Michael Karnjanaprakorn – Transforming Education by Empowering Teaching and Democratizing Learning

May 29, 2012
9:00am - 10:00am PST
By Educator Innovator

Get an in-depth look at how this platform is transforming education by facilitating the exchange of knowledge, and hear what helps drive their community and mission forward.

Key Questions and Comments:

  • (11:52) Is Skillshare’s model something that you want to institutionalize, bring to the education system, and diffuse across the education system? Or is Skillshare more about de-institutionalizing education?
  • (14:18) It seems like if you start teaching a child, from early on, to love to learn, that they seem to carry that through the rest of their life […] How did it feel when you were at South By [Southwest] seeing the kids actually engage with littleBits and were their parents involved or was it just other strangers and kids actually helping them?
  • (18:32) With Skillshare, how do you vet out the good teachers? As Skillshare grows and expands, how do you make sure that the teachers are teaching well and that the students are getting out of it what they expected?
  • (22:22) What’s the actual mechanism for teachers to learn from each other? How do they have access to professional development?
  • (24:54) Because I do work with a mixture of unconventional people and more traditional people that are educators, how do you convince those that are more traditional? Maybe this model makes them a little bit nervous because it’s something totally different. How do you have that conversation?
  • (27:20) We have a few folks asking about the relationship between Skillshare and other types of open-learning sites. Do you see Skillshare moving into those spaces or linking up with other platforms that are serving those different kinds of needs?
  • (29:46) Is Skillshare targeting a specific age group in regards to both teachers and learners? Your community feels more on the “elite side”–are you making efforts in terms of outreach beyond that technically elite kind of crowd? What is your strategy as far as broadening your demographic?
  • (34:30) As you’re expanding to communities that have less socioeconomic privilege […] what happens when those elite modes of education then are transferred onto those communities and they’re asked to “keep up the way we’re learning here, otherwise this isn’t for you either”?
  • (38:14) With MOOCs and open education being somewhat invaded by traditional higher education, how might that affect the Skillshare business model?
  • (40:47) I was curious if Michael ever had a situation where a group needed resources that they couldn’t obtain? How do you overcome a potential lack of access to certain fields or content?
  • (43:20) People in the future should be able to take classes from different schools and combine them together to form that one degree. How do you feel about that and how would you test something like that? How would you know that the people actually learned the material that was given to them?
  • (45:02) Is Skillshare planning to incorporate or encourage the use of badges? Is this one of the ways that Skillshare could contribute to this whole credential question?
  • (50:03) I’m curious to know a little bit more about what the plan/vision is for the physical aspect to grow further. Will every city and town have a Skillshare group? Would organic growth continue or would you push for more outreach in places more aggressively?

View the Conversation
During the broadcast, the conversation also took place on Twitter using the hashtag #connectedlearning.

Guests for this webinar included:

  • Lisa Kurt
  • James Lopez
  • Luka Carfagna
  • Steven Harowitz
  • Michael Karnjanaprakorn:Michael Karnjanaprakorn is the CEO/co-founder of Skillshare, a community marketplace to learn anything from anyone, anywhere. Driven by the belief that learning should be lifelong, meaningful, and accessible, Skillshare empowers anyone to become a teacher and/or learner. Previously, Michael led the product team at Hot Potato, which was acquired by Facebook, and developed products and services that organized the creative world at Behance. Michael is also a Venture Advisor for Collaborative Fund, 2012 TED Fellow, and graduate of the University of Virginia and VCU Brandcenter.
  • Mimi Ito

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