Archive for January, 2009
eduConference 2: Turning Teachers Into Rock Stars
Posted on 26. Jan, 2009 by Koichi.
A lot of you may remember our first eduConference, on “The Future of Education.” That was a lot of fun, we got to meet a ton of interesting people in the education business, and I think everybody learned a thing or two. Now, a couple months later, we’re holding another one (we did promise to hold these semi-regularly), and this one’s theme is “Turning Teachers into Rockstars.” Definitely rockin’ topic (har har), and we’re really looking forward to seeing what people come up with.
Of course, absolutely everyone and their dog is invited (as long as the dog is very passionate about education), but we did go outside the borders of eduFire to invite a good number of education / language bloggers to the event as well. It will be exciting to meet and learn from all these experts of education.
If you’d like to sign up for our second eduConference, please sign up for an eduFire account if you haven’t, and then make your way over here. Please tell your friends, family, colleagues, and anyone you know that has any interest in education. The more the merrier, and the more we end up learning!
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Record Your eduFire Classes for Future Viewing
Posted on 23. Jan, 2009 by Koichi.
Until recently, you were only able to record your 1-to-1 sessions. Classes (with up to 100 participants!) could be recorded before, but your recordings would fly away into the unknown, and you’d never see them again. Now, with classes out of Beta, we’re happy to give you the ability to record (and view) your recordings after the class is finished. This means that if you hit the record button, all your students will be able to go back and re-watch the entire lesson, just like they were in the class again (yep, the video size and quality is that big!).
Only teachers have the ability to record their classes (students, don’t forget to remind your teachers if you want a recording!), and it’s pretty easy to do.
Click on “Meeting” in the top-left menu, and bring your mouse down to “Record Meeting.” Another prompt will come up asking you a few things. Feel free the change the name of the recording and write a description, but do not click “Record Audio from Speaker Phone” unless you are using an audio source that isn’t through the eduFire platform. So, for most of you, this means ignoring this button.
Enjoy your new ability to record classes! After the class is over, give it an hour or so to process, then check your “My eduFire” page. A link to the recording will appear under the class that it’s associated with!
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eduFire Classes Goes Live! Let Social Learning Begin!
Posted on 22. Jan, 2009 by Koichi.
It’s finally happened! Just the other day (on the same day as the Obama inauguration – we do feel bad for overshadowing his big day), eduFire classes came out of testing and went live (along with a brand new home page), and we’ve already seen a lot of activity. Classes are being added, and all that is left is for you to join them (or create some more)! Since we’ve recently added an “Other” category, there’s been a lot of new things as well, such as a class on raw foods, a class about Twittering for Business and Blogs, and even one about network security!
So what does this mean for you? Well, a lot of things, but here’s a few, nicely numbered out:
- Reduced Prices for More Students: Think of it like getting a bulk discount at the store. By allowing for more students (you can do up to 100 participants in a class), teachers can charge less and make more! Not only that, but students will pay less (or nothing, for some classes), which means everybody wins!
- Social Learning: Did you ever try classes when it was in beta? Learning with other people… learning with your friends… can be a lot of fun! Students help each other out, they can practice with each other, and have a grand old time. The culture of a group class is really interesting!
- More Choice: Now, anyone will be able to create a class. It doesn’t have to be about languages. It doesn’t have to be about test prep. Feel free to make up new categories, and teach a class based on your expertise! We definitely look forward to see what your creative minds come up with.
If you have a chance, help eduFire spread the word! Just a Tweet on Twitter, a blog post, or telling your friends about it will be much appreciated! We look forward to seeing you in a class!
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Jam Today? / When the Education Bubble Finally Pops
Posted on 13. Jan, 2009 by jon.
Jam Today? / When the Education Bubble Finally Pops.
Must-read blog post about the possible impending bubble in education. Plus there’s a plug for eduFire Classes. Each day that goes by I see the opportunity for start-ups to fundamentally change how people around the planet learn. It’s going to be incredibly fun to be a part of that change.
Thanks for the mention James!
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Sugata Mitra: Can kids teach themselves?
Posted on 11. Jan, 2009 by jon.
If you doubt the power of technology in education (highly unlikely if you’re ready this blog!) then watch this video:
Mind-blowing to think what could happen if we properly harness all the fantastic stuff we’re creating and bring it to the world.
(Thanks to Veer and Kareem for the tip.)
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Keyboard Shortcuts to Use in Adobe Connect
Posted on 11. Jan, 2009 by Koichi.
Recently, I took a class run by eduFire CEO Jon Bischke, and it was all about using shortcut keys and other software to make your Mac usage more efficient. Today, during a class, Quincy (an avid eduFire class attender) asked about keyboard shortcuts that you can use in the eduFire teaching platform. I didn’t know any of them at the time, but now I’ve done a little reasearch and found that there are quite a few!
The easiest way to get a list of the shortcuts would be to go where I went – The Adobe Connect Tutorials Page (where you can find a whole lote more, as well!). Just want the shortcuts? Here they are, in good ‘ol PDF format.
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What’s your genius? Teach it on eduFire!
Posted on 11. Jan, 2009 by jon.
We’re T-minus 9 days away from a very historic event. The inauguration of Barack Obama? Nope, the launch of eduFire Classes! OK, so we might be slightly overshadowed that day in the news but nevertheless we’re pretty excited to launch one of the first open platforms for interactive live video learning on the Web. And we’d love to have you be a part of it.
We’re looking for people who are interested in being pioneers in the field of online education to teach the first classes on the platform. The classes are done online using a combination of video chat, voice, presentation sharing and more. Students can attend from anywhere in the world. We’ve been beta testing for a couple of months now and hopefully have worked most of the kinks out. We think you’ll really dig the experience.
Although we’re mostly focused on languages and exam prep here at eduFire, teachers are willing to teach whatever they’d like on our platform (assuming it’s not R-rated :)). Examples of some of the classes that have been run during our beta period include Music Theory, PHP and The Great History of Egypt. You are welcome to run your class for free for students or to set a price for your classes. If you set a price you’ll pocket the vast majority of the class fee (85%).
Here are the only things you’ll need to run a class on eduFire:
An eduFire account – That will take you all of 30 seconds :)
A microphone and headset attached to your computer – This doesn’t have to a fancy set-up. In fact, many of our teachers plug in a pair of iPhone earbuds into their headset jack and it works just fine!
A webcam – This is technically optional but typically makes the experience more life-like for your students.
If you’re interested in being a teacher when eduFire Classes goes live, you can start preparing the items above and drop a line to Koichi at koichi at edufire dot com or Marco at marco at edufire dot com. They’ll answer any additional questions you have and get you all ready to teach your first class.
We’re very excited to launch this new service and would love to see you sharing your genius with the world!
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5 Necessary Steps Towards Global Intelligence
Posted on 08. Jan, 2009 by jon.
Was very encouraged by the response to the blog post on Global Intelligence earlier this week (already in the Top 50 on Google for the phrase!). Wanted to follow up with some thoughts on what things are currently lacking for this vision to get closer to reality. In other words, what’s need to get us to a true Global Intelligence System (GIS…I kind of like the sound of that!). Here’s a start. If you have more thoughts please add them in the comments:
#1: Much better filters for content – There just aren’t that many great content filters out there right now (and I mean filters in the “tastemaker” sense of the word rather than the “restrict access” sense of the word). Sites like Digg and Reddit are *way* better than what we used to have but there’s still a lot to be done in this area. For example, I recently came across the excellent videos from the Business Innovation Factory. They’re kind of like a hybrid of Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast and the TED videos. I love ‘em. Which makes sense because I love ETL and have listened to almost every podcast and I’ve probably watched 100+ TED videos.
So why is that I’m only now discovering the Business Innovation Factory stuff? It’s because there’s not a great filter out there for me to discover them. That filter not only needs to be more all-encompassing than something like Digg (which offers a very male, very young, fairly geeky take on things) and it also has to be personalized for my tastes.
People are working on this right now but we still have a long ways to go here.
#2: Connections between disparate networks – I spent a fair amount of time in 2008 learning about nutrition. There are a number of different forums and social networks that are focused on the subject. However, there’s very little that connects these together. Hence, I’m hesitant to invest myself fully into supply my knowledge to any one network because the only people who will benefit from it are the people on that network.
This *is* starting to change. Some examples of companies that are helping to push this change forward including Disqus (which we just rolled out for our blog comments), Ning (which at least allows common authentication across all of its social nets) and Facebook (Facebook Connect could help significantly with this problem).
The silo approach that networks have historically operated with is a huge barrier to true sharing of global intelligence. And I say that knowing full well that eduFire is still predominantly a silo (something we’re intending to improve upon this year).
#3: Easier publishing tools – I think we made a major step forward in this year in the last couple of years. Leading the charge were micro-blogging platforms like Tumblr and Twitter, social networks with easy publishing capabilities like Facebook and Ning and video sharing platforms like YouTube, Vimeo and Viddler. It’s getting really easy to share information.
The next major leap forward will be the increased ability for “set it and forget it” information sharing. For example, if I’m giving a talk at a university it needs to be incredibly easy for me to have that talk recorded, uploaded to the Web, tagged appropriately, RSS-ified, etc. Sites like UStream.tv are doing some very cool things in this area. But there’s still too much work involved. As it gets more simple you’ll see an absolute explosion in content.
Of course with the explosion in content the question naturally arises “Won’t we be overwhelmed with all this content?” I think that question is best answered by #1 above (better filters). As long as the filters are high-quality it doesn’t really matter how much content is created. I’ll only see what’s best-suited for me at any given moment.
#4: Better publishing hardware (for audio and video) – Publishing tools only go so far. If the hardware blows, the content that they generate is going to be lackluster. Look at webcams…most webcams end up generating video of people that would suggest to the uninformed observer that dwell in a cave somewhere. The video is grainy, the lighting is bad…and that’s if you know what you are doing.
As with the other items, there are some cool things happening right now. Just about every video blogger I know seems to be talking about the new HD Flip cameras. I’ve also heard of some good audio recording devices for the iPhone. But we’re not quite there yet. We’ve come a long way in the last 3 years and that’s in large part due to the stellar success of YouTube and the relative success of podcasting.
#5 – A different mindset – This really has nothing to do with technology. It’s all about our individual approach to sharing information and knowledge with the world. Too many people (myself included) are still too wrapped up in hoarding knowledge. There’s still too much of the mentality that I need to keep what I know to myself lest you learn from it and benefit. This is called scarcity mentality.
But look at two stunning examples of what happens when you take an abundance mentality: TED and 37Signals. A few years ago I blogged that I hoped TED would be made available to the world. A couple of days later I was surprised to see an email in my inbox from Chris Anderson, TED’s curator, letting me know that something very cool was in the works. Indeed it was. By sharing all of the TED content for free on the Web not only have they helped educate and inspire millions, they’ve also done more for their brand than anything else they could do. Three years ago, TED was relatively unknown outside of certain circles. Now it’s rare that I bump into a young professional type who hasn’t heard of TED.
37Signals is another great example. Sure they’re predominantly a software company that makes killer products. But they’re also one of the best examples of an abundance mentality out there. By blogging openly about their products, methodologies, etc., they’ve built up a legion of fans. Their book Getting Real has inspired many entrepreneurs (while have the nice ancillary benefit of getting a lot of revenue for their company) and their recent live events have been a big hit. Sure, they could have been very covert in their approach to software development but they chose not to. And not only did we all benefit, so did they.
OK, this post is getting on the long-ish side so I’ll stop there but I’d love to hear any thoughts that you might have. What other things are necessary for us to move towards a Global Intelligence System? Please post in the comments!
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eduFire Classes Launching Soon – Important Info for Tutors
Posted on 08. Jan, 2009 by jon.
For the last couple of months many of you have been participating in our eduFire Classes Beta. We’ve ran hundreds of classes and have been very happy to hear your feedback (most of which has been quite positive!). We’re happy to announce that we’re just about to move out of the beta period.
eduFire Classes will launch officially on January 20th. I’ve included some additional details in this forum post. A very important thing to mention is that when we move out of the beta period classes that we’re created in beta that have recurring sessions that extend past the 20th will need to be re-created. That’s pretty easy to do using our cloning feature but definitely something we wanted to make sure all of our tutors knew about.
So go check out the forum post and if you have any questions or comments please add a reply in that thread.
We’re really excited to launch eduFire Classes. As far as we’re aware it’ll be one of the first (the first?) open platforms for live interactive video learning on the Web. That’s pretty cool and it’s awesome to have such a great group of people who are excited to be pioneers in online learning!
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How to Record Your Lessons
Posted on 06. Jan, 2009 by Koichi.
Recording your lessons is a great way to allow you to go back and review, especially since the recording is full sized, making it really easy to experience the same lesson twice. Currently, students and tutors of one-on-one sessions can record their sessions and re-watch them later. We’re working on one-to-many recordings, so I’m sure you can expect them in time.
Recording your one-on-one classes is really easy. When you’re in your session, just click on “meeting” then find “record meeting.”
From here, you’ll get a prompt. You can name your session and add a description if you want, but you don’t have to. All that is up to you. There is however, one thing you don’t want to do, and that is clicking on the “Record audio from speaker phone” button. If you click on that, you’ll suddenly find that your audio doesn’t work. Just skip that step and click “okay.”
And now, you’re recording! Your students can now go back and review everything that went on (and so can you!). Definitely take advantage of this amazing feature!
