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The Computer Ate My Homework
Distance learning via website
By ERIC ELLIS
February 17, 2000
Web posted at 11:40 a.m. Hong Kong time, 10:40 p.m. EST
One of the biggest areas of interest, and e-commerce, for the Asian Netizen is shopping for books, CDs and shares, right? Wrong. You've just inadvertently applied the information you've gleaned about Net commerce--correction, American Net commerce--and applied it to an Asian model.
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But the Internet is not McDonald's. Just because Asia's got Starbucks and five of the top 10 busiest "Golden Arches" in the world are here, it doesn't necessarily mean citizens of the region are logging on to buy the latest Butthole Surfers CD.
After an intensive year trawling the emerging Asian e-commerce market, research group Boston Consulting have deduced that Asian consumers are particularly interested in education-oriented sites. So it turns out that the commercial emphasis of the New Economy is remarkably like the habits of the old--as any casual visit to universities in middle America, Australia and Canada will testify.
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Boston also found a distinct lack of Asian sites catering to the regional education market. That surprises me. Asians are usually so nimble at spotting market opportunities--and this one is a biggie. Asian parents seemingly have endless pockets when it comes to providing excellent education for their kids, spending more than $20 billion annually to send their kids to school all over the world.
And the evidence of that spending in recent decades is emerging today. In my anecdotal experience, four out of five Asian Internet start-ups are manned by foreign-educated Asians. As Lai Kok-fung of Singapore-based BuzzCity.com told me recently, "I started really learning when I went to an American university." Harsh words and probably an indictment of the caliber of Asia schools, where independent thinking hasn't always been encouraged--for a lot of other reasons more to do with politics than education.
In the past, good foreign education has been expensive for Asian families, not to mention also posing cultural difficulties. A squeaky-clean, naive 17-year-old Malaysian often comes back a world-weary (and maybe even pot-smoking) 22-year-old Canadian. Sometimes they don't come back at all. Singapore, for one, is continually pleading with its posse of foreign students to return, one factor in the creeping liberalization of that republic to make it more alluring to its highly trained expatriates.
But the emergence of online education now means parents can avail of world-class educational resources without mortgaging the family business. Australia is a forum to watch here. One Net site to keep an eye on in Australia is Worldschool.com. It's a start-up conceived and designed by savvy Australian teachers and is primed for launch next month. Initially it will be Australia-oriented but there are plans to roll out models to cater to local audiences.
Distance learning has been around in Oz for decades. If you were a family stuck in the Outback, with the nearest school 500 km away, the answer was obvious: you got on the shortwave radio and plugged into the world-famous School of the Air. You'd do your lessons on the radio and teachers flying their own light aircraft would swing by the cattle stations for exams and tutorials. Thousands of Aussie kids received good educations this way. The Net simply takes that old tradition, and energizes it into the 21st century ... for everyone.
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