Around the World for $300
Last chance to apply for Hackademic Camp!
I’m back from New York, where I participated in the Hacker Academy Summit—a workshop that Dave Hoover organized focused on how to scale apprenticeship systems. Next week, I go to New York again for a brief stay before I speak at The Big Ideas Conference, hosted at Rutgers University.
Due to the number of applicants we’ve had for the upcoming UnCollege Hackademic Camp, we will be closing the applications on May 15th. If you want to apply, there are just a few days left! But don’t worry—if you can’t make it this time, we will be hosting more camps in the future. Sponsorship slots are closing quickly. If you want to sponsor the Hackademic Camp, email me, dale@uncollege, for details.
We are also working (with Francis Pedraza and Lisa Betts-La Croix) on hosting an education conference in October 2012 and we need a designer for the website. Do you do web design? This is a paid job, and will reach a very influential audience. If you are interested, send your portfolio to dale@uncollege.org.
It was after I lived in France that I made the decision to travel as much as possible in my life for as little as possible. After this week’s link roundup, I have outlined my strategies and tips for flying and traveling as cheaply as possible. I know that money is often a significant barrier for many people who want to travel, and I hope this gives you ideas for how to travel without breaking the bank.
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This week’s link roundup:
Dave Blake argue that “Jailbreaking the degree and making courses the “unit” of education will unlock a flood of unmet demand and a new wave of possibilities in how we learn and consume education.”
Isaac Asimov foreseeing online learning (Video):
Issac Asimov explains how “he can be the sole dictator of what he is going to learn and what he is going to study.”
Bonne Snyder considers “unreasonably high costs and poor job prospects an unacceptable double whammy” in going to university.
(However, I disagree with her conclusion. It’s unlikely that most teenagers—or anyone—can predict and plan for a job market 4 years in advance).
The Intelligence Revolution (Video)
Sebastian Thrun, who quit Stanford to start Udacity, talks about higher education and how he got rid of grades in his courses (@17:30).
Rethinking Motivation in Higher Education
I discuss my trip to Doha, Qatar, where teachers struggle to motivate their students, and I propose methods to cultivate self-motivation in classrooms.
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How to Travel on a Student Budget
I did not grow up with wealthy parents, and when I decided I wanted to go to France, the issue of who would pay for the trip came up. My parents didn’t want to spend their money, and I didn’t have enough in my savings for the $1,000 plane ticket plus travel expenses. So I started my journey to find a way to fly across the pond without actually buying a plane ticket.
Free tickets with miles
I discovered that airline credit cards have generous bonus offers. I signed my mom up for an American Airlines credit card with a 50,000 mileage bonus after the first purchase. The card arrived, we used it, and six weeks later I had 50,000 miles in my account. A round trip flight to Europe was 60,000 miles, so I waited until American was having I mileage sale (where you can buy miles with a 50% bonus) and purchased the remaining 10,000 miles for about $120.
In the end, the ticket to Europe cost me:
$60 credit card annual fee
$120 to buy 10,000 miles
$100 in taxes
$280 for a round trip ticket to anywhere in Europe is a darn good deal.
Cardsfortravel.com has a nice overview of the rewards from different travel credit cards. If you already have points with an airline, it probably makes the most sense to choose their card.
Did you collect your miles for your last trip? If not, you can still claim miles flown within the last year (in most cases).
Airline-specific travel blogs keep track of the best credit card bonuses. One of the best ones right now is the British Airways visa with a 100,000 mile sign up bonus. That’ll get you to Europe, Asia, or almost anywhere else with just the bonus!
Low-cost airlines
If you can’t get a free ticket with points, check out low-cost international airlines like AirAsiaX or Iceland Express.
Iceland Express routinely offers tickets to Europe from the East Coast of the United States for $500 or less. And to boot, you can have a free stopover in Iceland if you want!
AirAsiaX flies routes that are mostly within Asia, but also flies long haul routes in Europe. I have a friend in Paris who often takes AirAsiaX for the 10-hour flight from Paris to Kuala Lumpur—for about $300.
If you’re at a loss of where to go on a tight budget, check outkayak.com/explore. Kayak is the flight comparison engine that searches 100s of online sites to find the best fare. At kayak.com/explore, you can enter your home airport, and then by adjusting your travel budget, see where in the world you can go. You’d be surprised how far $300 can take you if you’re willing to go at off-season.
Tricks
One strategy that frequent flyers use is to “trick” fares. I’ll hold off on the long explanation of why this works and jump right into how is works. When you trick a fare, your stopover is your final destination.
For example, say I want to fly from New York to San Francisco, but flights from JFK to SFO are $500. I begin to look at what flight from New York might connect through San Francisco—Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, to name a few.
Then I discover that the flight to Portland is only $123, so I purchase a ticket for that flight, fly to San Francisco, and never take the flight to Portland.
It’s important to note that this only works with one-way tickets. Any un-flown portions of tickets are grounds for the airline to cancel the rest of your ticket.
Stay for free or cheap
It used to be that hostels were the cheap way for young people to travel around Europe, but not anymore. The Internet has given us new ways to find places to stay for free or cheap.
My number one tip is to ask your friends! Post on Facebook or Twitter that you’re going to Paris and ask if someone knows someone that can put you up for a night or two. Chances are a friend of a friend will be more than willing to put you up for a few nights.
The next place to look is couchsurfing.org. Couchsurfing is a community of people who open their homes—for free—to travelers, in the hopes that each party will learn something about the other culture from the interaction. This may sound sketchy, but it’s not. Couchsurfing has a feedback system that is extremely safe. I know people who have Couchsurfed for months. I don’t recommend overstaying your welcome, but you’re bound to find someone who is willing to host you for a couple of days.
The last place to look on a tight budget is AirBNB. While AirBNB now hosts many high-class accommodations, their humble beginnings (of the air mattress bed and breakfast) are still widely available. Their website has a simple user interface that allows you to search by price, location, and date.
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I’ve long thought that traveling is one of the best ways to learn. I hope these tips on how to travel cheaply will help you take off on your next adventure!
Keep on hacking,
Dale
Rethinking Motivation in Education
I often use this picture of my parents in pajamas, of one early Christmas morning when I had roused them at 5 a.m. to open gifts, in my talks, joking that this is how my parents looked when I told them I was dropping out of 5th grade. But I couldn’t use this picture when …
Applications for UnCollege Hackademic Camp now open!
I just got home for the weekend. Last week, I was in Stockholm, speaking at SETT. Monday, I fly to Switzerland to speak at the St. Gallen Symposium. And on Saturday, UnCollege Research Apprentice Marlon Paine will be moving to San Francisco to start working fulltime! We’ve been working on a lot of exciting new …
Stop Enslaving Students to Banks
Under current laws in America, amended in 2005 during the Bush administration, student loan debt is not dischargeable in the case of bankruptcy. You can foreclose on your house and have your credit card debt written off, but you can’t get out of paying your student loans. Perhaps that’s because it’s easy for a bank …
Breaking the Monopoly on Higher Education
I’m in Doha, Qatar this week, speaking at the Exploring ICT in Education Conference. The book is officially off to the publisher. At UnCollege, we’re finishing up our new website design and putting together new programs that will be more engaging and community-building than before. But we need your help to push forward. Luckily we …
Dale J. Stephens is a Penguin author, Thiel Fellow, and education activist. He lives in San Francisco, California.