Category Archives: In the Spotlight

The Learn Now – I am Online Feature

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Let me give you some thoughts on this feature that comes up once in a while. Sometimes it is called “Learn Now” or “I am Online” or “Instant Question”.

The idea behind it is that a student enters an educational webpage and there he / she will find teachers who are instantly available to teach a lesson or to answer a question. In some recent talks I had with educational start ups this feature was mentioned a lot.

In some cases it can actually make sense but generally I think its effect on the core service of those sites is overrated.

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1 Billion Views per Day

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1 billion views per day. Yes, per day, not per week or month. That should make YouTube the biggest broadcaster on this planet, right?

They even changed the logo to make sure, we notice it ;)

1,000,000,000 views per day!

1,000,000,000 views per day!

I don’t have exact data yet but I would say that the biggest percentage of videos are made by average people like you and me. Do you see the shift that is happening?

Good bye old world! :)

Second Life – The Revelation

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First of all: thank you to all participants who took part in the lively discussion about my last post. This brought up another point of Second Life I haven’t had on my list before.

However before I start to give you my final point of view about SL I think I need to explain what my intention was writing the first post. Interestingly it attracted a whole new group of readers to this blog. The first post was written from the perspective of an edupreneur (me or anyone else) who hears: “There are so many students to teach on Second Life, you have to go there.” As you can see this was a totally business driven decision, no fun involved. But the post brought in SL evangelists, not other teachers.

I really appreciate the input they gave me on Second Life itself but it was basically not my intention to poke in a hornet’s nest and start a discussion about the general use of Second Life. I just wanted to show other online teachers that

1. they are not alone with their first impression of Second Life and
2. there is a problem of how most of us see Second Life.

There are obviously some issues about Second Life and Linden Lab that lead to what I experienced yesterday and maybe I will give you my thoughts on this, too.
Judging someone by the first half of a two part blog post, start a “riot”, tell the person that she is basically to dumb /ignorant to use the search, should have RTFM read the Wiki, does not know how to have fun, is not well prepared, does not know how to use Google etc is not very helpful either. I can understand their intention and I can also understand that they are fed up with douche bags who just want to bash SL users as useless people who don’t have a first life. But still I think it would help them more to inform themselves about the writer of the post or, even better, to wait until the second post before getting “berserc” ;) . If everyone who has doubts / a question about SL has to experience this I can understand a part of the problem.

So without further ado, here is my corrected view on Second Life as an edupreneur.

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Partnerships, Partnerships, Partnerships

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For a long time I did not cover all the new partnerships that were made in the education 2.0 sector. One reason for this is the huge amount of new companies which enter the game.

Really exciting times but nevertheless lets have a look at the “grown up” rebels. You will see that there is lots going on, too. Especially building alliances with the established top dogs in education.

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Sclipo – The Other Platform Model

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This week I had the pleasure talking to Christopher Grant, Senior Vice President of Barcelona, Spain, located startup Sclipo.

The company was founded in late 2006 as an educational video sharing platform as you might have guessed from the name already.

Since then it has rapidly grown and can today be seen as a full set teaching and learning platform with an inhouse developed virtual classroom. Sclipo is also a true platform and that is something I really appreciate. I also like the fact that they call themselves social learning revolution.

Let’s see if they can stand up to this statement.

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Twitter for Teachers Workshop – Review and Additional Links

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Last wednesday WiZiQ organized a mini workshop about Twitter for Teachers. They invited Enza Antenos-Conforti (@iVenus), Alexandre Enklerli (@enkerli) and myself to give some presentations about how teachers can use microblogging.

It was a great event and I learned a lot from my co-presenters there. Below you can watch our presentations as well as some links to teacher related events on Twitter, some useful ebooks and blogs or watch some more videos about Twitter.

Presentation of Eza Antenos-Conforti

Presentation of Alexandre Enkerli

My presentation

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Back to 16th Century Teaching!

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This morning I read a very interesting article in the NY Times.

[...] Education moved from a bespoke craft to a more industrial approach. [...]

[...] Still, one-to-one tutoring is the learning method proven time and again to sharply improve a student’s measured performance. A good human tutor can deliver a “home run,” educationally and statistically, explained Christopher J. Dede, a professor of education at Harvard University. [...]

Very encouraging for the classic one-on-one private teacher / tutor, right? I will get back to this point of the article later because there is more to talk about.

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Exclusive Preview of the new Livemocha Active English Course

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On Wednesday I was kindly invited by Clint Schmidt, VP of Marketing and Product to have a first private sneak peak preview of the new Pearson powered Livemocha Active English course.

Livemocha and Pearson announced a partnership back in March 2009 to build an online English course based on Pearson content. The release was previewed for August but as always in the IT industry, you have to add some extra months :) .

So, first of all, thank you Clint for giving me this opportunity and now let me share my experience with you Continue reading →

Twitter for Teachers – Mini Workshop hosted by WiZiQ

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I was kindly invited to present at a mini workshop about Twitter for Teachers.

When?: Wednesday, September 16, 5.30PM CEST
Where?: WiZiQ
Price?: Free

Of course, I will not be the only presenter. WiZiQ has invited a very impressive panel with

Alexandre Enkerli @enkerli

Alex is a French-speaking ethnographer from Montreal, Qc. As a part-time or visiting lecturer, he has been teaching anthropology, folkloristics, and sociology at diverse universities in Canada and the United States, including Concordia University in Montreal and Indiana University South Bend. His teaching philosophy has been influenced by his constructivist father and by diverse learning experiences. Alex pretty much lives online. Apart from diverse activities on online services like Facebook and Twitter, he participates in diverse online forums and mailing-lists, including the Moodle community at Moodle.org. His main blog is Disparate.

Enza Antenos-Conforti @ivenus

Enza Antenos-Conforti is a Professor in the Department of Spanish and Italian at Montclair State University. She received her Ph.D. in Italian Studies from the University of Toronto. Her research areas are Applied Linguistics, instructional technology, materials development, and teacher training. Currently, she is working on viable Web 2.0 alternatives to learning management systems for the second language classroom and mobile-assisted language learning (MALL). Recently she presented on Twitter at the OIT Summer Symposium at Montclair State and LARC’s Summer Institute (San Diego State University).

Really looking forward to this event and to hear the opinions of Alexandre and Enza.

I made a little promo banner for the event. So if you like, copy the code below and share it on your website or blog.

#Edchat 09-01 How to prevent Social Media Burnout

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edchat

First of all, for every guest on my blog who is not familiar with my background yet: I am, amongst other, an independent language coach who works only with adults.

My point of view is therefore from the business side. I am not a classic school teacher, in fact I started my career from a legal background specialized in European law as well as the history of law and legal systems. But I always had a big interest in languages so after my studies I took this road.

I just wanted to let you know as many of you will be refered by Twitter and I think most of you will be classic school teachers. Nevertheless, I hope you will find some interesting points in my post :) .

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ETCon 2 – Chat Review and my Answers

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There was a great discussion going on in the chat of this ETCon. Below this post you will find the complete transcript for you to download.

As I could not answer all your questions during the conference or get deeper into the conversations that were going on, I would like to do it now.

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Personal Review of the second E-Teachers Conference

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Before starting to give you my personal review I have to thank a couple of people. Let me start with Vikrama Dhiman of WiZiQ who supported me all the way from the planning to the ETCon today. I think he did an amazing job, so Kudos to you! You made the second ETCon a really smooth event for everyone involved.

Secondly I want to thank the members of the panel. Jason West of Languages Out There who did a great presentation about communities and shared emotion, Bernhard Niesner of busuu who gave us an inside view of his company and his thoughts on self regulating communities and the difference between in house developed content compared to crowdsourced content, Kevin Chen of italki who talked about problems of international / global platforms and the right member mix and last but not least again Vikrama Dhiman who explained how non educational companies use crowdsourcing and that crowdsourcing not always needs a community.

And of course I have to thank the great audience. You asked awesome questions that led to a resourceful discussion of the panel at the end. Thank you for attending the ETCon and spreading the word. I really appreciate your interest!

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E-Teachers Conference 02 – Communities and the Power of Crowdsourcing

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logo-etcon

The second ETCon will be on August 27 at 3PM CEST. We scheduled it this time towards our attendees and panel members in India and Asia.

As last time the E-Teachers Conference will have a first class line up of panel members. This time our panelists are:

Shirley Yiong, Marketing Manager of Livemocha
Jason West, Founder of Languages Out There
Bernhard Niesner, Co-Founder of busuu
Kevin Chen, Co-Founder of italki
Harman Singh, Founder of WiZiQ

The panel will present their own point of view about the topic Communities and the Power of Crowdsourcing. The presentations will then be followed by a moderated discussion and a Q&A session with the audience.

You can ask your questions on the ETCon directly to the panel by using the classroom chat or using Twitter and the #ETCon hashtag. If you cannot attend on the thursday but want to ask a question you can also post them in the ETCon blog at http://etcon.eteachersacademy.com

The ETCon is a free event and everybody interested in elearning is welcome to join. Just subscribe for a free ticket.

The second ETCon is hosted by WiZiQ.

Follow the ETCon on Twitter @ETConference or join out twub at http://twubs.com/etcon

Royal Rumble – The Champion enters the Ring

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As a kid back in the nineties I loved to watch Wrestling on TV. Hulk Hogan, The Undertaker, Bret Michaels, The Heartbreak Kid, you name them. One of the events I loved the most was the Royal Rumble where every two minutes another Wrestler entered the ring. The rule was simple: the last one in the ring won the match and you had to get all the others out of the ring above the top row. But their two feet had to touch the ground to be out of the match.

At some moments of the fight there were up to 20 Top Wrestlers in the match, building alliances that broke the next minute and so on. You see, the WWF taught me a lot about business ;) .

Now what has this to do with online education? Well, you can say that in the Royal Rumble of language learning communities we are now at the point where the World Champion entered the Ring. In this case Rosetta Stone with their new product TOTALe.

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Come and join me on the EDUKWEST

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I was a bit quiet the last days and as some of you might know by now, this is the sign I am working on something new ;) .

Today I finally launched a project that has been in the back of my head for quite a while: EDUKWEST on the search for better education.

It is a series of interviews with people involved in the education revolution. Founders, CEOs, teachers, content writers and all the other great people involved.

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My personal Review of the E-Teachers Conference

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Although I am the initiator of the E-Teachers Conference I would like to share  my personal point of view of the evening mixed up with some comments I got in chats and via email.

Let me start with a general overview.

I opened the ETCon with my provocative theme “Lesson Slides and Virtual Classrooms. Do we really need them?”. The presentation had three parts: thoughts about slides, thoughts about webmeetings and thoughts about users.

Basically I explained that both slides and webmeetings are not “education natives” meaning they were developed for the corporate world for a whole different use. I also mentioned the problems involved using lesson slides like boredom and information overload and with webmeetings like weak internet connections and overstrained users.

In the part about the users I mentioned the different kind of user types today, the digital natives, settlers and immigrants and that most of the potential customers today belong to one of the last two groups.

My conclusion was that on Monday I did not really need a virtual classroom to teach but that I see potential for the future when the majority of potential users won’t have infrastructural problems to use them anymore.

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A new Life for old Content – Thoughts on Syndication Part 1

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Imagine you sold a product for decades and decades and it sold really well, and I mean brilliantly. Imagine you wake up one morning and suddenly no one seems to care about your product anymore.

In the past couple of months we saw this on the publishing market. Newspapers and Magazines are closing because blogs and Twitter stole their show.

Encyclopedias are discontinued after over 100 years because no one is buying them anymore. Even the new kid on the block, the CD or DVD version is discontinued because no one can compete with  internet based versions or Wikipedia.

The state of California is switching to e-books in its schools. First reason they are cheaper and the Governator needs every cent but honestly, if you see the growing demand of e-readers like the Amazon Kindle it is only a question of time when other states will follow suit. And remember, Bill Gates is still working on his dream of the tablet PC.

I guess, if you are in that industry you saw the impacts coming nearer every day. So what could they do? Some chose the way to publish audio books which is quite a strong market in Germany these days. Others are publishing on the Kindle there is even a project where you will be able to design a custom printed newspaper just for you.

But what about the huge market of education material publishers? Well, it seems as if they found out a great way to save themselves: content syndication.

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italki.com brings back and old friend: the Language Marketplace

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The title of the latest italki Press release is quite a statement:

italki Partners with Eleutian to Offer US‐Certified Teachers and SpeakENG Content “Powered by Pearson®”

Pearson, does it ring a bell? Exactly, Pearson announced a partnership with Livemocha a couple of month ago. You can read my post about it over here.

But to me the fact that italki is calling themselves “the italki Marketplace” is even more interesting. So lets have a look on the news from Shanghai.

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The Learning Approach of Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants

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Based on my blog post why Learning Communities are the most efficient way of learning right now I made a Screen Cast about the Learning Approaches of Digitial Natives compared to Digital Immigrants and what effect this should have on the development of learning products.

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