:Michael Anuzis

It’s been about a year since my last post. I’m heading to Beijing tomorrow for an intensive go study program. I understand twitter and facebook are blocked there, so I may post a few updates on this blog again.

For those interested, the go study program I’m enrolled in is 5 hours/day, 6 days/week for 2 months. The primary teachers are 9dan amateurs from Beijing University. Professional go teachers will be joining as well. You can read more about the program at www.experience-go.com

The program lets you choose whether you want to study 4, 5, or 6 days per week. It also lets you choose 1 or 2 months. I thought I’d be among the select few hardcore enough to choose the 6 days/week for 2-months option, but according to one of the coordinators that’s actually the option that most people chose. It sounds like I’ll be among good company with a similar love and intensity for go.

It sounds like they plan on taking us sight seeing for a couple days while we’re there, but I’ve honestly never been much of a tourist so don’t expect many photos.

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S.Korea’s top online math tutor, Woo Hyeong-cheol, makes $4 million/yr via online instruction.
S.Korea’s top online English tutor, Rose Lee, expects to make $7 million/yr via online classes.

Excerpt from Reuters:

Woo is not affiliated with any institution that is part of the official school system, but the 46-year-old math instructor is considered one of the best cram school tutors in education-obsessed South Korea, with his Web-based classes as well-known among test-taking teens as top-rated TV dramas.

“School teachers are concerned about creating moral people. We focus more on getting the students better grades in a short amount of time. That’s why we are needed and popular,” said Woo, who commands a salary higher than almost all of the top baseball players in the country’s professional league.

Woo is among a group of about a dozen instructors raking it in because they are thought to be the best at raising scores.

Reminds me of my ‘06 post ‘The Obsolete Classroom: Rethinking Education in the Information Age’

We’ve still got a long way to go before our education system is efficient, but it’s good to see strides being taken.

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Had an idea this morning for a huge social impact in Africa. To bring you up to speed quickly I’ll summarize three articles as background in 1 sentence each:

1) By late 2010 high-speed internet access will be cheap/affordable across most of Africa: http://www.o3bnetworks.com/press_quickstart.html?mod=2_1571_leftbox

2) Small pockets of people doing SMS messaging to inform farmers of fair market prices are helping to improve the income/economic efficiency of their regions:
http://whiteafrican.com/2008/12/01/tanzanian-farmers-and-their-sms-empowered-market-spy/

3) Ushahidi, an innovative African web startup that “Crowd Sources Crisis Information” has been hugely successful: http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2008/11/11/ushahidis-volunteers-rock/

Imagine a site that crowd-sources fair pricing information – the same info currently exchanged on a small/unorganized scale via SMS messaging. A site as simple as Twitter could be used with success today, but a site designed for the job that tracked pricing information simultaneously across thousands of products would bring market efficiency incredibly fast.

It’ll be amazing to see the explosive pace of innovation coming out of Africa in the next three years.

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