Towards the Demo Day – Things that I've Learned about Learning

As we reach the end of the second cycle of the Accelerator, with the program based this time on Lean Startup principles involving ongoing learning – the question of how learning develops in an age of constant connectivity becomes more acute. What is the influence of technology on learning?

We are all constantly flooded with information, often to the extent that we cannot absorb it all. To cope with this flood of information, we come up with visual solutions, or use short, terse messages, and engage in what some would describe as a superficialization of language and of our ability to look at things in depth. We all experience the culture of Facebook and Twitter, which emphasizes brevity, transience, and sometimes triviality (or even infantility) over length, depth, and significance.

There is no unequivocal answer. But I will share with you some contrary tendencies that MindCET’s entrepreneurs are seeking to create through their products.

Have you thought of how music is written today? How to write notes and melodies in today’s connected world? How does the music develop when there is no intuitive response to the writing of notes? – Or – Can the digital world be enlisted to encourage writing? Writing is a lonely, difficult process – can technology make it easier for the writer, preventing procrastination and encouraging writing in parallel with other writers?

The understanding that technology is an integral part of learning today is significant. Technology isn’t here only to allow experiential learning, or learning through visualization. It changes learning, both for good and for bad. It allows one to reach new frontiers, but at the same time narrows or closes off other directions.

From the second MindCET cycle, I learned how technology promotes depth, complexity, cooperation in the development of a product, and a celebration of diversity.

Thus, the entrepreneurs in MindCET’s second intake will show us, among other things, how technology can assist in allaying fears of mathematics-based subjects, how it can give new meaning to visits to archeological sites, and how it can offer a new architecture of learning based on our variability as learners.

You are invited to an evening of inspiration