The Cassiopeia Project: Free Science Education Online by Maria Popova What a mysterious retired physicist has to do with the future of learning. In 2008, The Cassiopeia Project began quietly publishing high-definition videos exploring in an intelligent yet digestible manner nearly every corner of the science spectrum, and releasing them online for free. We believe that if you can visualize it, then understanding it is not far behind.” The project, operating under the slogan “No science teacher left behind,” is funded by an adamantly anonymous retired scientist who, after weighing the benefits of helping academic institutions versus helping teachers, he chose the latter and made it his mission to champion science literacy in the US. All the content is open-source and educators are encouraged to edit, remix and otherwise customize the footage. Sadly, the effort appears to be in stagnation since 2009, but we sincerely hope to see it resurface with more fantastic content. via MeFi Share on Tumblr
Virtual Schools Booming As States Mull Warnings DENVER -- More schoolchildren than ever are taking their classes online, using technology to avoid long commutes to school, add courses they wouldn't otherwise be able to take – and save their school districts money. But as states pour money into virtual classrooms, with an estimated 200,000 virtual K-12 students in 40 states from Washington to Wisconsin, educators are raising questions about online learning. States are taking halting steps to increase oversight, but regulation isn't moving nearly as fast as the virtual school boom. The online school debate pits traditional education backers, often teachers' unions, against lawmakers tempted by the promise of cheaper online schools and school-choice advocates who believe private companies will apply cutting-edge technology to education. Is online education as good as face-to-face teaching? Virtual education companies tout a 2009 research review conducted for the U.S. Still, virtual schooling at the K-12 level is booming. Online:
12 Ways to Become a Recognized Expert As we measure the degree of damage, or more precisely, reduced revenue and increased costs from the downturn, advertising spending tends to be one of the first cuts owners make. Yet this may be a great time to expand marketing to take a share of the market away from your competitors. The key is marketing without little or no money through efforts like community engagement, referrals or sending a press release to local media. Another method is becoming a recognized expert who is called upon by media and other outlets to speak, write and lend your expertise. You want to be recognized as an expert in your field, a specialist with trustworthy credentials that establishes your credibility. There are alternative paths to reach the goal of being recognized as an expert. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Related: How to Start Video Blogging for Your Business 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. You have begun to cement your reputation into a solid foundation of respectability. Related: Get More Referrals by Asking
In 2011: How the Internet Revolutionized Education As connection speeds increase and the ubiquity of the Web pervades, free education has never been so accessible. An Internet connection gives lifelong learners the tools to become autodidacts, eschewing exorbitant tuition and joining the ranks of other self-taught great thinkers in history such as Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, Paul Allen and Ernest Hemingway. We can be learning all the time now, whenever we want, and wherever we want. And because of that, we’re seeing explosive growth in online education. Insider How the Internet is Revolutionizing Education This was our seminal piece on online education, which includes interviews with UC Berkeley professors and CEOs and Founders of today’s most disruptive education startups. Stay in or drop out? There’s a lot of debate right now about whether or not paying for a degree is worth it, a particular problem facing entrepreneurs. How Technology Has Changed Education Skillshare lets you learn anything from anyone News Apps Coding
4 Reasons Your Brain Loves to Learn Online Are we offloading our brains onto the web? Are programs better than teachers at knowing what we know? Do virtual badges motivate more than grades? We’ve analyzed here four different special powers of online teaching that make brains very happy. 1) Memory: This is your brain on-line. According to Columbia neuroscientist Betsy Sparrow and her team, “We are becoming symbiotic with our computer tools”. Dr. So is offloading our brain making us dumber? “Accessibility [of information] changes the relative importance of certain topics in much the same ways that a calculator changes the relative importance of some things.” Kuntz, who’s V.P. of research at the fast growing adaptive learning company, explained that fields of knowledge that were off-loaded simply left room for cogitation on other topics. “Long division, for example, is a process that, in my opinion, is more or less irrelevant, you never have to work through a problem in that way.” He measured responses to curvey lines, like this one:
Stop Looking For a Job, Start Looking for an Opportunity | Under30CEO A lot of jobs that once were, aren’t coming back. Ever. To look for what isn’t there is a waste of time and an insult to your dignity. If you haven’t noticed, the world has changed — radically. The traditional yellow brick road to success and financial security has imploded. These are the greatest times of opportunity we have seen in human history — but only if you know how to seize them. 1. Over the last decade we have witnessed the death rattle of an era gone by. 2. Take the skills you have as an employee and turn those into a contract services business. 3. What goods do you have that others might want? 4. If you want to calculate your potential for increased wealth, don’t look at your current bank balance, cars or property inventory. 5. The economic downturn has created a ton of new problems that need solving. 6. You make your choices; then your choices make you. 7. There are no secrets, shortcuts or quick fixes to success. Awesome People + Awesome Places
Khan Academy Triples Unique Users To 3.5 Million Today at The Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Founder of Khan Academy, Salman Khan, took the stage to share a few quick stats on the growth of his online video education platform. For those unfamiliar, Khan Academy is, as John Batelle noted this afternoon, one of Bill Gates’ favorite educators. It also happens to be one of mine, but I thought you’d probably resonate a bit more with Bill Gates. But Khan Academy is the institution of Salman Khan, who brought the idea of educating young people, self-starters, people who learn at their own pace — online. While Khan is a not-for-profit organization, the Academy has received donations from The Gates Foundation and also won Google’s “Project 10^100″. It looks like all the publicity and traction Khan Academy has been getting of late is really starting to pay off, which is great to see.
The Stanford Education Experiment Could Change Higher Learning Forever | Wired Science Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig in the basement of Thrun's guesthouse, where they record class videos.Photo: Sam Comen Stanford doesn’t want me. I can say that because it’s a documented fact: I was once denied admission in writing. Last fall, the university in the heart of Silicon Valley did something it had never done before: It opened up three classes, including CS221, to anyone with a web connection. People around the world have gone crazy for this opportunity. Aside from computer-programming AI-heads, my classmates range from junior-high school students and humanities majors to middle-aged middle school science teachers and seventysomething retirees. It’s not until the second week of class that I notice a small disclaimer on the AI course website: Prerequisites: A solid understanding of probability and linear algebra will be required. Solid understanding? Apply this rule to a computational problem and you can make efficient predictions based on otherwise unreliable data.
10 clues that it's time to start your own business By Martin Zwilling, contributor Many budding entrepreneurs struggle mightily with that first step – out of their comfort zone and into the unknown. They keep asking people like me whether the time is right, and the truth is that there's never an ideal time to start your own business. It's like starting a personal relationship, if you wait for exactly the right time, you'll never do it. I've talked to many experts, and everyone has his own view of the right personal attributes, and the right business conditions to jump in. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. If a few of these reasons are calling your name, now is the time to start building your business. Martin Zwilling is CEO & Founder of Startup Professionals Inc. Like this: Like Loading...
The Wrath Against Khan: Why Some Educators Are Questioning Khan Academy An Explainer Post There's an article in this month's Wired Magazine about Khan Academy. The headline speaks volumes -- "How Khan Academy Is Changing the Rules of Education" -- as do the responses I've seen to the article. As usual, there's plenty of praise for Sal Khan and his one-man-educational-video-making machine. But there's also push-back from some quarters, particularly from educators who are highly skeptical of what Khan Academy delivers and what it stands for. That dichotomy says it all, right? Technology Replacing Teachers If one person can create 2400 educational videos and these videos can in turn be viewed by anyone with an Internet connection then why do we need teachers? While "technology will replace teachers" seems like a silly argument to make, one need only look at the state of most school budgets and know that something's got to give. The Bill Gates Connection "Retain qualified people." What does all of this have to do with Sal Khan? Old Wine, New Bottles, Bad Pedagogy
Stanford Professors Launch Online University Coursera - Liz Gannes There seems to be something in the water at Stanford University that’s making faculty members leave their more-than-perfectly-good jobs and go teach online. Coursera co-founders Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller Stanford computer science professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng are on leave to launch Coursera, which will offer university classes for free online, in partnership with top schools. Mountain View, Calif.-based Coursera is backed with $16 million in funding led by John Doerr at Kleiner Perkins and Scott Sandell at NEA. Compared to Udacity, a similar start-up from former Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun that’s creating its own classes, Coursera helps support its university partners in creating their own courses, which are listed under each school’s brand. Coursera evolved, in part, out of the hugely popular Stanford classes that Ng and Thrun taught last fall on machine learning and artificial intelligence, respectively.
Khan Academy founder: “Helping people is more important than making money” Sal Khan, a YouTube phenomenon, is on a stage talking to higher education professionals about how he’s disrupting their business. How he got here is an interesting story that has everything to do with money. “I can’t claim to be a Mother Teresa, but the fact that helping people is more important than making money is just reality,” he told us. In 2006, Khan was working in the world of hedge funds. To help his young cousins who were struggling with science and math concepts in grade school, he started tutoring them remotely via a series of YouTube videos. This work, which became known as the Khan Academy and has turned into his full-time job, was less about financial profit and more about helping people who desperately needed a higher quality education. Today, five years later, Khan has made more than 2,600 micro-lessons and posted them on YouTube. When he started the Khan Academy, he said, “Helping people felt good. “But it’s obvious there’s room for change.
11 Tech Factors That Changed Education in 2011 Michael Staton is the founder of Inigral, which develops social software for student recruitment and higher education retention. Inigral recently brought on the first PRI as a venture investment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and has been named one of the top 10 innovative companies in education by Fast Company. In 2011, entrepreneurs and startup activity sprouted up everywhere. Not coincidentally, the Bay Area, New York, Boston, Austin, Portland and every college town from Abilene to Gainesville is fostering young, eager minds. The millennial generation is proving it can create companies — and thus, jobs — that solve real problems. Trends like these are quickly impacting how young people relate to and absorb education. 1. Former CEO of PayPal and venture capitalist Peter Thiel maintains that entrepreneurship is best learned outside of higher education, through real-world experience. 2. 3. 4. 5. Providence Equity acquired Blackboard for $1.6 billion. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.
Stanford Professor Gives Up Teaching Position, Hopes to Reach 500,000 Students at Online Start-Up - Wired Campus The Stanford University professor who taught an online artificial-intelligence course to more than 160,000 students has abandoned his teaching position to aim for an even bigger audience. Sebastian Thrun, a research professor of computer science at Stanford, revealed today that he had given up his teaching role at the institution to found Udacity, a start-up offering low-cost online classes. He made the surprising announcement during a presentation at the Digital–Life–Design conference, in Munich, Germany. The development was first reported earlier today by Reuters. During his talk, Mr. Mr. He concluded by telling the crowd that he couldn’t continue teaching in a traditional setting. One of Udacity’s first offerings will be a seven-week course called “Building a Search Engine.” Teaching the course at Stanford, Mr. “I feel like there’s a red pill and a blue pill,” he said. Correction (1/26, 11:54 a.m.): This article originally reported incorrectly that Mr. Return to Top