Week 3: The Importance of Simplicity

An overarching theme of this week’s readings pertaining to solutions and enablers to deliver basic human needs seems to be the effectiveness of simplicity. From the unconventional creation of a television series inspired by the existing knowledge and passion of the producer to the design of various water purifiers catered specifically to the areas in which they would be used, there is proof that complexity is not a prerequisite for innovation. With a desire to be innovative, outsiders striving to come up with brilliant solutions frequently neglect to identify the true root of the problem they want to solve, resulting in the tendency for the oversight of simple, effective answers.

I believe the idea of simplicity applies to the innovation of both physical products as well as social change, which also reflects on the idea of positive deviance discussed in the “Design Thinking for Social Innovation” reading from last week. By looking within a community to see what is and is not working, the use of existing knowledge and solutions is an advantage. A group of faculty and staff members at CMU did a positive deviance study last year in an attempt to combat student stress culture. Dr. Jon Lloyd, who was the Director of the Surgical Residency Program at the University of Pittsburgh Trauma Center, had successfully used positive deviance to fight the MRSA outbreak in 2004. He proposed the idea that similar positive deviance strategies could be applied as an initiative at CMU. By identifying existing students and practices within the university as “positive deviants”, they hoped to analyze common that would help them create a model for change instead of implementing hypothetical solutions that were likely to face resistance and/or ultimately fail. Designing solutions meant to impact a community based on existing solutions that are already working proved to be a much simpler solution than risking the oversight and improper modeling of the system that occurs from an outside perspective.

I was particularly intrigued by the Child Vision project, particularly the challenge to product the product for approximately $3. In this case, not only is simplicity beneficial, it is also a necessity to make availability of the product feasible for consumers in developing countries. Numerous considerations had to be made in regards to practicality, from developing the Adspecs to be adjustable without an optician to furthering the reach by training school teachers on the use of the product so they can assist their students. If the Child Vision product had completely addressed the problem from the outside instead of using existing stakeholders like the teachers to their advantage, the reach might not have been as far. While it can be effective to approach innovation from the outside, the analysis of the existing practices definitely have the most impact in identifying the ease of simplicity. Stemming from that insight, how does identifying positive deviance with simplicity change the strategy of approaching and actually developing innovations?

Democratizing Education

Out of all the themes in this week's reading list, "Education" is the one that stuck a chord with me. As an international student here at Carnegie Mellon University, ever more sinking in student debt, I couldn't help but wonder if there was a more economical way to access similar type of quality education and learning that I receive here at CMU? Well luckily for us, the answer is yes, accessible and affordable learning is here - Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs)! This article's primary focus is to understand how MOOC's have led the democratization of education?; and tackles a more fundamental question in the process: what does education mean for us as a society?

Education in its earliest and primitive form was enculturation[1]. It helped in the transmission of values and accumulated knowledge over generations in a society. This is why primitively education was limited only to those of a higher social stratum. But as society has become complex over time, education has become more institutionalized, with learning has become more abstracted from practice and has to be distilled. Though this structure made sense in the early days, when accessibility was a very big problem and the world wasn't as connected as it is now. With the incredible modernization of our lives over the last few hundred years, accelerated by technology, one would think these advancements have improved our lives unilaterally in all aspects. But this isn't the case, there are a few sections of our society which have virtually remained unchanged over the years and one of them is education. Education, especially higher education, would seem to be only available to a select few in the higher economic strata of our society. In a world where a majority of governance is a democratic process, it is unclear how an institutionalized mechanism of education still make sense. 

It's counter intuitive to think that we have our education system and institutions to thank for all the advancements we have come to enjoy today, but the system of knowledge propagation hasn't changed a bit over a long period of time except a few facelifts here and there. With the advent of MOOC's in the early 2000's and MIT's open-courseware (MIT-OCW), one could say education and the learning process finally caught up with the times we live in. Progressively over the years, online learning platforms like Khan Academy, Coursera, Udacity, edX, Udemy and Chegg (to name a few) have sprouted up, leading the charge on making education accessible to virtually everyone with a computer and internet connection. The landscape of online education was quickly transformed into a thriving and nourishing environment where students from all around the globe, irrespective of age or economic status, can now collaboratively learn and exercise their mental muscle. The major role that MOOCs have played in progressing the way we learn is to effectively reduce the need for physical classroom and improved matching of tutors to learners. Most MOOC's are essentially centered around the self-paced learning model, which means that we fundamentally address the problem that each student is different in the way they learn and grasp concepts. These qualities of MOOC's have made them the essential tool used in shaping democratized education.

The article by HBR [2] provides a good insight into how modern ed-tech (education technology) has had a positive impact on people. The figures below confirm that MOOCs have actually helped people in certain aspects in their lives. It is important to know that the base line here is that without MOOCs many students from developed countries wouldn't have access to certain types of learning topics.





It is a virtuous cycle, better-educated citizens equal a better workforce to propel the civilization as a whole into the future. To say the least, open source and free-ware based education is here to stay, it is not only going to strengthen the spirit of community as a whole in our society but also improve the value of the human resource at an individual level thus resulting in a more concrete foundation upon which the future of our civilization will be built.

References
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[1]   Marrou, H., Szyliowicz, J. S., Naka, A., Mukerji, S., Chen, T. H., & Shimahara, N. (2017, April 14). Education. Retrieved September 12, 2017,

 https://www.britannica.com/topic/education

[2] Chen ZhenghaoBrandon AlcornGayle ChristensenNicholas ErikssonDaphne KollerEzekiel J. Emanuel. (2017, March 17). Who's Benefiting from MOOCs, and Why. Retrieved September 12, 2017, from https://hbr.org/2015/09/whos-benefiting-from-moocs-and-why

Solutions for Basic Human Needs: Social Innovation vs. Policy Change

People are stranded around the world due to the current refugee crisis. Individuals are unable to make a paid living and the education of children from developing countries is affected by not being able to afford the cost of seeing an eye care specialist. Students from first-generation and underprivileged backgrounds cannot afford tutors. These are only a few of the policy problems around the globe. The three articles I selected from this week’s theme are based on my concentration and interests in domestic policy, specifically education policy, homelessness, and health policy. Access to education, shelter, and health care are innovatively demonstrated by Salman Khan with Khan Academy, by the IKEA Foundation through the solar-powered shelters for refugees, and by Professor Joshua Silver’s self-adjustable eyeglasses. The individuals presented in these articles have revolutionized solutions that are key elements of the global and United State’s political agenda.

I was immediately pleased by the idea that education fell under ‘basic human needs’ for this week’s theme. This may seem obvious; however, during this time in America, citizens are being stripped of basic human necessities. My particular passion in education policy originates from being a first generation student and my experience working with non-profit organizations that target schools with 96% Latino students and 90% of low-income families.

While there is a history behind my passion for public service and education policy, other policy issues are just as intriguing to me. In the Public Policy and International Affairs Program, I studied the intersection of race, health disparities, and Medicaid expansion in in states with the most prevalent health disparities. In a group project, I helped develop and publish Expanding Access, Narrowing Gaps: Health Disparities, Rural Black Populations, and Medicaid Expansion in Georgia. Studying health policy was fascinating, as I began to comprehend that racial disparities connect to not only education policy but also to many other policy issues.

In terms of change in health policy, education policy, or any other sector the first and utmost solution that is pushed forward in academia is policy reform. The research I conducted in regards to Medicaid expansion covered funding in terms of solutions (again, policy changes). It is my first time being exposed to the study of innovation, social innovation, and enterprise. Class lectures, readings, and the study of social innovation, in general, lead me towards hope that social innovation can assess basic human needs. Observing simple innovations presented in the readings that make vast changes and differences around the world has taken a turn on how I visualize reform other than referring to policy reform. In terms of change, however, to what extent is social innovation enough and therefore to what extent should we focus on social innovation as future policy professionals?

                                                     

It's Not Only Developing Countries That Benefit From Adjustable Glasses - We Can Too

Most of the buzz around Professor Joshua Silver’s adjustable glasses is rightfully centered around the benefits that such glasses can do for those in the developing world that do not have access to optometrists and vision care. I would argue that along with this obvious benefit, these glasses also have the potential to critically transform accessibility for low-income families in the United States and can reduce waste by a significant margin.

According to an editorial from Slate[1], the average adult replaces their glasses every 2.2 years. If an adult with vision issues gets their glasses at 18 years old and needs to adjust their glasses every 2.2 years until they are 78 years old, that adult would need to change their prescription 27 times. That is a significant number of lenses and frames that do not need to be replaced when that adult uses adjustable glasses. That of course does not account for fashion changes, but adjustable glasses would considerably cut down on the waste produced by replacing traditional glasses when you get a new prescription.

Another benefit to adjust table glasses is reducing cost for government programs such as Medicaid and costs for families as they often must cover the cost of both lenses and frames, which can become costly very quickly. Medicaid generally does not cover vision care for those over 18 years old, but even for children the cost of replacement prescriptions can be steep. A set of glasses can cost upwards of $200 for children or as little as $50 a pair. In either case, replacing those prescriptions at least once a year (as 71% of parents stated on a poll[2]) can get costly quickly.

Many vision plans provided by employers cover eye exams but not glasses or frames to correct vision. This is important to note because most financially insecure families will use these plans to supplement the cost of vision care if they opt into any vision insurance at all. Adults generally replace their prescriptions every 2.2 years, with glasses costs easily reaching over $400 a pair. This causes a huge financial burden on low-income families and can restrict access to a wide variety of opportunities.

With adjustable glasses, financially insecure persons and families can easily maintain their vision and their optical health at low costs because they would not need to buy new lenses for each prescription. This can help a family maintain their tenuous financial position and help cut the expensive costs of traditional glasses.

With adjustable glasses widely available in developed countries, the world could see a reduction in unnecessary costs – both as waste produced per pair thrown away and as excess financial burden.

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[1] Rastogi, Nina. “Glasses vs. Contact Lenses”. Slate, January 12, 2010, accessed September 12^th, 2017, http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_green_lantern/2010/01/glasses_vs_contact_lenses.html.

[2] Z., Ann. “How Often Do Your Child’s Glasses Prescriptions Change?”. Little Four Eyes, October 20^th, 2009, accessed September 12^th, 2017, https://littlefoureyes.com/2009/10/20/how-often-do-your-childs-glasses-prescriptions-change/.

In this week's selection of readings, I was drawn first and foremost to Michael Noer's article, "One Man, One Computer, 10 Million Students: How Khan Academy is Reinventing Education." I first learned of the Khan Academy three years ago from a middle school teacher, and I was eager to learn about the Academy's founder, development, and future as well as the implications the online school has for students today. After completing the article, I believe the Khan Academy must continually grow more dynamic in its implementation to become a mainstay in the world of education. My post will speak most specifically to the education of students at the upper elementary to high school levels.

Noer painted the picture of the Prussian-style educational landscape Sal Khan entered into with the invention of the Khan Academy. "Those schools were dedicated to teaching citizens the three Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic), with the secondary, more cynical, objective of creating a docile working class accustomed to submitting to authority.1." Though I'm not sure the Khan Academy alone encourages students to be less submissive or more inspired, I do believe it provides scholars today with a unique opportunity to "flip the classroom" and empower their own learning by watching the videos as needed. As well, I think that coupling this online educational tool with other opportunities and resources will push students far beyond the mastery of a specific learning objective.

Providing students with access to the Khan Academy is huge, but to create a more substantial impact I believe teachers and everyone else who plays a regular role in a child's education are the real game-changers. These are the people who will push the Khan Academy beyond other instructional videos or programming of the past.

Noer touches on critics of the Academy and how it compares to these past programs. "In the 1920s, as radio boomed, more than 200 educational stations were formed with the hope "that through the connectivity of radio, a single dazzling teacher could inspire thousands of bored students," as William Bianchi writes in his history of the movement. By 1937 only 38 had survived. The dawn of television spawned similar utopian dreams. Sunrise Semester , a production of CBS and New York University, ran for nearly 25 years starting in 1957 and offered watch-at-home courses for credit. In the 1980s personal computers became common in schools; in the last decade broadband Internet did. None of it helped very much.2." The difference is that when students' classroom teachers use the Khan Academy in regular classroom instruction, it can work as supplementary material to push student comprehension and application of learning objectives forward. Meshing the Khan Academy with students' everyday classroom experience will provide them with more opportunity to achieve the best education possible.

During my time with Teach For America, Khan Academy served as a tool that was used by my fellow teachers to further explain mathematical concepts to their students. Each teacher who employed it directly in class, spoke about nothing more than the benefits it had on their classrooms. The Academy served as an additional resource to support their student's apprehension of a concept, and it had huge impacts overall on the students' benchmark and end-of-year assessments.

The first thing you read when you enter the Khan Academy's website is: "You can learn anything. For free. For everyone. Forever.3." Sal Khan is accomplishing everything he set out to do in making his educational videos accessible, easy to comprehend, and fun. My biggest takeaway from Noer's article was that the potential for Khan's tool are much more far-reaching than I realized. The Khan Academy is serving an incredibly important part in the fight to improve educational outcomes for students worldwide. As its use grows, particularly in classroom environments, the tool will continue providing more students an opportunity to receive the highest quality education possible.

1. Noer, Michael. "One Man, One Computer, 10 Million Students: How Khan Academy Is Reinventing 

     Education." Forbes, 2 Nov. 2012, www.forbes.com/sites/michaelnoer/2012/11/02/ 

     one-man-one-computer-10-million-students-how-khan-academy-is-reinventing-education/4/#3f4518da7a26. 

     Accessed 12 Sept. 2017.

2. Noer, Michael. "One Man, One Computer, 10 Million Students: How Khan Academy Is Reinventing 
     Education." Forbes, 2 Nov. 2012, www.forbes.com/sites/michaelnoer/2012/11/02/ 
     one-man-one-computer-10-million-students-how-khan-academy-is-reinventing-education/4/#3f4518da7a26. 
     Accessed 12 Sept. 2017.


3. Khan Academy. www.khanacademy.org/. Accessed 12 Sept. 2017.

Week 3- Are the six basic needs "mutual supplement"?

After reading the articles, I looked at the theme- “Solutions and Enablers to Deliver Basic Human Needs”. It reminds me the Maslow 's demand theory[1]. I found that health, food and water are belong to the lowest level of demand-Physiological needs. Housing (Shelter) and energy may belong to the second level-safety needs. Education is a self-actualization need. Technology/Information is more like a method/channel instead of a need. But in this digital age, it became a safety need for Millennials generation[2].

I used to think that we should fulfill the lower-level demand first, then we can turn into the higher-level needs. But sometime the fulfilling hierarchy is not one-direction, layer by layer upward. Instead, every time you satisfy a level of needs will more or less supplement other levels of needs. It is more like a multi-direction and cycled system.

The second point I learned from those articles is the importance of technology and energy in satisfying the education needs. I gain a strongly feeling of this assumption during my summer volunteer experience as an online Chinese teacher for kids in Ghana. In July, I volunteered as an online Chinese teacher to teach students in Ghana Chinese. My students are 5 grade kids from an international school in Ghana. It is only a 30-minutes weekly course, but nearly every week I had to wait about 15-30 minutes to secure the internet connection. Even though, our class always paused due to internet failures. Pedro told me that they do not have stable electricity suppliers. Now, after this week’s reading, I plan to recommend the Inye computer tablets[3] to my students. Without the energy and internet infrastructure support, they couldn’t us the fantastic Khan Academy platform as well. In other words, if the energy and technology needs met, children in Ghana would gain a huge benefit by having access to multiple education resources.

I remember, on the first class, they kept asking me questions till the end of the class. I saw the eager to learn from their eyes. As Khan says, “What happens in 50 years? [4]” If we could help the local kids to equip themselves with willing and skills to “Change the World”, they may start from their daily events and the community they are living, leading a change and eventually make a great difference to the country, the world.

Finally, I am so happy that I read many cases about “technology + Education”, such as the Raspberry Pi computers[5], and the Khan Academy. It is true, we are coming to the age when technology is finally poised to disrupt how people learn.

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[1] Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. (n.d.). Retrieved September 11, 2017, from http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=391607

[2] According to the reports and data from the Pew Research Millennial generation are those born after 1980 and the first generation to come of age in the new millennium. Millennials in Adulthood. (2014, March 06). Retrieved September 11, 2017, from http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/03/07/millennials-in-adulthood/

[3] Holland, M., Tucker, I., Mark, M., & Kelly, A. (2012, August 25). Africa innovations: 15 ideas helping to transform a continent. Retrieved September 11, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/aug/26/africa-innovations-transform-continent

[4] Noer, M. (2015, May 15). One Man, One Computer, 10 Million Students: How Khan Academy Is Reinventing Education. Retrieved September 11, 2017, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelnoer/2012/11/02/one-man-one-computer-10-million-students-how-khan-academy-is-reinventing-education/

[5] Hickey, S. (2014, March 09). The Raspberry Pi computer – how a bright British idea took flight. Retrieved September 11, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/09/raspberry-pi-computer-eben-upton-cambridge

To Solve Global Problems, Start With What You Know

This week’s readings showed that many social innovations with global impact started as solutions to much smaller problems. It’s especially interesting that many products that meet basic human needs such as energy and education in the developing world started as answers to problems in the United States. Their creators didn’t set out to solve humanitarian problems on a global scale, but by tackling a problem they saw firsthand in their own lives, they were able to craft a solution with broad application to tackle similar but more pressing issues in the developing world.

The makers of VOTO, for instance, wanted to create a way for backpackers to convert the energy from a campfire into electricity to charge their electronics. While it’s an interesting and useful invention for outdoor enthusiasts in wealthy countries, the initial idea wasn’t a social innovation. However, Point Source Power realized that the product could have a social impact on the many communities in the developing world that use wood stoves for energy.[1]

Khan Academy, a revolutionary educational organization, has a similar backstory. The company developed from the YouTube lessons Salamar Khan created to help his cousin with algebra into a way to provide a free, high-quality education to any student with an internet connection.[2]

These stories suggest that innovative ways to meet basic human needs in the developing world can spring from solutions to smaller problems in wealthy countries. Just because the initial idea isn’t aimed at social impact doesn’t mean that it can’t turn into a social innovation, just like VOTO and Khan Academy. This process allows the innovator to start small with a problem that he or she is very familiar with, such as needing to charge a phone on a multi-day camping trip, and later apply their innovation to a more pressing social problem.

The innovator doesn’t even need to be the one to realize the potential social impact of his or her creation. Khan Academy, for instance, became a global phenomenon partially due to the interest and investment of Bill Gates, who used the videos to teach his own children.[3] While many successful social innovations were tailored to the developing world from the start, it’s also worth asking what inventions in the developed world might have the potential for broader social impact in poor communities around the globe.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURHTER READING:

Howard Husock, Reclaiming The American Dream VI: The (Other) Lessons of Khan Academy, Forbes.com, October 28, 2014

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[1] Stomberg, Joseph, “Five Innovative Technologies that Bring Energy to the Developing World.” Smithsonian, May 2, 2013, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/five-innovative-technologies-that-bring-energy-to-the-developing-world-49271677/?no-ist.

[2] Noer, Michael, "One Man, One Computer, 10 Million Students: How Khan Academy Is Reinventing Education," Forbes.com, November 2, 2012, https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelnoer/2012/11/02/one-man-one-computer-10-million-students-how-khan-academy-is-reinventing-education/4/#7dafff587a26.
[3] Husock, Howard, “Reclaiming The American Dream VI: The (Other) Lessons of Khan Academy,” Forbes.com, October 28, 2014, https://www.forbes.com/sites/howardhusock/2014/10/28/reclaiming-the-american-dream-vi-the-other-lessons-of-khan-academy/#2b527f062159.