At least 1/3 of US teens owns an iPod. Katy Perry (currently #1 in iTunes downloads) is a terrific entertainer, but what if iKids were mixing it up with educational music on the go? Hearing great beats mixed with scientific and mathematical terminology could make an impact on the US drop out rate which hovers at 30%. Parents that can’t afford iPods may benefit their child’s e-learning with less expensive .mp3 players purchased from overstock.com.
Leveraging technology is a great way to innovate teaching as teens spend 72 hours a week accessing electronic media. It’s also cheap. The government launched a $260M STEM campaign with the private sector and we’re already spending $529B directly on our K-12′ers. By comparison, the price of an .mp3 digital download which a single teacher can repeatedly share with hundreds of students is only $0.99.
In-class blogs complete with targeted on-line sharing are free, along with hundreds of state of the art web apps which can be implemented into virtually any kind of classroom lesson. Digital textbooks are slowly replacing paper dinosaurs with open sourcing. All enable low cost mobile e-learning. So why $10,041 per pupil?
