ezLearnz Blog
This is the blog for ezLearnz, a project I've put on hold for now. Feel free to browse/fork/use the code for it here.
The 6-hour workday
This is only tangetially related to ezLearnz, but once ezLearnz is an established company, I’d love to implement this idea:
Everyone works 6 hours on their dayjob, i.e. for what they’re hired, with a 25% smaller salary. For those who have other interests (e.g. wanting to spend more time with their children), their jobs stops at this point (they can always join others later). For the others, there are the projects. All of these projects are voluntary and come from the employees themselves. If the company needs a specific project carried out, it hires people whose primary responsibility is that project; that is, their dayjob. Every project, which can be done using company resources, lasts one quarter, after which it is presented company-wide. At this point, several things happen:
- If the company and the employee both like the project and agree to do so, it becomes “official”, and the company pays the employee a bonus for it; thus buying ownership of the project.
- The employee may decide to continue the project as a startup, or a hobby. In this case, the company takes a certain percent equity depending on the situation and whether the company’s resource will continue being used.
- There is no penalty if the project fails: it is a learning experience, and the employee can continue with something else.
- A project can be worked on any number of people, both within and outside the company.
This work arrangement has several advantages:
- An employee can explore different fields of knowledge by making something, and moving forward with a career in ways that are traditionally impossible or very hard.
- The company retains a start-up-like atmosphere, and grows/diversifies its competencies; becoming a de-facto micro-venture capitalist at the seed stage.
- The company draws top talent, who often prefer freedom and flexibility to financial compensation.
What do you think?
Update: To clarify the idea a bit, the company would take equity only if the employee(s) used company resources to develop the project. If, after a given quarter, the company didn’t like the project, but the employee(s) did, the employee(s) could continue working on their own, not using the company’s resources. In another scenario, if the project was on the verge of succeeding (or had a very good chance to do so), but additional funding was needed, the company could put in funding/introduce to the employee other investors for funding (similar to YC’s Demo Day). In my opinion, for this to work, everything must be done voluntarily and with a consensus on both the company’s and employee’s side.
The next iteration of ezLearnz UI is complete (for now)
Check out these mockups for the next iteration of ezLearnz:
Teacher views:
Student views:
[1] The revision history box is something that I thought would be really neat, but I have no idea how to develop this, so this would be a farther-future feature.
As always, let me know what you think!
What's missing from open courses (hint: grades)
From the article:
“I recognize that — unlike sending video to my computer over the Internet — the marginal cost of giving me a grade is not zero.”
With smart programs being able to grade even essays with single-digit percent accuracy (not to mention multiple choice), this marginal cost does tend toward zero.
The Value of a Textbook
ezLearnz will bring these costs down in the future
There is now a RoR plugin that adds social networking to your site…
Community Engine: A Social Networking Plugin for Ruby on Rails. I will be looking at this to add to ezLearnz… any opinions on it?
Next iteration of ezLearnz
I am starting to create mockups for the next iteration of ezLearnz. See the new lesson view here: http://alpha.ezlearnz.com/lesson-view. I will start adding the elements that have to do with the user: percent completed, grade recieved, etc.
If you have any suggestions or ideas, please let me know.
Interesting Organization
User Stories, Part III
Some time ago, I posted two scenarios for the ezLearnz vision, and promised the actual stories were to follow soon. So, here they are.
Story 1 (learner is part of an educational organisation): at the beginning of the semester, the professor sends a link to the custom “textbook” on ezLearnz that will be used for that semester. The subject contains selected chapters from the textbook publishers (not necessarily from one book) as well as the professor’s own content. The cost to the students is free (that is, it’s part of their tuition), and the university/college pays $25/student/semester. The students have the option to have the customized subject printed into a book for an additional $10 (paperback) or $25 (hardback). In addition to the content, the website allows collaborative note-taking in the form of comments on any part of the lesson or chapter in the given subject, as well as a tight feedback loop to the professor on how well a given lesson part was understood. After the semester, the users’ textbook(s) persist outside the organisation white-label, and are ad-supported (for $50/year pro membership, the user can get rid of the ads). This story would probably work really well for secondary education institutions and corporate training, reasonably well for high schools, and not very well for middle/elementary schools.
Story 2 (independent learner): Andrew decides he wants to build a web app using Ruby on Rails. Only one problem: he knows nothing about programming other than the obligatory one-semester C++ course he took in college. After googling “learn Ruby on Rails”, he clicks on the ezLearnz subject titled “Ruby on Rails 101”, reads through the content, and tries out what he learns in a Ruby-console widget embedded in the lesson, answering questions at the end of each part to test his knowledge. After finishing the subject, Andrew is offered to add more subjects that might interest him to his virtual book bag. He leaves off “Programming 101” off his curriculum, but opts to have ezLearnz include questions from the course in other quizzes that he might take. He adds “Object-Oriented Programming”, “Web App Development”, and “Introduction to Git” (the latter he is taking in a “class” with his co-founder, who is taking “User Interface Design” on ezLearnz, as well as other courses). Later, he might add “Web App Security” and “Web App scaling”, at which point ezLearnz will suggest that he complete the “Developer Certificate” with four more courses. (While the education was free, the signed, accredited certificate and official documentation costs $99.) Andrew decides not to upgrade his account to pro, since he wants to develop his app with the cost being as close to zero as possible. He doesn’t mind the ads, since that’s how he found out about and purchased the e text editor (textmate for windows), and got himself a “Micro” account on GitHub.com free for the first three months.
The new ezLearnz logo makes me happy, and although this might seem like a really trite basis for its quality, it does tell you something about it.
