Higher-ed online platform Coursera had an interesting NYTimes article recently talking about it’s partnerships and funding:
An interactive online learning system created by two Stanford computer scientists plans to announce Wednesday that it has secured $16 million in venture capital and partnerships with four major universities.
Besides Stanford, the university partners include the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton.
Although computer-assisted learning was pioneered at Stanford during the 1960s, and for-profit online schools like the University of Phoenix have been around for several decades, a new wave of interest in online education is taking shape.
“When we offer a professor the opportunity to reach 100,000 students, they find it remarkably appealing,” Dr. Koller said.
Earlier in the year it was stated that Chuck Eesley would host an entrepreneur class, but instead Chuck mysteriously dropped his course from Coursera and released his class in entrepreneurial spirit, called Venture Lab. This is a commercial I had to make in one day for one of the projects, my good friends Chris, Sarah, and their beautiful son Adam, were nice enough to indulge my last second commercial.
SXSW 2012, this is the second year I went to the SXSW Film and Interactive Festival, it was another great experience. (You can read 2011 post here.) SXSW is a large festival that spans multiple weeks, which is broken into three categories, Film, Interactive, and Music. The Film and Interactive sections appeal to me the most since that’s where my work and passions lie. According to SXSW Film and Interactive combined attract over 30,000 registrants.
So many great panels, talks, and people at SXSW 2012, I will try to recap some of the awesome ones.
This talk was given by Prerna Gupta, CEO of Khush. Khush develops musical applications that leverage artificial intelligence technology in fun interactive ways. In this talk Prerna explains how she was able to ‘hack’ the YouTube system to obtain viral marketing for her products. As CEO of Khush, a small development company, primarily existing of developers, Prerna took the lead for marketing their mobile apps, and she says she became obsessed with viral videos. Customers who purchase the app after watching one of her viral videos are more engaged, and spend more money on her applications. Prerna defines the ‘viral building blocks’ as music (cover songs, original music, humor/parody, etc), surprise (shocking, cause for sharing), cuteness (puppies, kittens, people respond to cuteness), B00bs (both men and women respond), humor (parody really works, celebrity parody, parody can become a successful formula, absurdity can work), celebrity (having a real celebrity, or referencing them through parody). Prerna goes on to talk about how production is becoming more affordable with the advent of DSLR video technology. She informs that one should pay attention to the YouTube thumbnail, and to hack what thumbnail appears. Seeding the video is important for getting the video views started, she will send out new videos on e-mail list servs, post them on message boards, and utilize existing social networks. Forbes wrote a post about the talk here.
This talk, which was given directly after ‘Hacking YouTube,’ took a 180 degree turn in tone, given by Jeremey Sanchez and Robert John Davis of Global Strategies and Ogilvy. Instead of attempting to break down virality to a science, they attempt to build meaningful lasting relationships through video. They are much more interested in helping build brands, and the idea of ‘going viral’ is scary to them, because they say if a video goes viral most likely it’s because most people are making fun of it. They would rather focus their energies on how to make videos relavant to the brand. They talked about the interesting differences between Adage’s and Unruly’s viral charts. An interesting statistic that they presented is that less than 4% of YouTube videos receive more than 100,000 views.
And they list their five step program as:
Have a plan: What is the trigger event? Use Google Insights and Trends. The click after play is most important.
Creative in context: The video needs to do a job, by bridging content, being promotional, and leading to engagement.
Optimize first: Make sure the video is optimized for search. The sum of the long tail SEO is greater than the initial views of the head. Understand the basics of metadata (title, description, tags), and leverage them. Audience retention is of absolute importance. Don’t underestimate the value of a great thumbnail.
Distribute and promote: Utilizing paid advertising services is a great way to get the views started, such as advertising through YouTube, Google, and Facebook.
Measure what matters: There are volume oriented metrics and business orient metrics, the latter being more important. Tools such as Salesforce help with this. Most meaningful metric is PPI (post play interaction)
Gary was giving a fireside chat, and caught him giving some good tips on brands and leveraging social media. Gary has built a small empire from utilizing social media.
Gary Vaynerchuk
Some other pics…
There is so much I want to share, so I hope to update this post, but wanted to get it out now.
When researching for my current graduate theory class, and about human-computer interfaces I came across this Manovich quote that encapsulates my feelings on the matter of cinema and HCI:
Cinema, the major cultural form of the twentieth century, has found a new life as the toolbox of the computer user. Cinematic means of perception, of connecting space and time, of representing human memory, thinking, and emotion have become a way of work and a way of life for millions in the computer age. Cinema’s aesthetic strategies have become basic organizational principles of computer software. The window into a fictional world of a cinematic narrative has become a window into a datascape. In short, what was cinema is now the human-computer interface.
- Manovich, Lev (2011-06-28). The Language of New Media (Leonardo Book Series) (p. 86). The MIT Press. Kindle Edition.
I look forward to learning more about HCI and interaction design through the process of trying to develop an app, and hope to post more about HCI in this blog. HCI is extremely exciting to me.
I’m trying to learn the best way to convey information over the internet, and believe screencasting is a powerful way to share a process. Let me know if you have any questions about Premier Pro, or this video. Almost all the videos I make are edited within Premiere Pro CS5, and I explain why in the video!
Also, look for a future post on my experience at SXSW 2012, the conference/festival I’m currently attending for Interactive and Film.
Here is a behind the scene video I made about the Capitol Tour App:
It was an interesting process making this video, since I was also the lead cinematographer for the video content in the app. It was a great experience working with Dr. Crimmons and Chris Escobar through out the development process. One of the greatest memories was being able to meet, light, and film Jimmy Carter. You can see the Jimmy Carter interview I filmed by downloading the app now.
An inspiring video labled Noam Chomsky – Purpose of Education from Learning Without Frontiers. I have roughly paraphrased what I believe Noam Chomsky expresses in the video. The video is segmented into 4 parts, ‘Purpose of Education,’ ‘Impact of Technology,’ ‘Cost of Investment,’ and ‘Assessment vs Autonomy.’
Purpose of Education
There is the interpretation that comes from the enlightenment, which holds that the highest goal in life is to acquire and create, to search the riches of the past, and to internalize the significant parts for a quest of understanding.
The purpose of education from that point is to help people learn on their own.
The other concept is essentially indoctrination, where young people are placed in an existing framework, accepting orders, and not challenging existing frameworks. There are movements in society that prefer indoctrination in our educational systems over the concepts of traditional enlightenment. Indoctrination is the opposite of the traditional enlightenment form of education.
Does one study for passing tests, or does one study for creative inquiry?
Graduate school and general research tend to follow the ideas of the traditional enlightenment. It should be like this all the way down through kindergarten, but there are forces in society that would rather people not ask too many questions, to be indoctrinated, and obedient.
Impact of Technology
There has certainly been very substantial growth in new technology, technology of communication and information, and it has helped change the culture of society. But we should bare in mind that the current technological changes, while important, have nowhere near the level of impact that the technological changes of about a century, or so, ago have had. The shift from a typewriter to a computer, or a telephone to an e-mail, while significant, do not begin to compare with the shift from a sailing vessel to the telegraph. And the same is true with other technology, such as plumbing, where it has had a huge impact on the overall health of city when compared with antibiotics. So while current technology is extremely important, we should not forget the changes that have already taken place.
As far as technology and education is concerned, technology is basically neutral. Technology is like a hammer, a hammer doesn’t care how you use it, whether it used to build a house or used to hurt someone, a hammer can do either.
The internet is extremely valuable if you know what you’re looking for. If you know what you are looking for, and you have a framework of understanding, which directs you to certain information, then it can be very useful. Of course you always have to question the framework of understanding, and modify it accordingly through the research and learning process. For example, a person will not become a biologist just through having access to a biology library, with no other guidance. With out guidance and direction, the internet can become just the process of picking out random factoids that are meaningless on their own, without proper context.
A person who wins the Nobel Prize in biology is not the person who reads the most journals and has taken the most notes, it is the person who knew what to look for. And cultivating that capacity, to seek what is significant and always being willing to question whether one is on the right track, is what education is going to be about; regardless of the technology utilized in the learning process.
Cost or Investment
Education is discussed in terms of whether it is a worthwhile investment, does it create human capitol that can be used for economic growth, and so on. It is a very strange distorting way to even propose the question.
Do we want a society of free, creative, and independent individuals, able to appreciate and gain from the culture achievements of the past and to add to them? Or do we want people who can increase GDP? They are not the same thing.
Educational systems should create better human beings.
Assessment vs Autonomy
There is an increasing importance on passing examinations when compared to earlier forms of education. Taking tets can be of some use, for both the learner and teacher, but beyond that tests do not tell you much.
A person can do magnificently on every test, and understand very little. You can be in some course that you have no interest in, and you can study hard for the test, and you can ace it, and a couple of weeks later you forget what the topic was.
A test can be a useful device, if it contributes to the constructive purposes of education. If it is just a set of hurdles it can be meaningless, and divert you from what is more important, your passions.
The current system is geared to have students pass hurdles, but not geared to help students learn, understand, and explore. Tests should be ancillary, not the primary form of assessment. Passing tests don’t even begin to compare with searching and inquiring, and to pursing topics that engage us and excite us. That’s far more significant than passing tests.
A renowned physicist once said to a student ‘It does not matter what what the class covers, it matters what you discover.’
Education is really aimed at helping students get to the point where they can learn on their own. Because that’s what one does for their life, not just absorb material and repeat it.
I found the entire video inspirational, but those were just some of my favorite parts. Watch the entire video below:
I personally believe that technology will enable greater democracy for education. The platforms that are being built now, such as Kahn Academy, Lynda.com, and Coursera, will enable students to have access to valuable information with the assistance of guidance, direction, and the ability to customize their own learning framework. And I do believe that a greater education can solve many of the worlds existing problems.
This is a pretty awesome Apple II emulator that was built with web technologies, meaning it runs great on most modern browsers. Cool to be able to experiment with their DOS. Amazing how graphical user interfaces (GUI) have become the standard. Even today though, there is a core of computer users whom still prefer use text based input, such as Terminal on the Mac, to operate the OS. For some OS functions, typing a command line is just faster than using a GUI, for others a GUI is much more efficient. Either way the GUI has revolutionized the way we interact with computers, and have made computers accessible even to larger populations than the Apple II originally did. I’m pretty sure the iPhone 4s outsold all the Apple IIs ever sold during it’s very first day on sale, pretty amazing to think about. This emulator is pretty cool stuff. And cool to see Apple’s DOS 3.3 in such an accessible format.
Firstly, you’ll need to call the contents of the disk up using the CATALOG command. As you might have guessed, this particular command will give you a catalogue or list of the contents of the disk. To use this command, from the BASIC prompt, type CATALOG & then hit RETURN. The disk drive will start up & the contents of the disk will be displayed on the screen. If the disk contents don’t display, there’s a chance that this is a specially protected disk & you will need to resort to more complicated measures to inspect the contents than this article outlines.
This year I am publicly stating a single goal, although of course I have many other things I want to accomplish during the year, I am only publicly documenting one goal.
Goal: Produce one application for the iOS platform, and sell at least one copy in the iTunes App Store (to preferably not me, or someone I know, but this will suffice if it’s Dec. 31st 2012 at 11:59pm.)
iOS applications are built using Objective-C with Apple’s robust Cocoa framework. It’s an object oriented programming language, with syntax structure possibly a bit more advanced than other OOPs.
So why iOS? I believe Apple has the largest existing framework for mobile development. Meaning that I could build cooler programs in less time, and also they have a vibrant development community, and consumer community. And of course, developing for mobile is an exciting platform, as the mobile (Phone + Tablet) experience is the most diverse experience.
Thus I’m starting out trying to learn C, the basis of Objective-C, and Java, a general OOP language, that is used in many introductory programming resources.
I have a good career in producing video content, so why am I planning on dedicating so much of my free time to learning how to develop an iOS application? Well, there is a saying going around “Program or be Programmed”, and I want to learn how to program.
This is the first application that I built, a simple drawing application. It was built in the Flash environment, built in Flashes OOP language, ActionScript. I built this web app in 2010.
Also, there is the documented ’10,000′ hour rule of becomming an expert, as reviewed in Gladwell’s book ‘Outliers’. Meaning that I would have to dedicate about 10 years to become an ‘expert’. That’s the plan anyways.
It will be fun to document my journey here. I don’t think I will have a viable application to share until December, as I want it to be cool. And that will take time. But I’m planning to allocate at least on average about 2 hours a day to my education of programming. And I might eventually post some ‘learning applications’ that I develop along my journey. My end goal is not to necessarily become a ‘software engineer’, but more become a programming expert on how to use coding as an artform to help define our future medium. How can one consider themselves a New Media Producer without being knowledgeable in the platform itself is not known. So if I become a software engineer of sorts in the process, it will be through the goal of wanting to help build platforms to experience and deliver content. I’m interested in helping design programs, and the interfaces that we use to consume media.
But basically I just want to be able to produce, design, and build cool stuff.
