A Talk with Invideous cofounder Jack Thorogood

Posted on August 30, 2010 by Victor Yu

Today we have Invideous cofounder Jack Thorogood with us today. Invideous is a new platform that promises to redefine the user experience in online video. Jack is with us today to talk about educational technology and Invideous.

1. Tell us a bit about yourself and how you got involved with invideous.

I’ve been working in the interactive online video sector for four years now; doesn’t sound like long but the space has seen a lot of changes over this time period. My first role in interactive video was as Head of Commercial for a company selling an interactive video advertising proposition to large FMCG companies such as Unilever and Proctor and Gamble. I started Invideous at the end of 2008 to explore a number of the more exciting opportunities in the interactive online video space that weren’t deemed core for my then employers.

2. Can you tell us a bit about your Social Playhead feature and how it improved the user experience in videos?

Our Social Playhead is a fantastic tool for enabling users to get a sense of ‘shared experience’ whilst watching an online video. This is having a tangible effect in terms of increasing dwell times on publisher video. The Social Playhead comes with an in-video instant messenger clients so viewers who are watching a video together can chat in real time about it.

3. How do you think this technology can be applied for educational technology?

From an educational standpoint, the technology allows a tutor to monitor a student’s process within an video and to answer questions as they arrive in real time.

4. What can we expect from invideous from the future?

We have an addition to the Social Playhead which will enable large groups to view simultaneously in a more organised, synchronous manner and take shared viewing an important stage further. We will also be moving many of our current social tools out of ‘in-player’ and onto mobile for better dual-screening.

We have some important upgrades slated for our pay-per-view platform too, which is the mainstay of our business.

5. What other technologies in the educational space personally excite you?

The opportunity to charge for quality educational video content is a big deal for us. We have many publishers and prospective publishers in the education sector who are using our platform to successfully charge for their often niche and specialist – but always valuable – content. This is something which is going to increase massively over the next few years.

The use of AI (artificial intelligence) in the educational space is also an awesome proposition.

Thanks for talking to us Jack! Again, you can find invideous here. For more information on how to change online education, see Udemy’s main site here.

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MindSnacks, An Interview with Jeff Evans

Posted on August 27, 2010 by Victor Yu

MindSnacks cofounder Jeff Evans is with us today. MindSnacks is a mobile app that helps users learn languages with several different games. It is now available on the Apple App Store. Jeff is with us today to talk about education and technology.

1. Tell us a bit about yourself and how you got involved with MindSnacks?

MindSnacks was founded out of a frustration with the current product offerings for learning a foreign language. My co-founder Jesse Pickard and I were college roommates, and had tried to learn Spanish on our own for years, with mixed results. We just couldn’t find a product that was engaging enough to maintain our learning commitments, and that didn’t require devoting large chunks out of every day to the learning process.

So, a couple months ago, we got together and decided to build our own tool for learning a foreign language that is fun, exciting, and convenient to use. After hiring our lead developer Karl, the team was formed and we got accepted into the DreamIt Ventures incubator program that just ended in August.

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Interview with Connexions founder Richard Baraniuk

Posted on August 26, 2010 by Victor Yu

Today we have Richard Barniuk with us today. Richard is professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Rice University and has been involved in Connexions since day one. He is with us today to talk about education and technology.

1. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got involved with Connexions.

I’ve been an electrical engineering professor at rice university since 1993. In 1999, frustrated by the fact that there was no appropriate textbook for my class, I considered writing my own. But on careful reflection, i realized that
the educational publishing system was broken and that writing a new book and publishing it through this system would not make a meaningful impact. At the same point in time i was starting to learn about and use open source software (linux) and was marveling at its highly efficient community development model and its high quality output. And so it was not much of a leap to conceive of building an open source textbook. Connexions was born from this frustration and opportunity and took shape rapidly, since i was aided immediately by a number of faculty and students who all shared the same frustrations and saw the same opportunities.

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A Talk with Edublogs’s Sales Manager Ronnie Blurt

Posted on August 24, 2010 by Victor Yu

Edublogs sales manager Ronnie Blurt is with us today. Ronnie works with Edublogs, a blogging platform for educators and students. Edublogs has over 500,000 blogs registered, and it is used by institutions such as Stanford University and the Department of Education. Ronnie is here with us today to talk more about education and technology.

1. Tell us more about edublogs and why it was started?

Edublogs was started by James Farmer in 2005 after he began using blogs and realized their power in education. In the past five years, Edublogs has grown to be the leader in Educational Blogging and provides nearly a million blogs to thousands of teachers, professors, and students all over the world. In addition, now with Edublogs Campus, entire schools, universities, and school districts can provide access to blogs to their entire staff and student body.
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Open Culture founder Dan Colman sits down with us

Posted on August 23, 2010 by Victor Yu

Today we have Open Culture founder Dan Colman with us. Open Culture is a website that links users with the best free cultural and educational media on the web. Dan is the director and associate dean of Stanford University’s continuing studies program. He is here with us today to talk more about education and technology.

1. Tell us a bit about your background and you got involved in Open Culture.
Ok, here’s the short version. After getting my PhD, I spent a good number of years working at an e-learning venture owned by Stanford, Oxford and Yale. When I moved to Stanford in 2006, my program (Stanford Continuing Studies) started contributing to the emerging open course movement, and I saw an opportunity to curate open educational resources (defined broadly) and highlight intelligent video and audio for lifelong learners everywhere. So I started Open Culture. And four years later it keeps on going and growing.

2. What do you think is the role of the web in changing education?

That’s a big question. Right now, the web is doing a great job of distributing/democratizing information. As Udemy well knows, the world now has access to thousands of lectures and hundreds of courses from major universities. That’s a wonderful development. But, as I cautioned on Open Culture last week, there’s more to getting a rounded education than simply watching lectures. You get that education (to quote myself) “when you couple lectures with readings, when you chew over ideas in a discussion section, when you analyze the lectures and readings in critical papers, when you take exams that force you to synthesize everything you’ve learned during the entire semester, etc.” Right now the web doesn’t do a great job of facilitating these other critical pieces, and sadly the pace of innovation in elearning has been relatively slow. We’ll eventually get there, but we will need a better effort during the coming decade than we’ve had during this past one.

3. What audience were you expecting to target with Open Culture? Did your expectations match up with reality?

Honestly, I defined the audience very broadly. I created the site for anyone who wants to keep growing and learning new things. Age doesn’t matter. Nor does geographic location. Only curiosity counts. That’s an endlessly big audience.

4. What were some of the technical and administrative problems with Open Culture?

The technology is fairly straightforward. So really the biggest challenge comes down to gathering the cultural media and writing the commentary. I do that almost entirely by myself. So I’m dealing with some very basic issues — like how to balance the site with my main priorities: family and work.

5. Finally, what can we expect from Open Culture in these next few years?

It’s hard to say right now. On one level, I’m pretty happy with what the site is doing right now. And certainly users seem to enjoy it. To keep things interesting, I’m always thinking about new directions, and they will require time, investments, strategic partnerships, etc. In short, a quantum leap. So it is still all TBD.

Thanks for sitting down with us today Dan! You can find Open Culture here. For more information about education and technology, see udemy’s main webpage here.

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E-Clippings; an interview with Mark Oehlert

Posted on August 19, 2010 by Victor Yu

Mark Oehlert is here with us today to talk about his views on education. Mark is a recognized expert in education, having worked in e-learning for 10 years and for firms like Booz Allen Hamilton. Mark is currently working at the Defense Acquisition University, described as a “A U.S. Department of Defense university focused on improving the learning outcomes for over 150,000 acquisition personnel.” Mark has also written the book Driving Results Through Social Networks.

1. What inspired you to start e-Clippings?
That’s actually a really important question to me. My blog has always been primarily me talking through stuff with myself and letting other people watch me do that. I have a wide range of interests and what I really enjoy is finding the patterns, the connections between what people would normally see as disparate parts with no real relationships; my blog is where I tend to do that synthesis. I love the interaction with people but I really need somewhere just to get all this information out of my head where I can work on it.
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Wordsteps cofounder Vladimir Saranchin sits down with us

Posted on August 18, 2010 by Victor Yu

Wordsteps cofounder Vladimir Saranchin is with us today. Wordsteps is an language learning website that helps users learn and retain foreign words. Users can spend 15-20 minutes a day learning 20 word, with results in about 240 words per month and roughly 3000 words per year. Vladimir is with us today to talk about wordsteps and online education.

1. Tell us a bit about your background and how you got involved in wordsteps.

While working on our first project to help people learn English language called RapidSteps.com, we realized what a great number of users wanted to learn foreign words, and not just English words. People demanded simple and convenient service with no confusing details; something that allowed them to monitor statistics and learning progress.

So we’ve gathered all that feedback and gave birth to a convenient international online service to improve and keep users vocabularies smart with minimum efforts and time. And guess what! Even if you plan to go out with friends for a beer on Friday, you will still have enough time to learn a couple of new words with WordSteps.com!
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We talk with Saskatoon Catholic Cyber School Administrator Darren Cannell

Posted on August 17, 2010 by Victor Yu

Administrator Darren Cannell is with us today. Darren works with the Saskatoon Catholic Cyber School, an online k-12 school which delivers accredited classes to Canadian students. Darren also writes ferquently about education on his blog Tado. He is here with us today to talk about education and technology.

1. What inspired you to start blogging?

Blogging for me was a newsletter for my online teaching staff, I use it to share my thoughts, websites, the educational articles and anything else that I think would benefit the teaching staff at the online school for which I am the administrator. Since the original plan it has become a repository of my thoughts, approaches to online education, and resources that more than my teaching staff view daily. But I still blog for my staff and if others find it interesting and of value…yahoooo.
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Gresham College, an interview with Communication Manager James Franklin

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Victor Yu

We’re excited to have James Franklin, communications manager at Gresham College, with us today. James works for Gresham College, an institution of higher learning established in 1597 which offers free lectures and instruction to the public. James is with us here to share his views on open education.

1. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got involved with Gresham College and it’s OpenCourseWare program.

After my postgraduate degree in philosophy, I eventually found my way into online editing. From there I was lucky enough to find an opening at Gresham College, a perhaps-unique institution, founded in 1597 to disseminate knowledge and learning through free public lectures (without ever having awarded a degree or admitted a student!) – somewhere with over 400 years experience of providing education and knowledge for free to all.

My initial position was to record the lectures and update the website, but I have since moved across to become the Communications Manager in charge of our online presence more generally, as well as handling the College’s press and publicity.
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Ideas and Thoughts, a talk with Dean Shareski

Posted on August 13, 2010 by Victor Yu

Today we have Dean Shareski, edublogger and Digital Learning Consultant with the Prairie South School Division. His blog, Ideas and Thoughts, documents new approaches to learning with technology. He is with us here today to talk about his views on education.

1. What inspired you to start Ideas and Thoughts?

I began blogging in Feb of 2005. As someone supporting teachers with technology, I felt it was important to explore and find out more about what blogging was and what it could mean. Very quickly it changed to a place of learning and connecting. I found it a great place to think and improve my communications skills. The following year I purchased my own domain and moved my blog over to it’s current location.
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