Futurewatch: Education

The even bigger challenge is not just content at a particular educational institution, but finding educational video in general. Apple has a head start in that space with iTunes U. But I don’t imagine that you can find 10% of the educational video on the internet within the House of Jobs.

A better video search engine has yet to be built, and there are any number of players who want to get into that game. But good search results alone are not necessarily sufficient for the student or teacher looking for quality educational content.

Here’s a place where academia might be able to take the lead rather than follow. While schools often compete for the best students and teachers, the institutions also subscribe to an ethic of sharing and cooperation. Here there lies an opportunity for schools to come together and find a way to share content by making it more easily indexed, searched, and accessed.

Like the rest of the streaming industry, the year ahead shows no sign of stagnancy for educators. Now is not the time to hesitate; opportunities for a better world of online education lie ahead.