2014款指南者怎么样:为什么谷歌是迄今为止最重要的学习工具发明

传统教育和网络在线教育，那一种模式才能为人们带来更多的受益，颠覆传统的革新将为我们注入更新更有效的提高模式。

Author and education prognosticator Tom Vander Ark on making education more more valuable and more relevant (even in search terms). 

作家兼教育预言家Tom Vander Ark正让教育变得越来越有价值和相互关联（即使出现在搜索关键词中）。

Tom Vander Ark at TedxManhattanBeach. [Image: hermosawave via Flickr]

Tom Vander Ark在曼哈顿。【图像来自网络相册】

Tom Vander Ark is an edu-futurist par excellence. He's chair of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, author of the new Getting Smart: How Personal Digital Learning is Changing the World, and an investor in startup technology and entrepreneurship school General Assembly (see this month's Life in Beta) through his education-focused venture fund Learn Capital. Here, he shares some of his views on the importance of "just-in-time learning" and the "plummeting" value of traditional education.

Tom Vander Ark是教育未来主义者最卓越的代表。他是K-12在线学习国际联盟的主席，新作《成就聪慧：个人数位学习是如何改变世界的》作者，开启科技和通过他的聚焦教育的创业学习基金成就的创业家学派综合汇集（参见本月Beta中的生活篇）。下面他将与我们一起分享“实时学习”的重要性和传统教育价值的“骤然下跌”的一些观点。

FAST COMPANY: What's happening now in the world of education from an investor's perspective?

快速公司：从投资人的角度看，你觉得世界教育如今正发生着什么？

TOM VANDER ARK: The quality of the deal flow is so much better and bigger than when we started three years ago with Learn Capital. The world has exploded since '09. It's a really interesting mixture of powerful applications, development platforms, cheap devices like tablets, and broadband cloud computing.

Tom Vander Ark：交易流的质量比3年前我们刚刚启动学习资金时要更好也更大。2009年开始世界开始“大爆炸”。强有力的应用程序，开发平台，像便签这样的实惠设备和宽频云计算的混合真的非常有趣。

What led you to get so interested in General Assembly as an investment? 

作为投资者，是什么让你对总装如此感兴趣？

Partly it’s a case of just-in-time vs. just-in-case learning. Young people, particularly those involved in a startup, become acutely and instantaneously aware of what they need to know. So their interest is a thousand times higher than it would be in grad school, when you’re usually just trying to finish a degree and get out. It seldom seems to have such relevance to your future life. The interesting thing about GA is the ability to bring both experts and peers to bear on that moment, to organize around that highly focused need to learn. 

在一定程度上，这是实时学习和备用学习的交锋。年轻人，特别是那些在起步阶段的人群，他们突然很强烈意识到他们需要知道些什么了。所以他们的兴趣点比在大学时通常是为了拿到学位证书而走出学校要高一千倍。这样看起来与你未来的生活毫不相干。关于总装很有意思的是，它是一种带给专家还有一般人那种承受那一刻并且组织高度聚焦所需学习的能力。

And this is a general trend in education that you write about in Getting Smart, right?

而且，这是你在《成就聪慧》一书中描写的一种教育风潮，对吧？

I think in general in the industry, the ability to deliver around that need will get much more sophisticated--to find out not only what people need to learn, but to get smarter about how they learn best. So we have a smart learner profile, a motivational profile not only what they need to learn but the best way for them to learn. 

我认为在行业里，向四周传递这种需求会变得格外复杂---因为不但要找出人们需要学什么，还要足够聪明地知道如何他们才能学得更好。所以我们这里有智慧学者文档，一份不但是人们需要学的，也是他们学习的最好方法的文档。

You talk so much about digital learning, but General Assembly is still working mostly on a face-to-face model. How do the two modes best fit together?

你讲到很多数码学习，但是综合汇集仍旧是面对面模式出现。那么，如何让两种模式更好地融合呢？

Since I’m sort of a leading advocate of online learning, you might wonder why I would get jazzed about small classrooms that don’t look very high-tech. But another thing these kids have stumbled into is just the importance of community. I think about their classes as a mixture of experts and a really smart motivated group of peers. We can view this as a pilot project of getting their arms around what people want to learn, how they need to learn, and then I think we can assume that as the community grows, that more and more of it will move online. I get this feeling that it will be a blended experience for many participants for a long time.

因为我是在线呢学习的倡导者，你可能会奇怪为什么我会这种很不高科技的教室感兴趣呢？但是这些孩子们会对团体的重要性产生困惑。我把他们的课程想成是专家和着实聪明受激励群体的混合体。我们可以把它看作是一项试点项目，用他们的胳膊环绕人们想学的东西和他们如何学习，然后我想我们可以假设这一团体逐渐成长，并很可能转移到网络上。我感觉很长时间这将是很多参与者的混杂体验。

You write a lot about the advantages of blended approaches, and in fact, a big 2009 meta-study by the Department of Ed showed that blended or hybrid models beat both online and traditional classroom models. Do you think traditional universities and MBA programs should be scared of innovations like General Assembly? 

你写了许多关于混合方法的优势，而且事实上，一个教育部门做出的2009年中间研究显示混合模式打败了在线模式和传统的教室授课。你有没有想过传统大学教育和MBA课程会害怕诸如综合汇集一类的教育革新吗？

Our calcified system of education is rapidly being enveloped in this new web of informal learning opportunities. Something people take for granted--web search--is probably the most important learning tool ever invented. Big companies have taken advantage of this to change the way they do training and development, but formal education is running a decade behind. The explosion of informal learning opportunities are getting better and better, more and more organized, and there's a growing tension between what happens inside vs. outside formal education.

我们的教育分类体系被迅速包含在这种非常规的学习机会网络中。有些人们认为理所当然的事情，比如网络搜索可能会被认为是最重要的学习工具发明。大公司已经利用这种模式来改变人们培训和完善的方式，但是正统教育已经落后了十年了。信息学习机会的大爆炸变得越来越有利，也越来有序，并且在内部教育和外部教育之间也逐渐出现了愈演愈烈的紧张对抗气氛。

And what about the cost of formal education? Public university tuition was up 8.3% just last year.

正统教育的费用如何？公立大学花费仅去年上涨8.3%。

With these continuing cost increases in higher ed, it's like they’re completely oblivious to the fact that the world has fundamentally changed.

随着高登教育的持续增长，就像我们完全忘记世界发生根本变化这一事实。

The return on higher education, particularly in the second and third tier, has plummeted in the last 36 months. There's a little bit of masking happening with effectively 20% unemployment, but this is going to change faster than most people realize. A lot of people out there are going to go, "Why the heck would I spend $100K when I can get what I want to learn, and how I want to learn it, online?"

高等教育的回归，特别是第二，第三等级的回归，最近36个月内骤然降温。这一点点假象伴随着20%的失业率出现，但是这种现象会比人们意识到的还要快速地变化。这之外的许多人都要投入其中了，“我在网上既可以学到我想学的东西，还可以得到我如何学到这些的信息，为什么我还要花10万美金来学呢，对吧。”