Date: 21-03-2023
Author: Dave Mackey
I'd welcome your feedback, criticisms, suggestions, random thoughts, etc. at: https://hachyderm.io/@davidshq/110061286749064902
I'm a big fan of education and thus of educators (aka, teachers). I wanted to take a few minutes to explain how I hope Phoebe will make the lives of educators easier and more enjoyable. Whatever the future holds, my sincere thanks to all of you who are doing great work teaching us - from primary education up through doctorates and beyond.
Let us imagine Suzie is a teacher at a local middle school. Suzie is a particularly dedicated teacher who is always looking for ways to improve their lessons, so they fire up their browser and visit Phoebe.
This lesson will be on whales. Suzie can use Phoebe to search just like any other search engine, they might start with queries like "whales" or "whale lesson plans" or "whale videos", etc. This can be the extent of their interaction with Phoebe and as such they will get solid search results - but there is the opportunity to do so much more.
Suzie knows they will be teaching lessons on whales for years to come. It would be nice if they could customize the search results to highlight those results that are most relevant and useful for them - and Suzie can!
Suzie notices that the first search result is pretty shallow. Suzie hovers over the result and an overlay menu appears. Suzie clicks on the "Hide Result" icon and the result disappears.
The next few results are solid, but not amazing. Then Suzie sees a result that has a video that will really catch the attention of their students. Suzie clicks and drags the result to the top of their personalized results page. Next year they'll be able to find that link again with ease.
Suzie might spend an hour or two doing further queries and personalizing the results. If Suzie has chosen to contribute their customizations to the community, their re-ranking of results will be factored into the future ranking of results for all users.1 Awesome!
The next day Suzie wants to pick up their query on whales again - but they want to explore fresh ground. Suzie types in their query and clicks on the "Unseen Results" tab. The results now exclude all results Suzie has seen before. They are able to explore new resources without needing to page through all the results they've already seen.
Suzie is a high quality educator, as I've mentioned earlier, and their customized results surface some really great resources for other teachers - ones that previously were hidden deep in the bowels of the results - pages 5 or 10 or even 100 (okay, maybe Suzie can be a bit compulsive in their research!).
Suzie receives a share in the income derived from individuals performing this same query.2 It isn't a huge amount but over time as Suzie continues to contribute, their share will grow.
Is it possible that this share could ever be significant? Quora ran a partner program and some of the best partners were earning thousands (USD) per month.
Suzie will continue to receive a share of the income until better results are discovered. If these results are discovered by Suzie, then their income share will continue.
At some point Suzie stands up for their students and loses their job as a result. Boo! Suzie begins looking for a new position and in their spare time continues to perform research and personalize their results. This generates income for Suzie during a difficult time.
When Suzie applies for a new position they include a link to their profile page on Phoebe. This page is similar to one found on StackOverflow/StackExchange sites and provides potential employer's with insight into Suzie's dedication and expertise. It could be just the distinguishing factor Suzie needs to get that next job.
As one can see there are multiple ways in which Phoebe can help educators:
- Personalized, customized search results
- Finding fresh (unseen) results
- Providing extra income
- Providing work during a period of unemployment
- Providing documented expertise to potential employers
The best part about all of this is that educators aren't adding to their workload - instead they are making their workload easier while also helping others in the process.
This is the vision.
I'd welcome your feedback, criticisms, suggestions, random thoughts, etc. at: https://hachyderm.io/@davidshq/110061286749064902
Footnotes
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Please see the article on the Trust Network for more information on how Phoebe will prevent abuse of this feature by spammers. It may also be helpful to note that while Suzie's customizations will be integrated into the ranking, it is the community as a whole's input as well as the usual algorithms that will determine the final ranking. ↩
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Phoebe will avoid integrating ads into the search results. Instead Phoebe will focus on income from a variety of sources including: Brave Attention Tokens (BAT), commercial link submissions (which will undergo a human review process), bounties on specific queries, etc. ↩