Today was a hard day for the former world champion. Good old printed paper got three heavy upper cuts right on the chin.
Maybe it will get up to stumble a bit around but the new rising champion ebook will finish it soon for sure.
by Jon Sullivan
So, this is the last KirstenWinkler.com of the first decade of the second Millenium (depending on your calendar, of course).
Funny enough it does not feel like this. There is so much to do and do you remember the overhyped New Year’s Eve 1999 / 2000? I have to say, this was my worst New Year’s Eve party ever 
.
Anyway, let me take a short moment to wrap up 2009 and to give you a small outlook on my plans for 2010.
Social Media has changed the way we interact with each other forever. We are living in a totally different world than maybe two years ago and the end of this social shift is not even at sight.
But most of us still behave as if we were living in a world without Social Media and that can be very dangerous.
As I mentioned in my earlier post today about WiZiQ, italki also has some nice new features for its teachers underneath the Christmas tree.
italki has been very busily working on their marketplace recently but the features they launched today are more affecting the overall usability and the booking process on the platform.
Today WiZiQ and italki both announced some very interesting new features to their websites which will be very helpful for teachers who are using those platforms.
WiZiQ is enlarging the possibilities for teachers to monetize on the content they deliver and italki adds some long awaited features like lesson packages to their service which I will cover in a second post.
Just received an email from eduFire as all teachers on the platform, I guess.
As of January 1st, 2010, we are suspending the eduFire SuperPass program. Although we have received good feedback about SuperPass and are excited about its possibilities, we have a need to spend some time working on the SuperPass model as the results were not quite what we had hoped for. [...]
That’s quite big news, I’d say.
Wow, I just saw that I am on the shortlist for the Edublog Awards 2009 in the category “Best new Blog”.
That’s really a big honour so thank you for everyone who nominated me, especially to Andrew Warner of Mixergy my model and inspiration to start with EDUKWEST. Thank you Andrew .
Now my fighting spirit is awake, of course. Therefore, if you like this blog, please vote for me at the Edublog Awards 2009.
Source: nsf.gov
This seems to be the sentence that stuck from my presentation at the last ETCon. Teachers are Dinosaurs old and ponderous in mind and hence doomed to extinct.
Of course I chose this title because it is kind of edgy and fits all the cut and dried opinions people have about education in general and teachers in particular. And as I think this is a very interesting topic I would like to elaborate my thoughts on this a bit more in detail than I did during my presentation.
The Edublog Awards are in their sixth year already. And 2009 is my first time to set up a nomination list. Exciting!
And my nominees for the 2009 Edublog Awards are:
Best individual blog: Mixergy.com
Best individual tweeter: Seth Godin
Best new blog: JonBischke.com
Best resource sharing blog: Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day
Most influential blog post: A Manifesto for EduChange
Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion: #Edchat
Best teacher blog: LearnOverIP.com
Best educational use of video / visual: eduFire Videos
Best educational use of a social networking service: Classroom 2.0
Best educational use of a virtual world: LanguageLab.com
I would like to thank everyone on my nominee’s list for inspiring me through the year.
Jon Bischke just announced the following on Twitter:
I admit, I am a bit lost for words. This is the proof that educhange is not only a vision anymore. It is happening. Before I wrap this up in a bigger post, I will have to let it sink a bit.
In the meanwhile please read the whole announcement and the available courses on the eduFire blog.
This post is the result of several talks I had with a couple of different people in our industry during the last year. The final impulse to write this down here is on the one hand a discussion in the E-Teaching community on WiZiQ. I will mention the second impulse at the end of this post.
All this brought an idea back to my mind I already had back in late 2008. And a couple of weeks ago I discussed basically the same with Jason West, the founder of Languages Out There.
Hence today I would like to set up a simple scenario that could fundamentally change the way people in developing countries could get access to high quality education.
On Monday eduFire launched its new Tech Channel. Topics include for example Java, PhotoShop, php, SEO and WordPress. This is their contribution to fight structural unemployment. One can say that after teaching people how to found their own business with the Business Channel, eduFire now want to serve those businesses with well trained employees. If you want to read more about this interesting topic, I suggest the article on BitchBuzz.com because I would like to focus on something else in this post.
How did this came about? Why did eduFire change from a pure language learning marketplace into a platform focusing more and more on business related topics?
The answer is very simple. It’s all about a hyperlink with four little words that changed the eduFire Business Model.
Today Languages Out There officially launched its Facebook project in partnership with Vivox, the company which offers the first VoIP client on the social network.
Facebook users can now buy Self Study, One-to-one and Group Courses in the English Out There Book Store on the Facebook page of the company and practice their English with their native speaking friends on Facebook.
Yes, we are back!
The third edition of the E-Teachers Conference will be on November 27th at 6PM CET.
Lancelot School is hosting the Virtual Round Table Conference on November 12th and 13th with a total of 29 events like presentations, workshops and panel discussions covering topics like blended learning, learning and teaching in online worlds, the future of teaching, teaching and business and many more. The range of topics covered is really mind blowing.
Heike Philp also invited a major lineup of online education leaders in the panels and workshops. Therefore if you are in any way part of this emerging industry I strongly recommend to take part at least in some of the events. All you have to do is to go over to the Virtual Round Table website, sign up for an account and opt in for the events you would like to attend.
And btw, I have the honour to moderate the panel on “How to build an online teaching business“.
See you all at the Virtual Round Table Conference 2009!
What is your association with the magic numbers 2.0? Social Media, networking, chatting and, of course, no cost or at least freemium.
Well, not anymore. At least not in education. With the launch of Babbel 2.0 the company says “Good bye” to freemium and “Hello” to advertising free premium services.
Last week I had the same experience anthropologists must have when they might have found a new species that fills a gap in the family tree of humans.
The missing link in online education has been the seamless group talk right now. You can have great 1o1 teaching over Skype and decent lectures in various online classrooms. But the interaction of a smaller group with seamless talking has been missing so far. But that might have changed now. A Canadian start up might have built the holy grail of online teaching.
In my last post about the “I am Online” feature I mentioned at the end that I think the status of being online equals the fact that I am available for a free chat.
This has something to do with the Lord of the Rings, kind of.
As you all might know, @web20classroom, @tomwhitby and @shellterrell the three founders of #Edchat where characters on the #140conf in Los Angeles.
Here are three short interviews with them after the conference.
Seems like a big question but I think the answer is rather simple: show them the benefits and risks of web 2.0.
In Germany we have a big discussion about so called “Killer Spiele – Killer Games” as our conservative political parties see the reason for the killing sprees we had at a couple of schools in the last years in these. They basically blame ego shooters like Counter Strike and others to motivate kids to kill other kids.
And as we all know, this does not stop if politicians get once started. So other games with similar options get on the radar, too. Basically games like World of Warcraft get on the list for their possible addiction risks and so on and so forth. Problem is: the people who are discussing and deciding about these issues never ever saw a game like this, not talking of playing one.
But then some young politicians of the bavarian CSU (Christ Socialist Party) had a brilliant idea. Their party “fights” on the front to ban “killer games” in Germany. As they knew that basically all of their party friends of a certain age never had contact to no matter what kind of modern computer game they organized the first “Parlamentarischer Spieleabend” – parlamentary gamer evening.
They invited their colleagues to play a wide range of games covering “harmless” ones on the Nintendo Wii but also those famous killer games. They also invited professional esport players, so young guys who earn money playing in world wide leagues. Basically like football but on the PC and including Counterstrike and other tactical shooters. They explained to the politicians why they play killer games and so on.
Of course, this did not change the minds by 180° but it was the first time a real dialogue took place and also the first time politicians tried out what they were talking about for months.
Back to Social Media. I think schools should do the same with parents. Instead of letting them alone with their imagination and assumptions teachers should invite parents in the school and give some little seminars about what their kids are doing and why it is all so fascinating.
This would set free various synergy effects, I think. First of all the whole Social Media world would be demystified as I don’t think the kids will sit down with their parents and explain them Facebook and Twitter.
Parents will listen to the risks and if they get an objective overview from the teachers and they finally know what is going on behind “closed doors” parents can guide their children more effectively.
And in the end it will also help the teachers to implement the use of Social Media in the classroom. If everyone knows what is happening there is no need to ban it anymore, right?
If it is done right this could be the beginning of something big. All you need is to print out some invites to the parents and get the ball rolling.
