Qajack : New Learning

We didn’t get Qajack into Techcrunch50, frankly I’m not surprised, we’re too early stage and have yet to meet, greet and hug our application in all it’s really useful video gaming glory. Which means when I had my phone interview with ‘Heather’ from TC central I came across like a rambling English buffoon.

‘Video Q&A meets Poker’ was found wanting, a presentation short of a slideshow for a not-yet-ready-hang-on-a-mo.

Frankly with a baby due I was going to struggle to tell my wife I was about to head out to San Fran only days after the birth to stand in front of a lot of very important mostly Americans replete with Madonna Vogue-esque headset and talk about ‘Qajack’:

‘You mean like stealing a car?’

‘No, Qajack not car jack’

We’re also behind schedule. Chief architect Daniel is a perfectionist, I am a perfectionist about perfectionists and David is excited. This is all good.

I’m also seeing Qajack differently now, which is not to say I won’t totally change my mind in a couple of weeks.

Qajack is a community for information exchange and a game in which dedication and application of knowledge are rewarded. Just like schools.

I am starting to see Qajack as a platform for information exchange and educational engagement.

For example, Joe Blogs in Hull is studying The Tudors, he uses Qajack to pose a question to the community; ‘How many wives did Henry VIII have really?’.

Jose Blogse in Barcelona is also styuding The Tudors and has alerts about all Qajack activity tagged Tudors sent to his inbox. Keen to demonstate his knowledge and impress his teacher he answers, ‘6′.

Joe and Jose’s classmates join in the debate keen to improve their standing within the Qajack community and gain the jackpot allocated to this question.

Joanna Blogberg in New York has been reading up and know’s it’s a trick question.

‘The answer isn’t 6, it’s 4, because two were annulled, thus Henry was not technically married’.

Joanna wins the jackpot and is furthering her position as THE source of information on The Tudors. She’s becomming a trusted voice and with her accumlated Jack rating can also demonstate her applied knowledge to her teachers and peers.

Qajack could enable learning through the use of mobile phones with video cameras. To demonstrate knowledge whilst on a field trip to enable children to learn using the tools they are accustomed with and have ready access to. No new text books or expensive software, just the ability to turn the phone in your pocket into a means of learning.

This is all theory, but a theory I am keen to test. Alistair Briggs, writing at Techcrunch UK bemoans the lack of innovation in the Eduction 2.0 arena and Ken Carroll commenting on the post says this:

‘But perhaps even more fundamental is the nature of online or mobile learning themselves. I’m seeing a lot of people trying to stuff old educational habits into new web 2.0 clothes, but it tends not to work. In the same way you would not film a newspaper and put the contents on TV, learning objects for new media have to be designed for the purpose. I don’t see many start ups who are getting this part right.’

Perhaps a platform not intended for education, but focused on sharing knowledge and earning reputation, born from a gaming background, could be the start-up to radically disrupt eLearning and faciliate a global educational information exchange?

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