It seems that the X-Prize foundation - if you've never heard of them, they're the ones who enabled this - is going to be endowing a prize for education. Via the Speculist, who overheard it at the Singularity Summit,
This is an interesting direction for engineering contests to take. Spaceships and cars that drive themselves are one thing, but trying to redesign how kids are taught ... that could be revolutionary. I have no doubt that we already possess the tools to turn every school into a genius factory by turn of the century standards; the problem is, the tools are still so new we're still floundering around trying to find a way to use them. An educational X-Prize could be just thing to focus people's minds.
Over Lunch, we saw a presentation from Michael Lindsay of the X Prize Foundation. The Foundation is considering doing a prize for education. They're looking at starting out by measuring Algebra, Reading Comprehension, and Second Language acquisition. Lindsay's intent was to gather feedback from the Singularity Summit crowd. There was a good deal of push-back, particularly concerning the fact that the Foundation plans to use standardized tests to measure the results. It will be interesting to see whether an X-Prize for education ever materializes.
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