a friend of mine has an education startup that's doing quite well, considering she spends maybe a few hours a month it.
they offer dance lessons, after school at elementary schools, or during the day at preschools. depending on the school, they charge the parents of the children, or they charge the school directly. the money they earn is more than enough to higher dance instructors to teach for them and to pay their overhead.
i'm talking to her about hiring programmers to come in once a week and teach the kids algorithmic thinking - i can imagine a ton of parents who'd be willing to pay $10 a week to help their kids learn to program. if you teach a one hour class five days a week, and each class has 30 kids, that's $1,500 a week.
most of the thinking in this space - especially on getting more people into programming - is way too focused on people in high school and early college. at that point, their impression of programming is mostly set. if you want to really change the world, you've got to start with they're still excited about learning and too young to worry about being cool.
they offer dance lessons, after school at elementary schools, or during the day at preschools. depending on the school, they charge the parents of the children, or they charge the school directly. the money they earn is more than enough to higher dance instructors to teach for them and to pay their overhead.
i'm talking to her about hiring programmers to come in once a week and teach the kids algorithmic thinking - i can imagine a ton of parents who'd be willing to pay $10 a week to help their kids learn to program. if you teach a one hour class five days a week, and each class has 30 kids, that's $1,500 a week.
most of the thinking in this space - especially on getting more people into programming - is way too focused on people in high school and early college. at that point, their impression of programming is mostly set. if you want to really change the world, you've got to start with they're still excited about learning and too young to worry about being cool.