Cognician is the brainchild of brothers Barry and Patrick Kayton. According to Barry, 'Users interact with content not in a superficial click and pop-up fashion, but by means of responding to engaging questions which set the agenda for what to think about next. Cognician gives users direct and immediate access to cognitive guidance for creative, innovative, critical, systems and entrepreneurial thinking. In plain-speak: Cognician helps you think about stuff.'
Patrick gives a little more detail. 'Books, podcasts, blog posts, or any source material that offers intellectual guidance can be deployed through Cognician to become highly interactive. Users can access expert thinking at the click of a mouse. This means Cognician has the potential to bridge the cognitive divide in South Africa by making expert intellectual know-how available to anyone with access to a computer.'
We chose Barry and Patrick as scholars for January's GeekRetreat because they seem to be doing just the kind of cutting edge entrepreneurial work that we love seeing in South Africa. And the best thing is that it's aimed at building first class educational methodologies right here in South Africa.
The Kayton brothers will be facilitating a brainstorming workshop at the retreat. Says Barry, 'Participants could submit their own challenges and we can use Cognician to help explore ways to respond to those challenges. This will be as much a learning experience for us as for the participants. It will allow us to test Cognician "in the wild" and how useful it is in a group-based brainstorming context.' Patrick adds that he'd 'like to connect with people who are able to imagine some of the uses we haven't thought of yet.'
Barry and Patrick are also looking to find some inspiration from participants on what they call 'bridging the "cognitive divide".
Asked what is the "cognitive divide", Barry explains that it is 'the gap between the conceptually advantaged (those who accumulate an abundance of conceptual frameworks) and the conceptually impoverished (those who suffer a deficiency of conceptual frameworks). In the 21st century knowledge economy, it stands to reason that building a rich latticework of mental models puts one at a tremendous advantage'.
The Kaytons believe that the reason that digital learning technologies are so exciting is that they hold out the hope – if not the promise – of alternative processes to develop and accumulate intellectual capital in those whose circumstances would otherwise leave them at a disadvantage.
Coming to the GeekRetreat to both facilitate and learn, the Kaytons say that they have no previous experience in creating or marketing a Web 2.0 application but have significant experience in product development, having spent the last ten years creating educational products with a particular focus on mindset change. During this time they have created learning materials for clients such as The Shuttleworth Foundation, The Deutsche Bank Foundation, The South African Institute for Entrepreneurship and UCT's Graduate School of Business.
Having secured venture funding just after they received this award, they have said that they will contribute to the GeekRetreat scholarship fund so that other social entrepreneurs just like them can join the ranks of GeekRetreat fellows.
