I love seeing these lists. It reminds us how technology has always played a part in education, but it also reminds us of how silly it often seems in retrospect. Look no further than the mass of technologies shown over the last 20 years. These will likely seem quite silly in another 20.
Maybe I should cut them some slack since they just opened shop today, but I expect more from an international company like Groupon, particularly when other companies (Starbucks) addressed these problems already.
Groupon, at this time, won’t let non-Koreans register for their service in Korea. They require a national ID number (주민등록번호) as part of a name validation procedure (possibly for “real-name” requirements, but more likely to help the company get more info on their users). Foreigners do have registration numbers, but most companies haven’t figured out how to verify our names/numbers in these sign-up forms (Starbuck’s seems to have done so in their wifi access forms).
I’m not asking for an English interface. After all, we are in Korea, we should expect to operate in Korean. I am, however, asking that I not be treated as a non-entity when I am a long-term legal resident of Korea. I am absolutely sick of this treatment.
So, please, Groupon, fix this. Thank you.
I disagree that this is a reinvention of education. These videos are little more than traditional lectures and tutors. It is a reinvention of content distribution with crowd sourced tutoring, which, don’t get me wrong, are both awesome.
The Khan Academy is a great repository for educational content (particularly mathematics-related topics) and a fantastic cheerleader for this combination of educational content and tutoring.
In a talk soon to grab several million views on TED.com, cognitive scientist Deb Roy Wednesday shared a remarkable experiment that hearkens back to an earlier era of science using brand-new technology. From the day he and his wife brought their son home five years ago, the family’s every movement and word was captured and tracked with a series of fisheye lenses in every room in their house. The purpose was to understand how we learn language, in context, through the words we hear.
This could be amazing. I’d love to see a write-up and the TED Talk. It’s not up yet 🙁
EDIT – The video was published (see below). I’m not as excited about the talk as I thought I would be. Over have of it is essentially an advertisement for his new company focusing on social media analysis. However, I hope that he publishes (or someone associated with the group does so) findings of words, locations, interlocutors, and such. Like many of the commenters are suggesting, this doesn’t seems to provide anything new theoretically; however, it can help to support (or weaken) these existing theories considering there has never been as complete (and unobtrusive) collection of data of this kind ever.
Great white paper here, particularly the categorization and listing of software and services. Also, good to see an extended discussion of what an LMS is and what one can expect from it.
via mindomo.com
This a great resource for educators or anyone looking for web-based tools.
Even if you cannot read Korean, you can still understand most of what is in this presentation. Great detail on Twitter use, particularly in regards to apps and Web usage.