Author Archives: Kay Alexander

About Kay Alexander

Co-Founder of the E-Teachers Academy and working with computers for about 18 years. Connected to the cloud with 2400 baud.

How to Create Educational Videos for YouTube

Kirsten talks about the importance of YouTube for online teachers a lot these days. Of course not everyone of you will feel comfortable in front of a camera or maybe you simply don’t know how to start, e.g. what tools you might need to create a video.

Well, the good news is that YouTube recently partnered with three video creating tools which make it really easy even for absolute beginners in video editing or animation to create stunning videos. The bad news, there are no excuses anymore to not start an education series on YouTube.

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Monday Roundup: authorSTREAM, Livemocha and Le Camping

As the boss is in Paris today to learn first hand how to get super rich and / or famous on YouTube, I guess it is up to me to share some interesting bits that landed in our inbox last week.

Today’s MRU is about the new authorStream which wants to take on Slideshare, the polished Livemocha navigation and some interesting edu startups that came out of LeCamping in Paris.
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Smarthistory – Multi Media Web Book about Art and History

In the 80s and early 90s we had a show on German television with the title “1000 Meisterwerke” – 1000 masterpieces. Every episode was about 10 minutes long and about a certain masterpiece in one of the big museums across the globe, may it be a painting or sculpture.

Back then the so called “Bildungsauftrag” – the educational mandate – that the state owned TV stations still have today was clearly noticeable. With the rise of ad financed private TV we unfortunately lost a lot of those formats.

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Lingueo launches Language Exchange Network PolyglotParty.com

Lingueo, the Paris based marketplace for online language lessons launched a new website although the actual format is around for quite some time already.

PolyglotParty.com is the new home of the very successful offline event with the same name that takes place once a month at a changing location in Paris and is hosted by the Lingueo team.

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Zipcast – One Click Web Conference based on SlideShare

The popular presentation and document sharing service SlideShare launched an instant web conference feature based on the SlideShare platform and the VoIP service tokbox. It’s called Zipcast.

From now on you can turn every public presentation on SlideShare into a web meeting with a click of a button and invite up to 5000 people to join via Facebook or Twitter.

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app:ed #2 – VocabSushi

This is a demonstration of the new VocabSushi iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad app by Jeff Novich.

He did this demo during an EDUKWEST interview and it gives you a great overview on the functionalities of this stand alone product. You don’t need to be a subscriber to the main VocabSushi offer to use the application.

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ScheduleThing – Take Online Reservations

As edupreneur who is offering live lessons on the internet you need of course a way for your customers to schedule lessons with you.

There are a couple of online schedules out there and today I would like to show you a new one which I think is really easy to set up, you can the look customize and it’s free for small businesses. So, let’s take a look at ScheduleThing.

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nabbber – Let’s learn foreign languages together

nabbber is probably best described as

the Twitter for language learners.

Like on Twitter you follow other people you are interested in and you share short messages. Whereas on Twitter those messages can be about everything, nabbber is build for the exchange of vocabulary.

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TechCrunch Disrupt:ed – Voxy

The next startup in our TechCrunch Disrupt coverage of online education related companies is Voxy. And this time it is actually an online education startup.

Voxy’s slogan is “Learn a language from Life” and they are also defining themselves as an edutainment company, similar to English Attack! as the content is based on entertainment, news and other pieces from “the real life”.

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Run to the Hills or Knowing when it’s Time for a Fallback

Ok, first of all: this is not my usual field of writing on this blog. But as the boss is in Luxembourg, poking a bit our friends in academia and I saw and interesting discussion on tutors, teachers and income going on in the blog post on Lingueo, I would like to say one or two things about this.

Note: I served for four years in the army and therefore I will use some military jargon to make my points clear, so please bear with me. ;)

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TechCrunch Disrupt:ed – Storify

TechCrunch Disrupt, formerly known as TechCrunch 50, is always a great source for seeing awesome products for the first time. Startups are presenting / launching their product at the event and fight to win the TechCrunch Disrupt Cup plus a $50k prize.

I would like to focus on the startups that I think could be either an interesting addition to online teaching / education or even have the power to change the market.

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YouTubeSocial – Watch Videos simultaneously with your Students

I just came across this nifty service on TechCrunch and thought I should share this with you as I think there are some interesting possibilities to use this in online education.

YouTubeSocial is a service that enables you and your friends to watch any video on YouTube simultaneously and you can even chat with them whilst watching the clip.

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R:ED August 15th to August 21st 2010

  1. Chegg’s First Acquisition: CourseRank
  2. Invideous adds ‘social playhead’ to its video monetization platform
  3. Are Your Facebook And Twitter Friends Using Other Languages? Try XIHA
  4. Digital Textbook Startup Inkling Scores Sequoia Funding, Publisher Deals
  5. China’s position as an economic superpower may be hampered by the patrimony and poor academic ethics of its universities
  6. Roommates Who Click
  7. As Private Tutoring Booms, Parents Look at the Returns
  8. Looking for Baby Sitters: Foreign Language a Must

#followfriday 08-13-2010 @RosettaStone

I think today’s company needs no further introduction: Rosetta Stone.

Yesterday they announced a new way for their clients to interact with them on Facebook and we will go into more detail about this in another post but let me explain why I think you should follow them on Twitter, especially when you are into languages, of course.

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R:ED August 1st to August 7th 2010

  1. Knewton Brings On Ex-AOLer David Liu As COO
  2. It’s A WinWin, Grou.ps Launches Referral Program For Ning Exiles
  3. Echo Brings Comments To Your Homepage With Real-Time River
  4. Want A Retweet? Be Insightful, Or At Least Link To Someone Who Is
  5. Recurly Raises $1.6 Million To Help Companies Manage Subscription Billing
  6. Apple Is About to Own Your Face
  7. 11 Free Services for Scheduling Social Media Updates
  8. Pulse + Posterous = News Sharing Bliss
  9. How 12 CEOs & Founders are Leveraging Web Video
  10. Social IM Client Digsby Finally Gets Group Chat Support

Predictions of Bill Gates: Information at Your Fingertips 2005

“Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world” – Bill Gates

If I take a look at today’s tweets of people involved in online education, this sentence has been retweeted by basically everyone.

In case you are not familiar with Bill Gates and his “predictions” you should take a look at the video below. It’s one of his famous keynote speeches, in this case “Information at your Fingertips 2005″.

I bet a guy in a black turtle neck took some notes back then – in 1994.

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#followfriday 08-06-2010 @Luludotcom

Time for a new category inspired by the fine folks at Seattle 2.0. Each Friday, I will pick an education related Twitter account of either an individual or a company / institution in the education 2.0 space.

This way I hope to help building up your personal learning network (PLN) but of course with an entrepreneurial twist from time to time.

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Every Teacher Needs a Home – Profiles are Dorm Rooms

You need to have a home, a place you can refer people to when they are searching for your services.

And every home is better than just a profile on no matter what platform. Referring someone to your profile is like inviting a client to your dorm room in college. Not appropriate if you plan to really sign a deal.

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Three Reasons Why You Should Start Creating Content Today

Content is King. I think you heard this wisdom sometime, somewhere already. Maybe even on this blog.

Content is King for many reasons but today we will take a look at the three top reasons why you as an online teacher should start creating content right now, well, after reading this post hopefully.

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