Hacking Education


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Originally uploaded by USV.

Union Square Ventures is a true partnership and I am fortunate to work with some very bright people. My founding partner Brad Burnham is in many ways the complete opposite of me. And the story of our two hacking education posts is a great example of how we work.

Two months ago, we convened a fantastic group of educators, entrepreneurs, and researchers to talk about "hacking education". I blogged about the event on the subway home that night.

Two months later, Brad has posted the definitive take on the event on the Union Square Ventures blog.

I'm all about expediency and the moment. Brad is thoughtful, takes his time, and gets it right. And he really nailed it with his hacking education post.

If you really want to drill down into the event, you can also read the transcript which is online here.

This is an important topic and I am sure you'll be hearing more from us on it.

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#hacking education#VC & Technology

Comments (Archived):

  1. kirklove

    Incredibly thought-provoking stuff. I’m glad I found your blog. Hope to find time to read through the transcripts. Thanks for sharing and kudos to Brad on an insightful summation. USV should be commended.Related to USV, about a week or so back, I emailed you some USV spec branding – completely gratis of course, because well I felt it could use some TLC. Perhaps you didn’t see it, been busy stuffing yourself in Montreal 😉 or it fell into the ether due to your recent email woes. In any event I’d be happy to send it to you again if you are interested. Let me know. Keep up the great work and keep posting great songs too while you’re at it.PS: Good luck with your presentation today. Enjoyed that as well.

    1. Eric Friedman

      Feel free to send it my way to eric@ and I will take a look.

  2. Guest

    are you familiar with steve barr? he’s out here in los angeles and he’s essentially attempting a hostile takeover of the los angeles unified school district. he’s apparently had enough success that the obama administration is thinking about setting aside a slice of the stimulus pie to implement his model across the country. he was profiled in last week’s new yorker. the link is here: http://tinyurl.com/dnxxnk. (if you’re not a subscriber you might not be able to view the whole article; but if you’re interested i can pass it along)

    1. fredwilson

      No but I’ll check it out. Sounds awesome

  3. Lincoln Nguyen

    Awesome. I’ll retweet this. I know some entrepreneurs including myself that could use this

  4. Donna Larson

    I’ve been in education for 20 years and it moves at the speed of a turtle on sleeping pills. Teaching technology to first year college students still isn’t what it could be. Disrupting the process is one of my main goals with a better process being the sought outcome. However, there are still many people who can’t even begin to operate that hardware much less learn from the great ideas in my head for software that teaches accelerated learning. So my question is who can I collaborate with to solve the real issues. I’m on the inside, and feeling all alone in my quest.

    1. fredwilson

      ‘Turtles on sleeping pills’. That’s a great one. I’m gonna use it if you don’t mind

  5. twakefield

    I ran across a company called Grockit, recently. They have some interesting thoughts on this subject. Here’s an article about them on PBS.org, http://bit.ly/3Xz9a.

    1. fredwilson

      Thanks for the link