Archive for 'ShoutOuts'
eduFire in Mashable
Posted on 24. Sep, 2008 by reg.
Mashable wrote up a good piece on eduFire this week describing our launch into the test prep space. Here’s the link:
eduFire Expands Live Tutoring Service to Offer Test Prep for Higher Ed
In light of fiscal woes and increased pressures to employ test prep anyway one can, without having to consult costly private, local institutions, a place such as eduFire seems to target a need that is almost definitely going to become more evident with time.
Great to see the word spreading about eduFire!
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Happy Birthday to a Fellow Educational Entrepreneur
Posted on 14. Sep, 2008 by reg.
Wanted to wish a quick Happy Birthday to Dave Schappell, the founder of TeachStreet. Dave’s one of a handful of entrepreneurs who’s approaching the education space in an innovative and very smart way. If you haven’t taken a look at TeachStreet yet, please do so. Dave and the folks at TeachStreet are helping to make life easier for those teacherpreneurs among us by empowering local teachers to reach students and provide better information and organization around their offerings. They’re in Seattle and Portland now but will be expanding into other cities.
Happy Birthday Dave and we here at eduFire wish you guys continued success!
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Grockit Launch
Posted on 10. Sep, 2008 by reg.
Back in July of last year I got my first whiff of Grockit, a MMOG for learning. Based on what I know of Farb and the team over there I was very impressed and excited to see it launch. Today, Grockit launched at TechCrunch50 and it’s a very cool looking application.
Basically a group of people get together around a question and discuss the right answer. One player can try to convince other players of right answers in attempt to reach a group consensus. It facilitates student-to-student learning which is a fantastic way to prepare for an exam.
Grockit hasn’t launched publicly but their presentation is embedded below. Kudos to the team over there for a great-looking product. I’m excited to see this evolve!
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TechCrunch50 and the Future of Video Learning
Posted on 09. Sep, 2008 by reg.
My productivity has been hampered a little bit this week thanks to UStream’s continuous broadcasting of TechCrunch50. For those of you not in the know, TechCrunch50 is a conference put on by the folks at TechCrunch that selects 50 (er, 52, don’t ask, I’m sure it’s a long story) of the most promising start-ups and give them a chance to launch their company in front of an audience of VCs, bloggers and other big wig types. They’ve done a great job with it and have a fantastic variety of start-ups presenting.
But here’s what I’ve found to be the most interesting. TechCrunch50 is actually a tremendous learning opportunity. I advise a few start-ups and yesterday morning as I was starting to watch the stream I immediately hopped on email and told them “start watching!”. There were a couple of can’t-miss presentations including a panel on venture capital, a panel on raising angel funding and a great talk with Peter Thiel that was hosted by Michael Arrington (embedded below).
I’ve sat in a lot of MBA classes over the years and listened to a ton of business podcasts and I have to admit that this is some of the best “educational” content I’ve seen. And here’s what’s awesome: I didn’t need to leave my house to consume it. Here’s what else is awesome: None of the presenters/panelists at TechCrunch50 had to do anything extra to “create” this content. 30-ish hours of the conference, 30 hours of content created.
This actually represents a fairly radical shift in information sharing. Similar to way back in the day when I asked for TED to be shared with the world (it happened although I can’t of course take any credit for it), this represents a massive change in the knowledge distribution. Something like TC50 is now no longer only available to those who can fork out $3,000 for a ticket but rather available (at least the “content”) for free. And what will happen to TC50 next year because they’re making this available? Will no one go because you can watch it in your living room? Nope, exactly the opposite effect will happen. More people than ever will want to present at TC50 and attend the conference because of the awareness that having this conference online brings. Just look at what happened with TED. The number of people who know about TED today dwarfs the number who knew about it a few years ago and that’s largely thanks to making TED available to download, on iTunes, YouTube, etc. (Check out Ken Robinson video below…it’s awesome!)
For the better part of the last decade this is exactly what I’ve wanted to see happen. Being a teacher I’d always ask the question “If you could stick a camera at the back or every classroom and mic up every instructor what would be the value of all of the content you are creating?” The answer, I think, is enormous. At eduFire we’re pursuing this problem in a different way than UStream or most anybody else out there but we share the ethos of trying to create an explosion in video learning and helping to democratize human knowledge.
My hat is off to Mike and the gang at TC50 for what they’ve done. It’s also off to UStream and others like Justin.TV who are making streaming live video over the web easier than it has ever been.
The world is changing very rapidly right now and in large part that’s due to the fact that we increasingly have access to much better information/knowledge then we have ever had. Google has been able to create a mammoth business by indexing the information and intelligence on the web and making it easily accessible. The companies of the next 100 years will create mammoth businesses by indexing the information and intelligence in our heads and making that easily accessible.
But that’s a topic for a later date. :)
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A couple of cool eduFire mentions
Posted on 06. Sep, 2008 by reg.
It’s cool to see more mentions of eduFire these days. Even a few tweets which is cool to see. :) Today I came across a couple of cool mentions and thought I’d blog about them.
The first is in Clayton Christensen’s new book Disrupting Class. A while back I connected with one of Clayton’s co-authors, Michael Horn. Michael and I had a great chat about the future of education and it’s an honor to see eduFire mentioned in the book even if it’s just a couple of sentences (below). The authors describe the emergence of “user-generated, collaborative learning libraries through which participants worldwide can instruct and learn from one another”:
EduFire is another mover in this area. It provides a place for tutors to work with students.
We also had a short write-up in a TechPluto article entitled “Five Frontrunners of e-learning 2.0″.
They aim to create a platform which allows live learning taking place all over the Internet anytime from anywhere. They also give an opportunity to the tutors to get paid for the time a tutor invests into live-tutoring. The best part is that the tutor sets the price of tutoring and majority of that price goes into teacher’s pocket only (unlike the KPOs, charging big money from the learners and feeding meager bucks to the tutors).
Thanks for the mentions guys! Cool to be mentioned and associated with some of the other companies doing cool things on the forward edge of learning.
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Paul Graham wants to fund us
Posted on 22. Jul, 2008 by reg.
Cool post up on the YCombinator site this week detailing different ideas that Graham’s quasi-incubator would like to fund:
Startup Ideas We’d Like to Fund
#13 is online learning. Here’s the blurb:
13. Online learning. US schools are often bad. A lot of parents realize it, and would be interested in ways for their kids to learn more. Till recently, schools, like newspapers, had geographical monopolies. But the web changes that. How can you teach kids now that you can reach them through the web? The possible answers are a lot more interesting than just putting books online.
One route would be to start with test prep services, for which there’s already demand, and then expand into teaching kids more than just how to score high on tests. Another would be to start with games and gradually make them more thoughtful. Another, particularly for younger kids, would be to let them learn by watching one another (anonymously) solve problems.
Good stuff!
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eduFire in the News
Posted on 16. Jul, 2008 by reg.
It’s been a while since I’ve rounded up the press eduFire has gotten recently so I figured I’d take the time to do so. Thanks to any of you who helped to make these stories happen!
Ich bin ein Berliner! eduFire Offers Language Tutoring over Video Chat (TechCrunch)
Parlez Francais (and More) With eduFire (NewTeeVee)
EduFire brings tutoring into the Web 2.0 age (VentureBeat)
How eduFire operates as a virtual company using Basecamp, Campfire, and Highrise (37signals)
We’re missing a bunch so our apologies if you wrote up eduFire and we didn’t include you here. We really appreciate it!
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The Top 21 Language Bloggers on the Web
Posted on 19. Jun, 2008 by reg.
Been scanning the blogosphere lately looking for people who are blogging on the subject of learning languages. There aren’t a *ton* of them but I have come across some really good blogs. So, here we go, in no particular order, with the Top 21 Language Bloggers on the Web. And I know I’m leaving some people out…my apologies in advance! Feel free to add others in the comments! :)
#1 – Omniglot – This blog covers a wide spectrum of languages and offers up fun stuff like Mystery Language competitions and Words of the Day. If you’re passionate about languages in general (vs. simply looking to learn one particular language) this one’s a must-read/must-subscribe.
#2 – ForeignLanguageBlog.com – This appropriately named blog focuses on a variety of aspects of language learning including stuff like intensive learning and raising bilingual children. This blog updates frequently and is full of lots of interesting language-related links.
#3 – Language Hat – Language Hat is definitely one of the smartest language-related blogs you’ll find. There’s a great community of people reading and commenting on the blog as you can see evidence of here. Highly recommended if you’re looking for something a bit more academic.
#4 – Free Language – If you’re one of those people who can never have too many resources or links in your quest to learn than this one’s perfect for you. By far one of the best collection of language-related learning links on the web as you can witness here and here.
#5 – Babelhut – Want to know how to set up a Spanish keyboard in Vista? Looking for insight into study habits for Japanese? You’ve come to the right place. Babelhut hasn’t been around very long but I like what I see so far!
#6 – Confessions of a Language Addict – Perhaps the most basic blog design ever but don’t let that fool you. There’s some great content here. For example, take a look at these recent posts on language immersion and the best language learning methods. Well worth the read.
#7 – Tower of Confusion – I love people who approach languages with the same intensity that Kevin Garnett approaches basketball. The author of Tower of Confusion definitely fits the bill. Check out recent posts on Migration to Anki and Shadowing Alone. Good stuff…
#8 – The Linguist on Language – Steve Kauffman is one of the most well-known language bloggers. He’s the author of The Linguist and has developed LingQ, a very cool language learning system. Given Steve’s deep expertise on language learning this is a good one to keep tabs on.
#9 – Polyglot To Be – Polyglot To Be is an interesting look at multiple ways to learn languages ranging from mnemonics to context reading. Seeing the variety of approaches and languages up close and personal is great…language learning voyeurism at its best!
#10 – Language Study Blog @ Suite101.com – You can think of Suite101.com as kinda like About.com. Their Language Study Blog is very well done. For example, check out this article on learning languages with an iPod.
#11 – Learn Spanish with Tomísimo – If you’re learning how to speak Spanish this one’s a must read. While not every post has to do specifically with learning the language for the most part there’s a high signal-to-noise ratio here and some fresh ideas (e.g., 6 Reasons You Should Talk to Strangers in Spanish). Two thumbs up from this end!
#12 – Behind the Curtain – Stuart Jay Raj is the self-proclaimed “Language Guy” (interesting background article here). He backs it up with some very solid content and resources on his website. What can we say…the guys knows his stuff!
#13 – Dr. Goodword’s Language Blog – More linguistics than foreign language learning, Dr. Goodword is interesting to follow nonetheless. Reading this blog gives you an increased sense of appreciation for the richness of language (e.g., this recent post on rapeseed oil) which is an important thing for all aspiring polyglots to have.
#14 – Learning Spanish Blog – Another must-read if you’re learning Spanish, I’ve been very impressed with this blog. Totally awesome links, reviews and more. Plus, if you really want you can learn to swear in Spanish. ;)
#15 – Italian Language, Grammar and Usage Resource – Since I’ve offered up a couple of Spanish-specific blogs I’d be remiss to ignore my Italian friends. This blog has a ton of Italian lessons and even an opportunity to follow their word of the day via Twitter. Gotta love technology huh?!
#16 – Learn Japanese – One fo the best Japanese learning blogs on the Net, Learn Japanese is chock full of helpful hints on subjects ranging from flashcard usage to whether or not to take Japanese classes. A must-have for all of you learning Japanese. (UPDATE: The author of the blog has moved it to here.)
#17 – Keith’s Voice on Extreme Language Learning – Extreme Language Learning?! I like it. Posts on stuff like the Iversen Method and using YouTube to learn languages make this blog worth checking out, especially if you’re learning Kanji.
#18 – The Four Hour Workweek – This one’s a bit of a cheat because most of Tim Ferriss’s posts *aren’t* about learning languages but the ones he has posted (e.g., How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour) are very interesting and the comments tend to be well worth the read as well. Let’s hope Tim posts more on language learning in the future!
#19 – The Language Chronicle – Very good yet very broad. Everything from Zulu to Hebrew to Ahmaric can be found here. Lots of links here and other interesting stuff. This is a good blog to put in your feedreader and scan from time to time.
#20 – The Linguist Blogger – Not to be confused with #8 on our list, The Linguist Blogger is a solid collection of articles and links. It’s a blog that seems to be picking up a lot of steam, both in terms of quality and quantity of posts as well as comment activity. If this was a Billboard chart The Linguist Blogger would have a bullet by it. :)
#21 – All Japanese All The Time Dot Com – This one almost didn’t make the list but a couple of our commenters pointed out what a great blog this and upon further review it definitely deserves to make the list. Khatzumoto has a very inspirational story, learning Japanese in all of 18 months. I think you’ll definitely dig this one.
Thanks for bearing with me through all 21 and I hope you find these helpful. Also, don’t forget to check out and subscribe to our Resources Blog in addition to this blog. And as I mentioned before, please post comments and tell me about all the great language learning I missed!
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eduFire on BNET and TechZulu
Posted on 24. Apr, 2008 by jon.
Here are a couple of interviews I did recently about eduFire that I wanted to pass along.
First is with Zorianna Kit of BNET on the Dog & Pony Show. They somehow managed to edit out all the dumb stuff I said so it turned out pretty well. ;)
Second is with the TechZulu guys. This one is a little longer and I go into a little more depth into what our model is.
eduFire on TechZulu
Thanks to the people at Dog & Pony and TechZulu for the exposure!
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eduFire in the News: Interview on SoCalTech News
Posted on 15. Apr, 2008 by jon.
Ben Kuo of SoCalTech News did an interview with me last week and it hit their site today. Worth a read if you’re interested in hearing more about where we’re at and where we’re heading:
Interview with Jon Bischke, eduFire
