Bill Gates' Hopes For Online Learning

If we can handle this perceived need completely within our industry without outside intervention it seems like it will present more of a money making opportunity for a lot more people in our industry. To get this off the ground, I think initially this should be viewed as a new product opportunity for the search providers.

This really might be a case of "If you build it they will come", and if the framework is put in place intelligently, a lot of money can be made quickly from simple add on products.

From the blog: "There is a lot of online material being developed, but it isn’t organized in a way where it is easy to find the best material that fits what you want to do." "We need a simple way of taking all of the education pieces and organizing them and then rating them in context."

I think we are at a point that the internet needs an agreed upon standard specifically for educational material. A standard that developers can use on their finished product to allow it to be considered for special educational indexing.

It seems like this could be most easily accomplished by using a system of appending the file type such as foo.aspe1 for formal educational level 1 material, foo.aspi7 for independent study material level 7, and so forth. The level rating like the e1 and i7 used in the example should be left up to the material developer to decide upon.

By further adding information to the file type, such as foo.aspEGe1, for elementary geometry, the type of material could be easily set forth for indexing. Material such as Cisco Certification Study material or MCSE study material could fall under .aspcee9 for instance, for computer education educational level 9.

It seems like this basic level of information in the file type would be sufficient to handle the gross special indexing of the material, other factors, for instance, Egyptian Prehistory, could be handled through normal search indexing within the special indexing.

A concern with the indexing process will probably be spam and pornography getting into the system. It seems like it would be fairly easy to control the use of the special educational file types by requiring the use of a special educational SSL certificate where the developing/posting party is definitely known to the SSL authority. Rouge SSL authorities (those breaking the indexers rules) could be delisted from the special indexing system. Using a special certificate designation for this purpose, such as SSL2 or SSLE, would probably be the easiest to implement and allow sufficient control by the indexer for delisting purposes.

As far as add on products one thing that comes to mind is profiting from the search providers implementing a system that allows user feedback into the indexing system where searching users can Blend the natural search results with prior user feedback on any number of predefined factors. Users should be able to easily propose new Blend categories into the system for global inclusion.

This Blend in the search results would be to attract users and to allow add on builders to financially capitalize on the fact that there are a number of educational people and parents who have very strong feelings (complaints) one way or the other about the specific content and presentation methods used in the educational material.