brian buser August 27, 2009
Wouldn’t we all love to know? To uncover the answers we have submitted a panel to the SXSW 2010 Interactive Conference in Austin, TX. Grockit CEO, Farb Nivi, will lead a discussion with a distinguished group of education and technology experts that answers questions such as; how advances in technology will make the current educational system obsolete; how game mechanics used in educational technology can make learning fun; why the best way to learn is from each other.
Sounds interesting, right? To help make the panel become reality, cast your vote with the SXSX panel picker. Thanks, we hope to see you at the conference!
farbood nivi August 17, 2009
Problems are everywhere. They are in the middle east and they are on your SAT. You can have problems with your parents and you can have problems with your latte. Like a table is a system of atoms, life is a system of problems. How to deal with all these problems? Let’s get some vocabulary practice as we examine the different ways to deal with problems.
Absolve – You can absolve yourself of your problems. This means that you basically ignore the problem thinking/hoping that it will just go away. Parents do this with their kids all the time.
Resolve – You can resolve your problems. This means to apply past experience from a similar situation to your current situation. This is the primary way of dealing with problems that you’re taught in school. You resolve a new math problem by applying your experience from previous similar math problems. This is also how you’re tested in school. This is also probably as far as our cat friend is going to get.
Solve – You can apply analysis and the scientific method to help solve your problems. You essentially engineer a solution that is better than the situation brought about by your problem. This allows you to optimize your system whether it’s dealing with international politics or factory efficiency. The teaching of analysis and problem solving has traditionally happened more during University than during the K-12 years.
Dissolve – This is a method of dealing with problems that is not often taught in school and as such is often not applied in the business world or life in general. Dissolving your problems means that you eliminate them all together. Design is the process used to eliminate problems. Russell Ackoff has a great example of this. He tells about how the Ohio Match Company dissolved its problem of being sued by people who burned themselves when they accidentally lit the whole pack of matches when they struck a match against the abrasive strip which, at the time, was on the front of the pack. In the story, Ackoff tells of how a teenager offered a cost-less solution to their problem and upon signing a contract that would pay him if his solution worked he simply said ‘Put the abrasive strip on the back’. As simple as this story is, and it certainly seems more obvious as we’ve all grown up in a world with match packs designed like this, it illustrates how a simple design change can completely eliminate a problem.
Think about how you’re dealing with your problems and which approach will get you the best result.
If you have more examples of these four different ways of dealing with problems, please leave a comment!
*Much of this post is paraphrased from a great talk given by Russell Ackoff.
Ari Bader-Natal August 13, 2009
We were lucky to have Angela Tombari join us for the summer as part of the Grockit Graduate Research Internship program. Angela is in the doctoral program in educational psychology at the University of Kentucky, with interests including Item Response Theory (specifically Rasch Models), statistics, and one-to-one tutoring. You’ll see evidence of Angela’s work in several parts of Grockit now and over the next few months: Diagnostics (individual assessments) will soon be rotated from week to week to create a linking pattern, Quests (individually-tailored practice) are already better targeted based on an improved IRT model, a hundred more challenging GMAT Verbal questions are now online, and personalized skill-review recommendations and GMAT score projections are both on the horizon.
I enjoyed spending the past three months working with Angela. She did a great job, and we’ll all miss her. Thanks for all of your hard work, Angela!
brian buser August 12, 2009
We would like to introduce a talented new addition to our engineering team, Jake Frautschi. Prior to Grockit, Jake worked as an application engineer at Warner Bros. Advanced Digital Services in Burbank, CA. He has a BS in Computer Science at USC. For fun, Jake was a gymnast for 7 years. However, those days came to an abrupt halt when he broke his hand in three places while applying his gymnastics in the park. Now, he snowboards for fun (just not in the park).
Why did Jake come to Grockit? In his own words, “I love San Francisco and am excited to be living here. I got a very good impression of the team here at Grockit during my interviews, as well as the agile process. I really like the project that Grockit is undertaking and want to contribute and learn.”
Welcome to the team Jake!
Jake
