Whereas in the last social media post I talked about why I blog and why this might be a good thing for you or have benefits for your education company, I want to concentrate on some of the platforms for the upcoming posts in my social media series.
So let’s get started with Twitter today: why and how I use it.
About a year ago we were witness of a short but heavy battle about the fact that Facebook does not allow you to download your user data or delete your account permanently. This battle took place on TechCrunch and several episodes of This Week in Startups and was the peek of an ongoing discussion on whether one can trust Facebook with personal data or not.
In the end Facebook enabled the download of your personal data and since then the tech world has moved on to other topics like the Twitter Dick-bar and Groupon being a ponzy-scheme.
But with “Big Data” becoming one of the major buzzwords recently, I would like to re-initiate this discussion for education 2.0 as I believe that data, especially the data related to learning, is the most valuable asset of each startup in this space.
Learning to Read on Zero Dollars a Day
“Twenty years ago we had challenges helping kids find enough information. Now we have the opposite problem. There’s plenty of information out there. Now it’s a matter of training students to think critically about what they find. Because 90 percent of what they find on the Internet is garbage.” New York Times
Tablet Computing Is Here To Stay, And Will Force Changes In Laptops And Phones
“Without us realizing it, our needs have evolved beyond the smartphone + laptop ecosystem.” FastCo Design
Industry Puts Heat on Schools to Teach Skills Employers Need
“Big U.S. employers, worried about replacing retiring baby boomers, are wading deeper into education and growing bolder about telling educators how to run their business.” Wall Street Journal
Ning And Ustream Launch In-Depth Integration To Allow Creators To Stream Live Video
“Ning and live stream video company Ustream are announcing an integrated partnership today that allows Ning network creators to broadcast live video and audio on their website at anytime, complete with live chat capabilities and more.” TechCrunch
The Future Of The Campus Isn’t The Classroom
“The most holistic educational experiences happen outside of the classroom. To make the biggest impact, target student-life facilities.” FastCo Design
DIY U: The Future Of Learning [Video]
“From Khan Academy and TED Talks to instructional YouTube videos, the future of learning is open and free.” Fast Company
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp is Making Big Moves in the Education Business
“Joel Klein, head of News Corp.‘s new education division, has plans to make new acquisitions in the next few months, though he hasn’t specified any companies or even sectors of interest. However, he has ruled out the acquisition of a traditional publisher.” Wall Street Cheat Sheet
Smarterer Raises $1.25M To Prove You’re Good At Anything In 60 Seconds Or Less
“Smarterer’s product revolves around a fairly straightforward theory: it doesn’t take a lot of time to gauge if someone is competent in a given subject. In fact, Smarterer thinks it can determine your proficiency in just about anything in 60 seconds and 10 multiple choice questions.” TechCrunch
The 20 Best- and Worst-Paid College Majors
“A new report shows some undergraduate degrees pay off more than others — literally.” Time
Why “Brain Gyms” May Be The Next Big Business
“Four years ago, investors gingerly handed over seed money to Lumosity, a startup creating brain games. Today they’re happily tossing the same company $32 million. What changed?” Fast Company
India’s oft delayed $35 tablet ready to ship, unicorns shed tears of joy
“India’s unfortunately-named Sakshat tablet began life as a $10 laptop way back in early 2009 and, in the years since, has had more than its fair share of delays and difficulties. But, after repeatedly dashing hopes and destroying dreams it appears the $35 tablet is just about ready for take off.” Engadget
Along with their official launch, I had the chance to meet with Patrick Randolph of Talkwheel for an EDUKWEST.
Talkwheel are based in SF and the platform allows its users to communicate and collaborate in a very visual way. Although not exclusively designed for education, it clearly makes sense in our context when you think of teachers maintaining thread with their students, seminar groups or student groups.
Sometimes I make a real finding on YouTube. Of course, Google knows me well and when I listen to some music or watch a webcast over there, I mostly get Inigral’s Schools App or Learnable as advertisement. This time was different however.
So, when I was listening to Mozart’s Requiem what I like when I do some writing, I saw an ad for eTeacherBiblical. My first reaction to be honest was a mix between scepticism, fascination and also awkwardness.
6 Reasons Tablets Are Ready for the Classroom – “By looking at all that tablets offer in the context of student behavior and some of the recent trends in education, it’s clear that tablets are ready for the classroom.” Mashable
Crowdsourcing Education Innovation, For Cash – “One of the largest educational publishers in the world is offering cash prizes to the winners of a crowdsourced learning product innovation competition.” FastCompany
Entourage shuts down Edge content store, devices reportedly discontinued – “It seems natural selection has finally caught up with the Entourage Edge.” Engadget
World’s Smartest Pens Get Social – “LiveScribe makes pens that record audio in sync with a writer’s notes and allow him to play it back at a specific moment by tapping the desired place in his notebook.” Mashable
Amazon Looks To Build Full-Fledged Publishing House – “Laurence Kirshbaum, the former CEO of Time Warner’s book division and most recently the founder of a well-respected, 40-client literary agency, has been named publisher of Amazon’s New York publishing office.” Mashable
NPG, CSU partner for $49 dynamic digital textbooks – “CSU has announced a three-year deal with Nature Publishing Group for low-cost, interactive, web-based textbooks with access options for disabled students.” Engadget
How Social Media & Game Mechanics Can Motivate Students – “Social media and online games have the potential to convey 21st century skills that aren’t necessarily part of school curricula — things like time management, leadership, teamwork and creative problem solving that will prepare teens for success in college and beyond.” Mashable
Organize An Offline Class With Skillshare – “Skillshare, which launched in April, is a marketplace for offline classes. Anyone can sell tickets for a class.” Mashable
What College Degrees Are Really Worth – “A new study from Georgetown University breaks down which majors of study result in the highest career earnings. Art majors, ask a friend if you can borrow his computer to read this.” FastCompany
Microsoft manager teams up with teens to build a fusion reactor in his garage (video) – “The science fanatic recruited a team of teens, as young as 13, and worked with them to build a Farnsworth–Hirsch Fusor — a (comparatively) simple nuclear reactor that smashes together atoms and produces neutrons.” Engadget
Watermelon Express Rebrands As BenchPrep; Launches App Store For Test Prep Content – “BenchPrep develops cross-platform apps to help students prepare for a number of standardized tests including the GRE, SAT, GMAT, LSAT and MCAT.” TechCrunch
The Kno Textbook App Hits The iPad – “Last night, Kno quietly released its first digital textbook app for the iPad. It includes its own store of “over 70,000 titles at 30% to 50% off list” price. And the app is a full textbook reader.” TechCrunch
As it’s the beginning of June and thus half the year went by already (as always I feel that January was just a short moment ago) but there is another six months to go before we’ll wrap-up 2011, I thought that today I’d give you some updates and reflections on my work and tell you about the progress of some of the projects.
In my own perception I felt, it would be relatively easy to get an overview on what I’m doing but thanks to the constant exchange with you guys in the comments on kirstenwinkler.com via email or also Skype I learned that there has sometimes been confusion and that is my job to give this whole thing a bit more of a structure, so that you’ll be able to follow the parts of my work you’re particularly interested in more easily.
EDUKWEST on tour has always had a special feel to it and as much as I like connecting with great start-up people via Skype, I have to say that I truly enjoy visiting companies when I have the opportunity to do so.
Episode 63 is such an on tour video, I’ve met with Michel Nizon and team of Edulang at their office in Morlaix, France. Yes, innovation can happen in the most remote places and I love that this is possible thanks to working online, connecting with people and the possibility of finding customers all around the world!
I had the pleasure of interviewing LearnBoost’s founder and CEO Rafael Corrales on how came up with the initial idea and how he and his team have shaped it until it became what we see today: a nicely made gradebook with pretty design, easy to create & mangage lesson plans, functions to share student progress with the parents and the possibility to integrate with Google Apps.
LearnBoost is currently free to use and I hope you’ll get a good idea of LearnBoost’s capabilities watching our EDUKWEST but essentially you have nothing to lose, so I’d say anyone interested should definitely go and open an account!
Just a few days ago I first got in touch with Shah Ullah of the GrayMatter Foundation via Twitter and I immediately liked what these young founders are doing. I believe, innovation is not a question of age at all, it may not be the most common thing when the founders are all still in High School though.
Well, it’s maybe at this age only when you still have the outstanding enthusiasm and commitment to just launch and keep going with a project whereas later in life it naturally happens that you think more before you start.
Long story short, as a bit uncommon projects have always appealed to me and therefore I am happy that Shah agreed on doing a KWestions.
Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Andrew Cohen, founder and CEO of the smart flashcard platform Brainscape.
Last month, I was honored to be interviewed on Kirsten Winkler’s blog as part of her series about web and mobile “flashcard” applications. As the founder of Brainscape – a new type of flashcard engine – I naturally spoke of flashcards’ tremendous usefulness as a complement to a more interactive curriculum, including vocabulary, supplementary facts, etc.
Today, however, I would like to take this opportunity to highlight how Brainscape has used the latest in cognitive science techniques to actually teach a language from scratch. Our new app Brainscape Spanish applies a revolutionary new type of language-acquisition approach that we call Intelligent Cumulative Exposure (ICE).
In this week’s EDUKWEST I interview Travis Millman, VP of product for EnglishCentral Inc. Although still quite concentrated on the Asian market, I think it’s a nice product worth having a look at from both teacher and student side.
EnglishCentral consists of three main areas, one is to watch authentic videos dealing with different topics such as politics or entertainment. Second is to learn all relevant vocabulary, also structured according to topics for instance introductions or culture. The third element is to learn to speak or more specifically how to pronounce words.
Looking from a student perspective, I like that it’s pretty customizable and that I don’t have to watch this or that video but define my fields of interest and thus get only relevant lessons for me.
Curation in any sense is one of the hottest topics on the Internet at the moment. Reaching from curating information that flows in our social stream over news to any other piece of information in our digital life. And we all know that our digital life is already pretty much just our life.
One thing I am thinking about for quite a while now is the curation of learning tools, services and applications. Every day the number of those is growing and who else than the teacher / tutor could give distinct advice to learners on which of those would fit their needs best.
As part two of my series portraying translation businesses on the Internet I did a KWestions with Jani Penttinen of Xiha. You might remember this name from an EDUKWEST we did several months ago but this time it was all about his latest venture PremiumFanpage where he is also CEO.
The original idea of PremiumFanpage is to give businesses the opportunity to connect with their fans or also users in general in any language.
Just read an interesting article by Greg Kumparak on MobileCrunch. Apparently another forecast by Kirstradamus became reality, this time it is the Teacher Cloud.
Today Castle Rock Research Corporation, a publisher of educational resources based in Canada launched its newest product called Motuto. It is an application for iPhone and iPad that enables students to connect with a tutor when they are stuck with their homework.
The language learning community busuu turned three today. Time really flies, so happy birthday to Bernhard, Adrian and the team at busuu!
As a side note to the event busuu shared that over 2.5 million people now have signed up to learn a language with the service. All in all, busuu seems to be on a role at the moment, getting some nice coverage in the press, for example yesterday on the Washington Post blog.
Today, I received a pretty interesting email from Udemy, advertising the new “Course of the Week” deal on the platform. It’s the same one Udemy is currently promoting via TeachStreet’s weekly deal called “Social Marketing for Startups”.
With now TeachStreet and Udemy offering weekly deals in various educational topics, good times for learners are to come upon us.
With New App, Ustream Aims To Take Live Streaming On Facebook “To A New Level” – “The app, [...], enables users to opt-in for reminders for upcoming streaming events using Facebook Oauth and receive notifications whenever a certain broadcaster turns on a live stream (the ‘Join Crowd’ feature).” TechCrunch
DreamIt Ventures Announces Its First Batch Of NYC Startups – “Like DreamIt’s Philly program, 5 of the 15 startups are digital education businesses and were selected in partnership with Startl — a social enterprise dedicated to accelerating digital innovations for learning.” TechCrunch
Can Flattr Plus Twitter Make Micropayments a Reality? – “[...] Flattr could transform the online content industry in much the same way The Pirate Bay disrupted it, but for the better.” GigaOm
Learning Formally or Informally…? Why not Both! – “After years of research, study and validation, Morgan McCall, Robert W. Eichinger and Michael M. Lombardo at Princeton’s Center for Creative Leadership have developed a very sound learning model; the 70/20/10 model.” Entreprise Collaborative
More Evidence That An iPhone Lite Is En Route – “[...] Apple’s strategy of keeping the old-gen iPhone and iPad on sale beside newer devices, at a lower price, is working well.” Fast Company
Will Chromebooks for Education Be a Good Deal for Schools? – “[...] in the long string of “one laptop per child” projects, the weight of Google behind this one may be good news for students – and that’s what matters most.” ReadWriteWeb
Social Learning: Can Facebook and Related Tools Improve Educational Outcomes? – “Online social networking sites, such as Facebook, can help students become academically and socially integrated as well as improving learning outcomes [...]” Science Daily
Can Learning Really Be Fun and Games? – “Using his own money and grants that he applied for, Pai has managed to round up seven laptops, two desktops 11 Nintendo DS’s, 18 games for math, reading, vocabulary, geography, and 21 digital voice recorders.” MindShift
There is always a multitude of reasons why I enjoy talking with him [Koichi], not only that he appeared in one of the very first episodes (EDUKWEST #4) and gave me some credit sort of ex ante the interview concept had proven itself to be more than just a flash in the pan but also as our online careers (if you want to call it like that) began approximately the same time and if you have a closer look and compare you’ll find quite some parallels.
[...]
Besides knowing that he wants to disrupt (no, I don’t think that the term is overused when talking about some people at least) the Japanese textbook industry, I was also keen on hearing his reasons to quit live teaching. I’ve my own reasons for that but seeing him doing the same at again almost the same point was quite interesting.
Yesterday, I nosed into the translator business a little deeper. In my teaching career this has never been an interesting field to me as I basically thought being a native German speaker was simply not sufficient to be a good translator.
My few experiences with translating documents from French or English into German seemed to prove me right as I had the impression that this was a pretty lengthy and tedious process. On the other hand, it made me increasingly curious what translators like about their work and business and why translating or interpreting is not a boring job for them at all.
