Whenever a new medium or technology becomes available the initial approach is to “repurpose” existing content, such as filmed radio on television. Many of the big education publishers have been approaching tablets that way. They try to grab some assets from the web or even further back from print and push them out. There are two reasons for doing so: first, it seems like low hanging fruit and second, these companies tend to believe that their existing content libraries are a big part of their...

Whenever a new medium or technology becomes available the initial approach is to “repurpose” existing content, such as filmed radio on television. Many of the big education publishers have been approaching tablets that way. They try to grab some assets from the web or even further back from print and push them out. There are two reasons for doing so: first, it seems like low hanging fruit and second, these companies tend to believe that their existing content libraries are a big part of their...

It is now six years ago that we at USV held our one day mini conference on “Hacking Education.” A lot has happened since then. We have made investments in Codecademy, Duolingo, Edmodo and Skillshare. MOOCs really took off with classes that have been taken by tens of thousands of students. Susan and I started homeschooling for our children. And yet when I think about what is possible in theory it still feels like we are early on. One of the things that I envision is an interactive learning env...

It is now six years ago that we at USV held our one day mini conference on “Hacking Education.” A lot has happened since then. We have made investments in Codecademy, Duolingo, Edmodo and Skillshare. MOOCs really took off with classes that have been taken by tens of thousands of students. Susan and I started homeschooling for our children. And yet when I think about what is possible in theory it still feels like we are early on. One of the things that I envision is an interactive learning env...

This summer I have been blogging less. That’s largely because I have been reading more and also been spending more time thinking about some of my favorite topics. All of this has me more convinced than ever that we need to invest heavily in elucidating the interconnections of knowledge. Way too much of our teaching and learning occurs in highly fragmented pieces. I have written about this before but now I have an idea for what to do about it. I want to help organize knowledge around basic con...

This summer I have been blogging less. That’s largely because I have been reading more and also been spending more time thinking about some of my favorite topics. All of this has me more convinced than ever that we need to invest heavily in elucidating the interconnections of knowledge. Way too much of our teaching and learning occurs in highly fragmented pieces. I have written about this before but now I have an idea for what to do about it. I want to help organize knowledge around basic con...

Today was the second day of our mini computer bootcamp for friends and family. The goal was to have a functioning and hosted website up and running. We started out by using nslookup to find the IP address of a web server – we use ziggeo.com as an example. If you are on Mac OS you can simply do this in terminal (which we learned about yesterday and used again extensively today – I am not sure what the easiest way to do this is on Windows, but if you have your Raspberry Pi handy from yesterday ...

Today was the second day of our mini computer bootcamp for friends and family. The goal was to have a functioning and hosted website up and running. We started out by using nslookup to find the IP address of a web server – we use ziggeo.com as an example. If you are on Mac OS you can simply do this in terminal (which we learned about yesterday and used again extensively today – I am not sure what the easiest way to do this is on Windows, but if you have your Raspberry Pi handy from yesterday ...

When we moved back to the city at the beginning of 2012 we experimented for 6 months with homeschooling our kids. They then spent last year at Avenues, a new school in Manhattan. Avenues is a startup (and of course I love startups). The Avenues team did an impressive job coming out of the gate and are building a great school. But as it turns out our kids all concluded that homeschooling was better yet and so we are going back to it. I will be blogging extensively about the experience most lik...

When we moved back to the city at the beginning of 2012 we experimented for 6 months with homeschooling our kids. They then spent last year at Avenues, a new school in Manhattan. Avenues is a startup (and of course I love startups). The Avenues team did an impressive job coming out of the gate and are building a great school. But as it turns out our kids all concluded that homeschooling was better yet and so we are going back to it. I will be blogging extensively about the experience most lik...

This weekend we are holding a two-day computer bootcamp for our kids, some friends of theirs and a handful of adults. Here is a recap of the first day both as a reminder and reference for those who participated and as an outline for anybody else who wants to try this. We started by watching the first minute or so of a clip showing NASA mission control. I then explained that for the Apollo 11 program NASA had five mainframes from IBM (System 360 Model 75 with 0.034 MIPS and 1 MB of main memory...

This weekend we are holding a two-day computer bootcamp for our kids, some friends of theirs and a handful of adults. Here is a recap of the first day both as a reminder and reference for those who participated and as an outline for anybody else who wants to try this. We started by watching the first minute or so of a clip showing NASA mission control. I then explained that for the Apollo 11 program NASA had five mainframes from IBM (System 360 Model 75 with 0.034 MIPS and 1 MB of main memory...

Growing up in Germany I was always bored in math class, despite going to “Gymnasium” (the branch of Germany’s multi-tiered system that leads up to university) and even taking the most advanced math class in our school (the so-called “Leistungskurs Mathematik”). The math we were doing included some multi-variate calculus and some probability but I never felt really challenged nor was there a clear opportunity to take something more advanced. In fact, I wasn’t even aware that one could do the s...

Growing up in Germany I was always bored in math class, despite going to “Gymnasium” (the branch of Germany’s multi-tiered system that leads up to university) and even taking the most advanced math class in our school (the so-called “Leistungskurs Mathematik”). The math we were doing included some multi-variate calculus and some probability but I never felt really challenged nor was there a clear opportunity to take something more advanced. In fact, I wasn’t even aware that one could do the s...

My older son asked me yesterday about how colors on the screen work. We started talking about the history of the RGB color model including early color screen technology. That eventually led to a discussion of how the RGB color space is three dimensional with 256 values on each axis for a total of 2^24 or roughly 16 million colors. Since a display is only two dimensional how would you go about showing the entire color space? From that question we talked about projections (from 3D to 2D) but al...

My older son asked me yesterday about how colors on the screen work. We started talking about the history of the RGB color model including early color screen technology. That eventually led to a discussion of how the RGB color space is three dimensional with 256 values on each axis for a total of 2^24 or roughly 16 million colors. Since a display is only two dimensional how would you go about showing the entire color space? From that question we talked about projections (from 3D to 2D) but al...

One of our goals for 2012 was to get scuba certified as a family. We took a first run at it in a rushed fashion early in the year but abandoned that effort after a less than pleasant pool dive in Manhattan. In the fall we decided to start the process over and go with a proper PADI certification program. We found a dive center in Playa Hermosa in Costa Rica called Diving Safaris and structured our vacation around that. Instead of wasting time on location with theory, we took the theory classes...

One of our goals for 2012 was to get scuba certified as a family. We took a first run at it in a rushed fashion early in the year but abandoned that effort after a less than pleasant pool dive in Manhattan. In the fall we decided to start the process over and go with a proper PADI certification program. We found a dive center in Playa Hermosa in Costa Rica called Diving Safaris and structured our vacation around that. Instead of wasting time on location with theory, we took the theory classes...

Not that long ago when I was still living in the suburbs the next town over embarked on a massive construction project for a big new public library. I recall thinking at the time: but what will they put there? Of course books aren’t going away over night but still if you are on the board of a public library it is not difficult to envision a time where you need a lot less space for books. What should you be doing instead? One interesting answer to that question is coming out of Chicago, which ...

Not that long ago when I was still living in the suburbs the next town over embarked on a massive construction project for a big new public library. I recall thinking at the time: but what will they put there? Of course books aren’t going away over night but still if you are on the board of a public library it is not difficult to envision a time where you need a lot less space for books. What should you be doing instead? One interesting answer to that question is coming out of Chicago, which ...