Collaborative Learning with Grockit – Podcast

by Jeff Cobb

Grockit CEO Farb Nivi It’s time for another edition of the Radio Free Learning podcast here on Mission to Learn. In this episode, I talk with Farb Nivi, co-founder and CEO of Grockit.

I became intrigued with Grockit quite a while ago when the company was promoting itself as a collaborative, game-driven learning platform. Since that time, Grockit’s focus has turned towards the test preparation market and helping learners prepare, collaboratively, for big standardized tests like the SAT and the GMAT.

In this podcast, I talk with Farb about how the Grockit platform works, his views on teaching and learning, and where Grockit may be headed in the future. If you are interested at all in collaborative learning and adaptive learning systems, this podcast is for you.

One other note – I’ve introduced “Show Notes” with this podcast to help give you an idea of how the conversation flows.

Here’s the MP3 file link (19:24 for content only/25:23 with extended theme music) in case you do not see the audio player below (or, if viewing by e-mail or RSS reader, click through to the original blog post).

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Grockit Podcast Show Notes

01:14 – Farb gives overview of what Grockit does

01:20 – Peers are a resource “left on the table” in most learning environments

01:45 – A million and a half kids take the SAT annually – a great resource to each student is other students

02:36 – System adapts to learners- whether working on their own, with a group, or with an expert. Applies algorithms to optimize environment

03:48 – Learning platform in multiple senses – people go there to learn, but the environment also learns about them and responds

04:22 – Discussion of gaming as a form of learning, starting with “Game mechanics are human mechanics,” just slightly more defined and immediate

06:30 – Discussion of standardized tests. Is Grockit sticking up for them?

08:38 – Discussion of our current educational system – and where it is falling short

09:36 – Teachers used to be facilitators of a design that had students learning from each other

11:35 – When you are forced to teach others, your own learning amplifies quite a bit

12:30 – Reference to the Cluetrain Manifesto. “Markets are conversations” – old idea made new again. Similar phenomenon occurring in education.

13:25 – Farb’s influences – Peter Senge, Edward Tufte, Russell Ackoff, etc. – and background

15:15 – The future vision for Grockit and the collaborative learning platform – beyond test prep

17:07 – Origin of the name Grockit

17:55 – What Farb has learned in building Grockit as a company

19:24 – Roll The Information Age by Anthony Fiumano, available on the Podsafe Music Network

Jeff

P.S. – Interested in collaborative learning? I encourage you to check out 15 Free Online Collaboration Tools and Apps .

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Tagged as: collaboration, Grockit, learning games, Podcasts