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I met Pooja Sankar two years ago after she founded Piazza, a collaboration platform that facilitates class discussion among students and teachers. Starting with a few students at Stanford, Piazza now is used at top universities such as Stanford and Princeton and MIT and in 25 countries around the world. With $7.5 million in funding from Sequoia Capital and Bessemer Ventures, Sankar, 32, aspires to play a key role in the transformation of education. But before other entrepreneurs get too revolutionary in this field, she thinks we need to reassess technology's role in education. Following an epiphany at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Sankar shares her view in this Guest Post.
两年前，我见过普加·桑卡尔，当时她已创立了促进师生间课堂讨论的协作平台Piazza。起初，这个平台只是在斯坦福大学（Stanford）的一些学生中使用。如今，Piazza已被斯坦福大学、普林斯顿大学（Princeton）以及麻省理工学院（MIT）等顶尖大学所采用，并在全球25个国家得到应用。获得红杉资本（Sequoia Capital）和贝西默风投（Bessemer Ventures）的750万美元融资后，32岁的桑卡尔希望能在教育改革中大展拳脚。但在其他企业家涉足这一极具变革性的领域之前，她认为我们需要重新审视技术在教育中发挥的作用。根据对达沃斯世界经济论坛（the World Economic Forum）的感悟，桑卡尔在本期客座文章中分享了她的观点。
As the founder and CEO of Piazza, I'm used to cheerleading for technology in higher education. But in the midst of an almost utopian optimism about online education that I witnessed in Davos, I found myself playing an unaccustomed role: gadfly.
作为Piazza的创始人兼首席执行官，我习惯于为高等教育中出现的技术摇旗呐喊。在达沃斯目睹了大家对网络教育近乎乌托邦式的乐观后，我发现自已要扮演一个很不习惯的角色：牛虻。
And since returning from Davos, I've distilled my heresies to this: Education is a personal journey, and right now we're offering students an online jumble.
从达沃斯回来后，我一直在酝酿着自己对这个领域的异端邪说：教育是一段个人旅程，而现在我们为学生提供的网络内容却杂乱无章。
I rode into Davos on a spouse's pass, and I'm not to the manner born. I came of age in interior India, where for seven years I didn't talk to a single boy outside my family. Many girls in my town were married off by their parents at 16, some of them barely literate. The reason I got out? My father, an educated man, demanded that I study. He painted a picture of a life that was different from the one I could see just beyond the wall that separated our home from the street. Without that guidance, I would never have gone to IIT, Indian Institute of Technology.
我在得到丈夫的允许后才来到达沃斯，而且我也不是天生就适合这一行。我在印度长大成人，其间有七年时间我从未与家人之外的任何一个男孩子说过话。我们镇上很多女孩子16岁就嫁人了，一些女孩子几乎不怎么识字。我为什么能摆脱这种生活呢？因为，我父亲受过教育，他要求我学习。他为我描绘了一种我从未见过的生活，一种不困囿于高墙大院的生活。如果没有他的指引，我就不可能到印度理工学院（Indian Institute of Technology）求学。
At a session in Davos, Salesforce.com (CRM) CEO Marc Benioff and Sean Parker of Facebook (FB) and Napster fame hosted a roundtable focused on the question, "What's one global change you'd want to see?" Our panel focused on education, and all agreed that online courses showed great potential. The words "disrupt" and "revolutionize" were spoken solemnly and often. Then someone asked me -- as the person at the table least removed from the proverbial mud hut -- whether online education would have broadened my childhood horizons.
在达沃斯论坛上，销售力网络公司（Salesforce.com）首席执行官马克·贝尼奥夫和社交网站Facebook前总裁、音乐交换网站纳普斯特联合创始人肖恩·帕克主持了一次圆桌会议，关注的问题是：“你希望看到怎样一种全球变化？”我们这个座谈小组关注的是教育问题，大家都一致认为网络课程潜力巨大。“颠覆”和“变革”是被人们频频郑重提及的两个词。当时有人问我——因为我至少已经走出了俗话所说的小土屋——网络教育是否本可以开阔我童年时期的视野。
I had to answer, "No." What was really most important in my education was that at key moments, I was able to envision to the next step. And usually I did it with the help of a mentor, or at least someone who'd taken that next step before I had. The journey was personal, but guided. And that, more than access to any particular class or bit of educational content, was what saved me from the fate of early marriage and poverty that befell so many others.
我的回答只能是否定的。回忆我的教育历程，真正重要的是，在许多关键时刻，我能憧憬自己的未来。它往往是得益于良师的帮助，或者至少得到过某个先驱的启发。这就是我的个人经历，好在有过他人的指引。这些指引比上任何特定课程或学习任何教育内容都更为重要，正是这些指引使我摆脱了像许多人那样早早嫁人和陷于贫困的命运。
In the wealthy world, we have an oddly romantic view of students in the global south: If we can just put educational stuff in front of them, they'll devour just as they would eat food if we airdropped it in during a famine.
发达国家的人对第三世界国家的学生有一种奇怪的、不切实际的看法：只要把教育内容摆在他们面前，他们就会像灾荒时期收到空降食物那样饥不择食地吞下去。
That's the dream. The reality is: If online education is going to change outcomes on a global scale, we must think more broadly about students' actual needs. We need to think about their entire educational journey, not just the content or the classes we provide.
这只是梦想。现实是：要使网络教育在全球范围带来变革，我们必须从更广泛的角度考虑学生的切实需求。我们需要考虑他们的整个教育历程，而不仅仅是提供教学内容或学习课程。
Every student needs three things:
每个学生都需要以下三点：
First, the plan. Imagine a child in Africa trying to cobble together an educational plan out of a series of online courses. It's impossible. Consider that Harvard and MIT have pledged $60 million for online education. In addition to building online classes, some of that money should go toward helping students make iterative plans for their education, with help from advisory staff or current students. Who better than Harvard and MIT to help students around the world put together educational plans?
第一，学习计划。试想，身在非洲的一个孩子正想方设法地从一大堆网络课程中胡乱拼凑出一个学习计划。这是不可能完成的。再来看看这个，哈佛大学（Harvard）和麻省理工学院已联手投资6,000万美元推广网络教育。除开设网络课程外，这些资金还将用于帮助学生制订学习计划，由教研人员或现有学生为他们提供咨询建议。这两家学府正通过努力帮助世界各地的学生制订教育计划，试问，还有谁比它们做得更好？
Second, the peer group. If students don't have peers struggling with the same material at the same time, they're likely to feel alienated and hopeless. At Piazza, we see spontaneous peer group formation every time we run large online classes. Online educational software must become more social and immediate and fun. Imagine what a gift it would be to a girl in rural India to connect with other girls studying the same material in other parts of the world.
第二，同龄群体。如果没有同龄群体一起学习、一起奋斗，他们会感到疏离和无望。在Piazza平台，每每开设大班学习课程时，我们总能看到学生们自发组成学习小组。网络教育软件必须越来越社会化、即时化和趣味化。试想，要是印度农村的小女孩能与世界上其他地方的小女孩一起学习同样的内容，那该是怎样的惠益啊。
Third. the mentors. Last fall, I helped create WitsOn, an online community connecting 500 professional women with thousands of college students. Students asked the women questions about how they had managed their lives and careers. Interestingly, we saw many of the professionals eagerly learning from the students, many of whom were more accomplished than they were in certain facets of technology. This suggests a giant network of learners, with mentors and mentees learning simultaneously.
第三，导师。去年秋天，我创建了网络社区WitsOn，为500位职业女性和上千名大学生搭建了沟通的桥梁。学生们踊跃提问，了解如何平衡自己的生活和工作。有趣的是，这些职场女性中有很多人热切地向学生们学习，她们发现很多学生在某些科技领域比她们更有作为。这就是一个庞大的学习者网络。三人行必有我师，大家自发地相互学习。
I'm a big fan of learning online. But we aren't being ambitious enough. If children in the developed world fall off the educational track, giving them computers is not going to help most of them. Education is more than lectures, assignments, and exams. It's a means to envision a different life from the one you're living. Let's give every student a shot at that.
我非常热衷于网络学习。但是，我们的目标不够远大。试想，在发达国家，如果有孩子脱离了教育的轨道，那么对大多数这样的孩子来说，仅为他们提供电脑是不足以帮助他们的。教育不只是听课、作业和考试。教育是憧憬未来、改变现有生存状态的一种方式。就让我们为每个学生都提供一次这样的机会吧。
