Here’s an idea for enterprising web-devs with a lot more free time than me: an online service that manages a person’s ongoing education with contemporary project management tools.
Once signed up to this service, I would like to be able to define educational projects with tasks, milestones, deliverables, etc. against which I can record and monitor my progress. If I specify dependencies and priorities, it can carry out wazzy critical path analysis and tell me what I should be working on and in what order. It can send me encouraging/harassing emails if I don’t update it regularly.
Some use cases:
I have enrolled in a formal course of study such as an undergrad degree. I can specify my subjects, texts, deadlines, tests and the like. It will tell me what I should be studying in what order, what areas I’m neglecting, and what I really need to get done before the coming weekend.
I have recently started a new job, and have a package of technologies and skills to learn. Some are more important than others, or have much longer time horizons. If I have x hours a week to develop these skills, it will tell me what I should be doing with those x hours.
Conversely, I am an employer or educator (or world-saving organisation) who wishes oversight of another person’s study. I can assign them a prefabricated syllabus and observe their progress.
Some things that might fall out of a system like this once the infrastructure is in place:
A community whose members can offer each other high-context support and advice
A lot of useful and interesting data on effective learning routes through various subjects, perhaps powering a recommendation service
I imagine there are enough autodidacts and students on LessWrong to establish a preliminary user base. I for one would happily pay for a service like this.
Ouch, that made my mind come up with a different startup idea, Relationship Management software. Basically it would be a website where you can post updates about your relationship every day, like “Last night we argued for 30 minutes” or “I feel that he’s unusually emotionally distant” or something like that. You would also input your partner’s astrological sign, and so on. And the website would give you an overall prognosis and some sort of bullshit psychological advice, like “Try to be more conscious of your needs in the relationship” or “At this point it’s likely that he’s cheating on you”. And it would show tons of ads for related products and services. I think some people would love it!
For a different sort of person, any sort of quantified self about relationships would be interesting. (I heard that an app exists where you record a happy face or a sad face after every time talking to a long distance partner, and it doesn’t give you any advice. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the name or where I heard of it.)
For a minimal product, perhaps just start with the dependencies and priorities side of things? That seems to be the core of such a product, and the rest is dressing it up for usability.
Here’s an idea for enterprising web-devs with a lot more free time than me: an online service that manages a person’s ongoing education with contemporary project management tools.
Once signed up to this service, I would like to be able to define educational projects with tasks, milestones, deliverables, etc. against which I can record and monitor my progress. If I specify dependencies and priorities, it can carry out wazzy critical path analysis and tell me what I should be working on and in what order. It can send me encouraging/harassing emails if I don’t update it regularly.
Some use cases:
I have enrolled in a formal course of study such as an undergrad degree. I can specify my subjects, texts, deadlines, tests and the like. It will tell me what I should be studying in what order, what areas I’m neglecting, and what I really need to get done before the coming weekend.
I have recently started a new job, and have a package of technologies and skills to learn. Some are more important than others, or have much longer time horizons. If I have x hours a week to develop these skills, it will tell me what I should be doing with those x hours.
Conversely, I am an employer or educator (or world-saving organisation) who wishes oversight of another person’s study. I can assign them a prefabricated syllabus and observe their progress.
Some things that might fall out of a system like this once the infrastructure is in place:
A community whose members can offer each other high-context support and advice
A lot of useful and interesting data on effective learning routes through various subjects, perhaps powering a recommendation service
I imagine there are enough autodidacts and students on LessWrong to establish a preliminary user base. I for one would happily pay for a service like this.
Will add this to my list of ed-tech start-up ideas to validate.
i’m interested in your other ed-tech startup ideas, if you don’t mind sharing.
List of them are here: http://www.quantifiedstartup.net/startup/
Student Relationship Management software? Sounds like a neat idea.
Ouch, that made my mind come up with a different startup idea, Relationship Management software. Basically it would be a website where you can post updates about your relationship every day, like “Last night we argued for 30 minutes” or “I feel that he’s unusually emotionally distant” or something like that. You would also input your partner’s astrological sign, and so on. And the website would give you an overall prognosis and some sort of bullshit psychological advice, like “Try to be more conscious of your needs in the relationship” or “At this point it’s likely that he’s cheating on you”. And it would show tons of ads for related products and services. I think some people would love it!
For a different sort of person, any sort of quantified self about relationships would be interesting. (I heard that an app exists where you record a happy face or a sad face after every time talking to a long distance partner, and it doesn’t give you any advice. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the name or where I heard of it.)
For a minimal product, perhaps just start with the dependencies and priorities side of things? That seems to be the core of such a product, and the rest is dressing it up for usability.