How Young Are You? The Role of Age in the EdTech Era
A few days ago, I was demoing the room2learn product to the principal of an award-winning architecture firm — let’s call him Gerry. When I finished, Gerry the baby boomer scratched his head and responded, “So… you’re making this thing up as you go, and then plan to make a living off of it?”
I guess that’s one way to interpret Eric Ries. I nodded. “We saw a gap in the market and decided to do something about it.”
While in design school, I met a teacher at a hackathon and decided to tackle the problem of poorly designed learning spaces in public schools. We built a team and spent two years riding an iterative roller coaster, testing and failing time and again to arrive at where we’re at today: building the world’s first visual feedback tool for hundreds of people to help design a learning space.
Our process exemplifies the kind of 21st Century learning that architects like Gerry are asked to and claim to design for. Entrepreneurship requires a heaping spoonful of all four C’s — communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking — to whip something out of nothing. And as the evidence shows, 72% of high-school students today want to start a business someday and 13% of Generation Z (people aged 5 to 20) already own a business.
Yet, this seasoned architect of “innovative” schools couldn’t wrap his head around our little project becoming a viable business. Nor could I blame him. Like most architects, he had spent 20 years in school and decades more apprenticing the craft of school design. The notion that a young person with an idea and a piece of software could make a living, let alone shift an entire industry, might seem preposterous.
While age and experience once served as proxies for effectiveness in the workplace, today you have 19-year-old’s re-configuring the way we work, play, eat, and get around — by writing code from their dorm rooms. These moments have fueled an entire high-tech industry and culture, largely manned by an army of Millennials.
Why does it matter for education?
A fellow Millennial once said, “We consider technology to be the things that come after we’re born.” Today’s newborns start swiping on tablets nearly the moment they exit the womb. Touchscreens and smartphones are not “technology,” but building blocks of of their natural environment. Young people today are growing up with every aspect of life connected and personalized, so the expectation is no different for life in school.
Now try selling that idea to the school principal. In the U.S., the average superintendent is 54 years old and the average principal is 48. These decision-makers certainly see devices as technology. Most of today’s educational leaders grew up in a world without video games and cell phones, let alone smartphones and VR. Ed leaders are largely digital immigrants, yet they decide what, when, and how tech products enter schools. This might start to explain the nationwide STEM skills gap.
To the legacy leaders that are shaping and designing today’s education system for tomorrow: take young entrepreneurs seriously. (It’s certainly the greatest learning journey I’ve experienced.) When you come across a young person with passion and promise, get involved. Act as a mentor, learn from how they see the world and offer up your perspective, no strings attached. I promise the reward will come.
Addressing the Tech Literacy Gap
On the flipside of the same coin, it’s important that young people recognize and take seriously the gap in digital literacy among adults in decision-making power. (Remember Hillary’s IT woes?) How do I use Google Docs? What is Snapchat? What’s the deal with filters? All fair questions, when there’s a new app out every other minute. But let’s face it — it can be embarrassing to admit you don’t know something. Especially when you’re in a position of power.
I remember tinkering with the laser cutter one day back in design school. I got a tap on the shoulder, and was surprised to come nose-to-nose with a senior architecture faculty. (I was in the design research department — the two worlds seldom collide.) He pointed to the machine next to mine and asked, “How do you get the settings to work?” At first I balked. Here was this renowned founder of a high-tech design firm and owner of twenty patents, asking a young grad student for basic help with a laser cutter. Checking my judgment, I showed him the buttons and got the machine whirring.
In the kombucha and craft beer-fueled offices of Silicon Valley, age doesn’t necessarily come with respect. Google even has a diversity program that considers any employee over 40 a “Greygler,” or elder at the company.
My advice to fellow young entrepreneurs is this: know that mentoring and coaching go both ways. Soak in the wisdom that comes with spending more years on this Earth, and step into teaching moments when a mentor could use your help. Learning is a survival skill for life, and recognizing that will help them help you.
“Technology” — whether we see it or not — is already changing the way that we learn to navigate the world. In order to swim ahead of the current, we all need to empathize. Age may be just a number, but that number can be a starting point to understand the context someone grew up in, and the learning gaps they might have.
