Graham Glass, etc.

Citizen Glass, Part 2

This is part 2 of a series; part 1 is here.

The process of upgrading from my permanent resident card (which means you can live/work/pay tax in the US but you can't vote) to full citizenship has taken about a year. Here are the steps:

1. File an initial application.
2. Three months later, they fingerprint you and run an FBI background check.
3. Four months later, you take an interview.
4. Four months later, you partake in an oath cermony and become a citizen.

It's a slow process, but the individual steps are quite quick. I highly recommend using a lawyer; it doesn't cost much and they can help you avoid various stumbling blocks. The interview was a bit strange; they ask you questions like "have you ever committed a crime that went undetected?" This must be some kind of idiot test; anyone who answers yes should be immediately rejected for being a moron! The written test was easy; you only have to get 6 out of 10 questions right, and the 10 questions are chosen from a set of 100 questions that are available online.

My oath ceremony is tomorrow morning; I'm interested to see what it's like.

A New Constitution, Part 9

This is part 9 of the series; part 8 is here.

In the last part of this series, I used the website Kiva as an example of how to use the Internet to efficiently get charity to the needy. In this part, I describe a more sophisticated version that could be used to enable a wide variety of charitable giving, including education and healthcare for low-income families.

As I mentioned previously, I don't think the government is efficient at providing social services such as education and healthcare; I would prefer that people gave charity directly. Here's one way this could be achieved.

Imagine a web site called, say, charity 2.0. Any person or organization can visit the site and register a request for funds; either a loan or an outright donation. They describe their situation and its urgency, their geographic location, how they would use the funds wisely, and maybe upload some pictures.

Some examples:

1. a high school could request funds to educate 20 local low-income children
2. a low-income family could request funds for medical insurance
3. an animal lover could request funds to provide foster care for some young raccoons
4. a teacher could request funds to take some children on a special field trip

A visitor to the site can browse fund requests by location, subject, amount, urgency, and various other parameters. For example, I could look for opportunities to fund education for local low-income kids, or to fund urgent medical needs under $500. A Google maps integration could easily display funding requests in my area.

A community rating system like Rapleaf could provide some basic cross-checking on the integrity of the requests; trusting that your money is not going to waste is definitely a concern. But let's face it, a ton of money is wasted already in government welfare schemes, so it doesn't have to be perfect to be a whole lot better than what we currently have.

One of the goals of the system is to allow people to fully enjoy the natural act of helping others, even if they're not known to them personally. This is one thing that Kiva does very well. When you fund a recipient, you can decide whether it's anonymous or in your name. Similarly, the recipient has the chance to post thank you notes and updates on their progress so that the givers can enjoy the results of their donation.

What about the history of giving and receiving? The history of a person's reception of money is always public. The history of a person's giving is public by default, but can be turned off by the giver. The idea here is that people can be rightfully proud to have helped others, and although I don't like the idea of people boasting about how much they've given, I do like the idea that they can leave a quiet record of their good nature. This encourages people to "put their money where their mouth is". If someone bitches all day long about how poor people need better education, I can log in and see if they're actively doing something about it. If not, I'll put them on the spot and ask them why. A gentle social pressure can work wonders!

It's interesting to note that a system like this was simply not possible until very recently. So perhaps the concept of government welfare made sense in the absence of the Internet, but I think there are better ways available to us now.

The next part of this series is here.

Thoughts on Education, Part 1

One of my heroes, Richard Feynman, told some great stories about how his Dad educated him.

Specifically, his Dad emphasized experimentation and observation over rote memorization. For example, when Richard and his Dad walked in the woods, Richard would ask him the names of the various birds. His Dad replied that he could teach him the names of the birds in 10 different languages, but that wouldn't teach Richard anything about the deeper issues of how they fly, why they sing, and when they migrate. Richard took this to heart, and spent far more time from then on exploring the essence of things rather than the labels we give them.

On a related note, one of the common criticisms of most education systems is that they emphasize rote memorization over problem solving. I agree with that viewpoint, and believe that one of the reasons for this situation is that it's so much easier for teachers to teach that way than to truly challenge the students with real and relevant problems.

But in some respects, I think that problem finding is even more important then problem solving. If you look at entrepreneurs and businesses, they succeed by first identifying an opportunity (problem finding), then translating it into a series of problems to be solved, and finally applying the appropriate talent. So ultimately what drives business is the indentification of opportunity; problem solving comes later.

OPPORTUNITIES -> PROBLEMS -> SOLUTIONS

So I think that one of the earliest things that kids should be encouraged to do is to look for opportunities. That way, they're motivated to learn how to problem solve.

One example from my own life was when I was a 5 year old at an English kindergarten. At lunchtime, the school did not have any good candies for us to eat. I asked a teacher how we could get candies to buy, and she encouraged me to come up a solution. In this case, the solution was for me to get my parents to buy some candies in bulk and I was given permission to sell them at the school for a small profit! Heh.

I can imagine several ways to introduce opportunity-first learning; EDU 2.0 is my vehicle for experimenting with these ideas.

History Factoid: Science can Kill

Francis Bacon is best known as the leading proponent of "observation and experimentation" which now forms the backbone of the scientific method. Unfortunately, when he tried an experiment to preserve a chicken with snow, he contracted pneumonia and died. Oops!

Homework

Here's an interesting thread on reddit about homework. I'm working on my "unified theory of learning" right now, so I find this kind of discussion very useful.

A New Constitution, Part 8

This is part 8 of the series; part 7 is here.

In the last part of this series I proposed that instead of the government helping poor people via welfare, the community could do a better job via charity. Before I describe a specific mechanism for doing this, here are some thoughts on welfare and charity:

Welfare

• not an act of free will, since the money is taken from you via tax
• inefficient; the government is an intermediary with a monopoly
• the recipients don't know who to thank and so usually don't thank anyone
• the givers don't know who got what and so don't receive any thanks
• influenced my government ideologies that you may or may not agree with

Charity

• an act of free will
• giver can choose to fund only organizations that are efficient and accountable
• recipients can sometimes thank the givers directly
• givers can sometimes see the receivers directly
• joyful; giver can donate to causes that align with their belief system

From an emotional perspective, I have found donating to charities to be a very enjoyable and satisfying experience. This is no surprise, since I'm helping organizations that directly support my value system and I receive regular reports on how my money is being spent. In addition, I'm free to change the organizations that I support based on new information or a change in my values.

On the flip side, I get no enjoyment from my tax money that is spent anonymously on my behalf for things that I either don't know about or disagree with. For example, it annoys me that the US government spends hundreds of millions of dollars funding abstinence-only programs that have been shown to be both ineffective and misleading.

My idea for a better and realistic alternative to government welfare was inspired by a micro-loan site called Kiva. This company lets you learn about people in developing countries who are looking for small loans for their small business.

For example, here's some background on Peter Okalang of Uganda who would like to borrow $500 for his chemical business. If you like what you see, you can lend him a small amount of money and he'll try hard to pay you back within the specified time period. (I liked him and lent him $100; it felt good to help a hard working guy halfway around the world.) The system tracks the repayment histories of loan recipients, and the amounts are small enough that even if you lose the money, it's not a big deal.

The next part of this series will build upon the Kiva idea and describe a site for managing charitable donations on a nationwide scale.

Citizen Glass

On August 31st I will become a citizen of the United States of America. I've always felt a strong connection with the US because of its entrepreneurial spirit, so I decided to take the plunge and upgrade my permanent resident status to full-blown citizenship.

My political views are very much aligned with those of the founding fathers, but sadly the country seems to have strayed from its original ideals. So when I vow allegiance to the US, it will be to its founding principles and not to some of the bullshit that's going on right now.

In the next part of this series, I describe the steps I have taken to become a citizen.

New Venture, Part 12

This is part 12 of the series; part 11 is here.

We launched an early private beta of EDU 2.0 two weeks ago and so far it has gone very smoothly; the initial feedback has been positive and no nasty bugs have surfaced.

The next step is to migrate to a professional web design, move the system from our office server to a clustered and hosted environment, and add a few more key features. We hope to complete these tasks in about 4-6 weeks, at which point we'll launch a public beta. In the meantime, we're also releasing previews of future features via EDU 2.0 Labs.

It's a busy time, but a lot of fun! I'm most looking forward to working on some cool non-traditional ways to teach kids.

US Open Tennis

I don't watch TV at all, with one exception: epic tennis. Today is the start of the US Open Tennis tournament, and I'm hoping for another Federer vs. Nadal final.

I watched the last Wimbledon final between these two lying on my unfurnished living room floor; this time I look forward to viewing it on my super-comfortable couch.

EDU 2.0 Labs

We just introduced EDU 2.0 Labs, a place that showcases new features under development but not ready for prime time. The first previewed feature is deep support for curricula.

The idea is that educational materials can be associated with the knowledge and skills that they teach/test, which in turn can be associated with one or more curricula. Once these relationships are in place, you can do interesting and powerful analyses such as:

• tracking a student's progress relative to a particular curriculum
• comparing the knowledge/skills required by various curricula
• generating new curricula dynamically based on student interests

The site includes a simple mockup that associates a few education materials with some knowledge and skills required by the Californian and UK curricula. We have many enhancements planned for this particular feature, but we thought we'd get an early prototype up and running in order to solicit some feedback.