SocialGold?) when they redeemed the personal gift certificates for services. Also, prizes could be offered to the most highly rated givers. Rewards could include publishing/advertising discounts as well as chats with people they especially admire.

What do you think?

Thanks. Now a need a little time to mull. Back to you as soon as the right questions jell.

Maybe the best way for me to get what I'm trying to understand is to describe what I think I see, and you can tell me where it might fit with Openworld's mission and strategy. As I'm sure you know, my focus is dropout factories in the States. One reason is that they are a clear and ongoing waste of human capital with life changing consequences for the kids involved. The other reason is that I believe it is the most fertile ground for disruptive innovation to take hold.

Obama's victory on Health Care says to me that there is a window now open that was previously closed. The way I see it playing out in the US edu is a maniacal focus on dropout factories. Much of the discourse is complicated by fear at the good enough schools. I don't think it's going to affect them all that much. But the d.o factories will be taken apart and put back together.

Over the last couple of months one of my uses for twitter is to find and have convos with people who get it. The under appreciated fact is that printing businesses at the global and local levels have very good reasons to get involved. It's a longer story, which I will be glad to share, if someone asks. On the print front, the emergence of matrix codes and the ability to produce 1 to 1 newspapers, posters is now getting to scale.

In the How to fix high school thread, Ned and I have been brainstorming about what might work. One of the notions that has evolved is to find and encourage pockets of school newspapers and other publications. The notion might be that there is a way for those papers to be sustainable by selling ads to non profits and public health organizations.

I think I know that all the functionalities you've created can be brought to bear. But I need your help to understand how they might fit into a clear offer to a dropout factory. Based on some of the other weak links I've created on Twitter, I think I'm getting close to a critical mass to focus on Central Falls High School in Rhode Island.

A smorgasbord of opportunities have come up on the EBD blog, in TwitterTennis, and various Tweetstreams, including:

- contests for kids to create Tweets, books and YouTube clips that boost peer learning
- social impact bonds (keyed to meaurable increases in literacy and reduction in crime rates in at-risk groups) with rewards going to new student-owned learning ventures (discussed on SuperCoolSchool.com blog) that deliver results
- Microsociety initiatives in classrooms (using alt-currencies) that can help kids launch publishing and media ventures
- Kid-created 3D models (Sketchup and Google Earth) showing their plans for bankable redevelopment projects - then teaming with college students to flesh out business plans, and leaning on municipalities/banks to transfer properties to jv's that in which kids have direct stakeholdings

Which of these do you think might be the best fit?

Best,

Mark
@openworld

- social impact bonds (keyed to meaurable increases in literacy and reduction in crime rates in at-risk groups) with rewards going to new student-owned learning ventures (discussed on SuperCoolSchool.com blog) that deliver results

Sounds most interesting(2me).

What if it were focused at the very bottom of the pyramid - prisoners. I think in a recent twitter stream you pushed out the idea of team achievement tied to "good behavior". I'm not sure how this plays out on the ground and I'm not entangled right now with the prisoner time/space except for a weak link to @tappedinorg . I still don't have a clear picture of his interests.

I do have a stronger connection to @readingwrite . Interesting in that she is a PhD now an Indie after 10 years in higher ed. We have convo'd about an approach to teach close reading by focusing on the Illiad as a first attempt.

The other possible player is our contact in Lagos. In many ways he is the most likely. As far as I can figure out, it's his day job. Has an articulated world view that includes business, education. The signals from Lagos are much clearer that anything that has yet gotten on my radar in the States.

What's next?

Oops the correct @ readywriting The convo re Lagos is #TwitTenLagos

To summarize my understanding of the convo status with @francisotolo

The Idea when I last left it is to create an edu space/time that serves the need of public health. One notion is to use the Open souce Public Health curriculum at John Hopkins Bloobmerg. Figure out the right forms to engage local community to learn and then teach those insights on the ground.

The biz model might be based on paying community people to become Public Health para professionals, delivering info in physical space. FYI - I think there is at least some possibility of entangling Xerox or one of the other global print outfits. I read yesterday that Canon(Oce) and HP are delivering Cloud to Print output throught FedEX. Maybe that's a path. For Xerox they are now the sales and service channel for the espresson book machine. I have pretty good visibility at Xerox and a weak link to @XeroxProduction how has RIT printing genes.

Mark,
I found something I wanted to get on the table.. http://ilnk.me/2373
Still, an innovative plan by the city of Murfreessboro, Tenn., to use federal grants to buy and repair vacated homes and then turn them over to charities to rent is running into some resistance.

According to the Tennessean, despite assurances from the nonprofits who will be finding people to live in these reclaimed homes, residents are fearful about who their new neighbors will be.

My thought is that if the "non profit" were a local edu enterprise, lots of the "resident's fear" might be mitigated.

@Michael, Mark,

Here in Nigeria, there are a lot of opportunities in the edu space for health and entrepreneurship. In our plan Lagos will be the major hub but with special interest in the rural area using @openword new communities formation. One of the reasons I appreciate so much the blog Emergent By Design is that the ideas obtained can be used in any developed and developing nations and makes us important agent of change.

For Health convo with Michael, sure we need offline community worker. if we come up with a good plan for this and we are interested in Govt, they could pick it up immediately. I am also waiting to see if we could get biz model from @openworld in other not to reinvent the wheel.

"they could pick it up immediately." Now that gets my attention.

One notion is to scale the Open Source Public Health curriculum from John Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health. But maybe we should explore using the video content from Dr Oz. If he is isn't on your radar, he's becoming a big deal in the States. When have a chance, go through http://www.doctoroz.com/

Let's assume for now that there are many ways to slice, dice and deliver the content. Also assume for now that we will be able to get the ok to use the content in whatever way we can demonstrate works.

Okay! Good.I will go through it."many ways to slice, dice and deliver the content" yeah and also especially "print", is less expensive but will be used too to introduce the virtual world through the effort of the community workers. This will be based on whatever conclusion reached.

"also especially "print". Ah, it's music to my ears. I'm on the radar of lots of folks in Print. No need to go through names but they are globals with global markets. They are still all stressed about Print is Dead, even though the stock market shows that newspaper stocks have made a huge come back. McClatchey is up over 8x last time I looked and rose on Friday while the Dow was falling.

Next week, I'll be in some F2F with some friends in Philadelphia. If we have a story worth telling, I'll tell it. If not, no problem. I'll tell it anyways. But the more cred I can get to back me up, the greater the likelihood that something might happen.

I took a thorough look at the problems that engulfed the period and brought about Joseph Lacanster's monitorial system of education; in like manner, I can boldly tell you that there is no difference between what you have in Nigeria and what transpired at the period in question in terms of demand and educational output.

Today, with my little understanding of what is happening in the new civilization, I can authoritatively tell you that the Nigerian educational system is failing. Here, there is a strong reliance on oil wealth because the present and past graduates could not generate jobs but dependent on what the nation has in his coffers and can offer either from oil revenues or a new multinational company to introduce a new product to the market. Education is supposed to be the source of development and job creation.

We need excellent schools, which are not difficult to establish. With 'EDU gamechangers" and the solution available here we can do something about this situation. @openworld and "EDU gamechangers" -Emergentbydesign have every information to convince any private investors or government to create excellent institutions especially now that we have special focus on BoP and dropout

In addition, part of the failure on our educational system is due to the change enumerated in the blog but our culture and value such as pride, corruptions etc are resisting global change.

Michael, I suggest with this site(which could give birth to a greater community-like bank of experts), an educational biz model could be created and tailored made to cater for education generally in Africa -and also to look into changes of global civilization as pointed out in the this blog. Michael, you and Mark are vaster on this.

Thank you for the reference to Lancaster. It's new to me. What I found telling was

"The Monitorial System, although widely spread and with many advocates, fell into disfavour with David Stow's "Glasgow System" which advocated trained teachers with higher goals than those of monitors."

In her last book Jane Jacobs talks about the dysfunctional effects of credentialing on American society. My sense is that it has been a primary driver of an education system that doesn't work for everybody. There are many perverse incentives here in the States that make it so hard to crack. One hopes that emerging nations will not have to repeat our errors.

The new stress in the States is the new focus on educating at the BoP. The fact of the matter is this is the first time in our Country's history that it has become a priority for the National Government. Please keep in mind that the Voting Rights Act in the States was only passed in the mid 1960's after a sometimes violent struggle. What we are seeing today is the result of those changes. Obama is only the tip of the iceberg. All over America for the first time, we have educated people of color and women in positions of power.

So in many ways, you get to start from a bit cleaner slate. You have to prune old growth to make way for the new.

It also gives context for the disruptive effect of taking new teachers from the pools of talent in the local community. That is precisely what threatens the education establishment. Most of them will fight it as hard as they can, with lots of "unqualifed" untrained." One must tread carefully.

My sense is that if it is framed as Health and Community Development instead of Education it will be alot less threatening to folks who can be a huge source of friction.

oops It reads "You have to prune old growth to make way for the new." Should read "we have to prune..."

My reference to Lancaster was actually " in terms of demand and educational output" in the present society. Yeah, we have to prune old growth which is one of the essence of this site too.

2me is brilliance for you to say "folks who can be a huge source of friction". I also thought about it before. you are right.
Sure we can go with "Health and Community Development" -2me this is perfect.

that gives me the idea that it would be good to frame the edu convo in the States in a similar way. Here the teachers at the btoom of the pyramid say, We can't do anything cause it's a poor community. Both the Harlem Children's Zone and a program I read about in LA have adopted that approach.

Hmmmm