Written on 15th June 2009
3 COMMENTS Ralf Rottmann, Serial Mobile Entrepreneur, Apple Addict
The United Nations Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technology and Development (GAID) today launched the University of the People, a non-profit institution that offers higher education for the masses.
“University of the People (UoPeople) is the world’s first tuition-free, online academic institution dedicated to the global advancement and democratization of higher education. The high-quality, low-cost and global pedagogical model embraces the worldwide presence of the Internet and dropping technology costs to bring collegiate level studies to even the poorest and most remote places on earth. With the support of respected academics, humanitarians and other visionaries, the UoPeople student body represents a new wave in global education.”
The image here is pretty funny but also makes you wonder about how to deal with children online. My 7 year old daughter has a profile on a Social Network and is connected with every child in her class. How should I talk to here about the opportunities AND dangers of the online world. Should school have a separate course on it? Are the teachers active on social networks? And how about Sex education? One look at BangBros will taint her ideas about sex forever. And unfortunately not in a very positive way either.
It is clear that the Internet and the World Wide Web will play an even more important part in the lives of our children than it will ever do in ours. How should schools and parents prepare their children for that? How do you do it?
Having said that, the image below STILL managed to bring a smile to my face:
Written on 6th March 2009
6 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
A Cambridge school has abandoned standard morning registration in favour of a facial recognition system.
City of Ely Community College will now scan Sixth-formers faces as they enter and leave the school every day. The scanning apparently, developed by Aurora, takes just 1.5 seconds and uses infra-red light to match their features with information stored on the system.
Scott Preston, vice-chairman of the school, told Cambridge News :
The system is working really well – sixth-formers and staff are pleased with the efficiency of it. Only today (Thursday, 05 March) we had a fire alarm test and the administration staff were able to quickly and effectively print data off from the system showing who was on site.
The system apparently is not only of benefit to security but will also save teachers about an hour and a half a day.
Written on 3rd February 2009
15 COMMENTS Srikanth AD, Web Designer, Search Engine Optimizer and Google Devotee
Google India has just launched ‘The Internet Bus Project’, an initiatory step towards educating people in India about the benefits of Internet.
The project entitled ‘The Internet Bus’, is a mobile bus which is gonna cover different cities of India, giving people an opportunity to experience the benefits of the Internet and how it may be beneficial to their lives
The bus is designed to make a simple introduction to the Internet for a new user. With a focus on the four themes of education, information, communication, and entertainment, the Internet Bus will be loaded with useful and informative content in English and Tamil.
The intent of the project is to showcase, how the Internet can make everyday life simple through services like Search, Email, Social Networking, Maps and others.
Written on 29th January 2009
20 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
In Greece the government pays for 99% of students’ textbooks which as you can imagine is no small cost. Well, in the video (below) Greek opposition leader George Papandreou recommends all students be given a sum of money each to purchase a Kindle (or like device) to replace the typical textbooks that students are given and the government spends a fortune on.
As John Aravosis from AmericaBlog points out, there is the issue of getting rights to the books required, as well as the costs involved in converting old books into digital format. Also, the cost of replacement should the child lose/break the Kindle is worthwhile considering, because lets face it, 5/10 kids are likely to have theirs lost.
Nevertheless, that aside, will ebooks lead to the death of textbooks?
Not ‘you’ but iTunes U. Apple is now offering downloadable videos of museums, cultural institutions and a bunch of world renowned universities such as Yale, Duke and MIT. Just login, select a few courses you are interested in and download them to your iPhone or iPod, for free.
Now your favorite destination for music and movies is also a great place to entertain your brain. iTunes U in the iTunes Store offers free audio and video content from top universities, famous museums, public media stations, and other cultural institutions. So whether you want to learn from the world’s leading thinkers, get a sneak peek at the latest MoMA exhibition, or simply brush up on your Spanish, iTunes U makes it easy.
I admit, this isn’t regular ‘Next Web’ stuff but the content is delivered to you online and you can watch it anywhere so to me this is about as extraordinary as it gets. Get started now and tells us what you want to learn…
UPDATE: “Though the program has existed on a smaller scale for a few years, it now offers more than 50,000 audio and video tracks “. Guess I missed it before and Apple has just now decided to promote iTunes U more actively. Either way, check it out.
Ok, maybe the headline isn’t fair, as I don’t speak more than three words of Spanish. But the episodes of Lingus.tv look pretty cheesy to me – with build-in laughs and all. But hey, maybe I would say the same about Seinfeld in Spanish. Anyway…, let’s get to important part of this post, since I’d like to introduce you to a new way of learning Spanish.
The Lingus team
Sergio Gazeau, Toni López, and Joan Balañá wanted to create a new way of learning Spanish, in which laughter would play a major role. Sergio had over six years experience in the language teaching business, so he knows the theories. He approached Toni and Joan for the technological and entertainment aspects. Together with thirteen other workers – including actors – and two Sony XDCAM high def cameras, they’ve created a web channel.
Lingus.tv features different episodes from a sitcom – divided in three levels, from beginner to advanced -, which all come with an outline, translation (those taught me the episodes really are cheesy) and several sound files of the hardest words. I guess Lingus.tv doesn’t work when it’s the only language learning tool you use – unless you try really, really hard. But it sure can be useful when you combine it with lessons. That’s probably the reason why Lingus.tv also sells licenses to schools that teach Spanish.
From this September schools all over Switzerland will run only Linux’s OS Ubuntu due to government’s guidelines. The new motto of the Department of Public Instruction is “Long Live Free Software”, reports Christopher Dawson from Zdnet. Already 9000 computers in Swiss schools have been dual-booting Windows and Ubuntu, since the schools want to be prepared.
The switch to Ubuntu is beneficial for both officials and students, says a spokesperson from the Department of Public instruction. Officials save a lot of money and students will be able to run the same programs at home as they do on school, since they’re all free.
The guidelines by the government might increase the market share of Linux in Switzerland, since parents will probably install Ubuntu at home as well. The reason most people haven’t considering switching to a different OS is that everything but Windows seems ‘alternative’ and ’strange’. Yet if the principal of a school sends a letter that Ubuntu is the next big thing, switching doesn’t seem all that weird again. One thing is for sure, the Swiss Linux community will be pretty busy with assisting people by installing their beloved OS.
Sometimes I stumble upon a service that strikes me as special, yet when I do a quick blog search I find no mention about it in the blogosphere. That recently happened to me when I found Pakt.com, a service for collaborative learning. Users can ask questions and at the same time contribute to the community by writing tutorials and answer questions from other users. This project fascinated me, especially because it also looked like it had an enthusiastic (yet really small) user base. So I emailed the founder Chris Weitenberner to find out more about this new service.
Chris, who are you? “I have a background in software development and project management. Over the past few years I was a tutor and mentor during my spare time for a couple non- profits. On the way home from a mentoring session, I started wondering if the concept of mentoring could be expanded on a larger scale. I started looking for parallels to my experience with mentoring online and couldn’t find what I was looking for. I kept thinking to myself there’s got to be a better way to learn online and to reach out to a community for help.”
“What made the most sense was a social network, however most social networks were centered on the relationship, not the content. I thought I could improve online learning by using the content as the center and leverage the network for help. What I came up with was a “collaborative learning” environment called Pakt. I wanted to focus on content that anyone could create, such as tutorials and Q&A. Questions & Answers provide quick to the point information while tutorials provide more detailed knowledge. Combining relevant tutorials and questions & answers creates a unique source of user submitted knowledge.”
Organize what you have learned
So Pakt’s mission is to empower people to learn and share knowledge, therefore the site is open to everyone. The mission sounds good to me, yet I always wonder who will sign up. When I’ve a question, I just hop on the Google train. So Chris, why would I sign up?
“It becomes a problem to organize what you have learned, where it is located, and getting help to finish if needed. Pakt allows you to track your progress of learning step by step in every tutorial. You can then share that progress with friends or everyone. This makes the learning experience more interactive and helps you complete your learning objectives more effectively. You can further reach out to the community for help and set up a one-on-one or one-to-many private mentoring chat session. Just like in school, many people may need help, but don’t want to ask for it in a public setting. Pakt also offers a revenue sharing program that can be an incentive for bloggers or freelance writers to express their expertise on Pakt.”
Experts
Ah! Expertise, sounds like Pakt has a 3.0 flavor over it. Chris: “From my perspective, anyone can be an “expert”. The main problem I have with sites like About.com is that they only offer one solution to a problem. Where in reality, there is rarely one correct way of doing something. Pakt leaves it up to the audience to determine relevant and quality information.” Taking this in account, it’s a Web 2.0 service after all, since it embraces the wisdom of crowds and doesn’t use an experts filter like lots of services do.
I like the idealistic approach of Chris Weitenberner, yet I wonder whether there is a need for Pakt. Since most people use Google to find tutorials, find answers at services like Yahoo Answers and browse through Wikipedia for specific knowledge. Pakt does make a chance when it manages to build up an enthusiastic community of a few hundred people. They’ll help each other in everyday life and at the same time push the pages up in the Google results.
Pakt really deserves this, even if it was just for the diversity of the tutorials and answers. Chris: “Since the inspiration for Pakt came from a humanitarian interest, I tend to like tutorials that inspire people to change the world around them, like “Take the Live Earth Pledge”, or “How to Donate Your Hair to Children with Hair loss Medical Conditions”. You never know what to expect with Questions & Answers, they go from “How do I unlock my iPhone?” to “How many days should you call a girl after the first date?”. I enjoy reading them all.”
Written on 15th June 2009
3 COMMENTS 
The United Nations Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technology and Development (GAID) today launched the University of the People, a non-profit institution that offers higher education for the masses.
Written on 22nd April 2009
Written on 6th March 2009
Written on 3rd February 2009
In Greece the government pays for 99% of students’ textbooks which as you can imagine is no small cost. Well, in the video (below) Greek opposition leader George Papandreou recommends all students be given a sum of money each to purchase a Kindle (or like device) to replace the typical textbooks that students are given and the government spends a fortune on.
Not ‘you’ but 
Written on 7th July 2008
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
