Learning Solutions

I discovered this site at my kid’s open house at Wall High School.

Brightstorm is a learning solution providing video content for students.  Subjects covered include: SAT and ACT prep, Algebra, Geometry, Trig and Precalculus.

As stated on the website:

For students, they’re given the choice of teachers and the opportunity to learn from some of the best teachers. With an on-demand format, students can go at their own pace, choose their own order, and easily jump to any section in the video to parallel their own class to tailor to their own learning needs. Each course includes interactive quizzes, facts as well as bonus materials like practice problems and study guides that they use with the videos to gain a deeper understanding of the subject.

Brightstorm is sponsored by Korea’s KTB Ventures, and as reported by TechCrunch, has quite a few competitors:

But there are plenty of startups trying. Here in the U.S., there is PrepMe, ePrep, Teach The People, and Grockit. In Asia, there is iKnow in Japan and perhaps the biggest success to date is Korea’s Megastudy.

Originally offering paid courses, they have now launched the free math help.  from their press release:

Brightstorm’s mission is to bring great teaching to the world. The company recruits the best teachers in the country, and then works with them to create high-quality, video-based learning solutions. Brightstorm’s free math help offering includes over 1,800 videos of great teachers explaining every topic contained in Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2 and Precalculus. The videos are short, averaging about 5 minutes each, to correspond to the attention span of the online generation. For each math topic, the teacher has a short video explaining the concept and then a few short videos walking through sample problems.

The whole purpose of this is for that student who goes home, is working on their homework assignment, and for some reason they’re just not getting it

Brightstorm’s free math help is a major step toward achieving our vision of a world in which millions of students learn through technology

In today’s networked world, there is no reason why a student should struggle with their math homework. Students should be able to have easy access to great teachers explaining the concepts they’re struggling with. That’s what Brightstorm’s free math help solution is all about.

Before this program was started, it would have been hard to find a site that was reasonably priced on which you could find everything that you needed. Now, with Brightstorm’s math help, students can find something good

Brightstorm math help really covers everything from Algebra to Precalculus

If you’re in the high school math curriculum, you can find what you’re looking for.

Creating great math videos is only half the battle

Content is only good if the learner can find it quickly, so user-friendly search and browse have been a major focus for Brightstorm math help.

It’s kind of like your back-pocket math teacher, who can explain those difficult concepts to you.

You can review the video, and watch it over and over–from your home.

Learning with our great teacher videos is only the beginning

Ultimately, Brightstorm’s free math help will serve as a foundation from which millions of learners can connect and learn together.

“The whole purpose of this is for that student who goes home, is working on their homework assignment, and for some reason they’re just not getting it,” says Brian McCall, Brightstorm’s Geometry teacher. “They have to get their homework done, but they don’t have that teacher right next them. Now, with Brightstorm, every student can have a great teacher at their side.”

“Brightstorm’s free math help is a major step toward achieving our vision of a world in which millions of students learn through technology,” says Brightstorm CEO Jeff Marshall. “In today’s networked world, there is no reason why a student should struggle with their math homework. Students should be able to have easy access to great teachers explaining the concepts they’re struggling with. That’s what Brightstorm’s free math help solution is all about.”

Brightstorm continues to look for more teachers to provide lessons.  The next Teaching Idol?!?

I featured Aviary a while back, when the company released its FREE photo editing suite.  Aviary is back with an audio editor to rival Audacity of GarageBand, named Myna.  Myna gives you the tools necessary to create audio tracks for all of your needs.  A large library of pre-recorded tracks are included to get you up and going in no time.

The user interface is logical, with Aviary’s signature cursor controls to easily tweak the tracks.

Give it a try!

Inside Higher Ed reports about a new competitor for Blackboard’s Learning Management Monopoly:

New Player in Course Management Software

Florida Educational Technology Conference (FETC), has posted the following for their upcoming online conference:

FETC Fall ’09 Virtual Conference & Expo is coming to you live on Thursday, October 22, 2009. This FREE 100% online educational event gives you the opportunity to participate in highly informative virtual sessions from the convenience of your office, visit the Virtual Expo Hall and chat with real live exhibitors, and preview and evaluate the latest hardware and software available today.

This extraordinary online educational event delivers valuable presentations and unlimited networking opportunities straight to your desktop — all at NO CHARGE!

Attend this 100% online event to enjoy:

• A dynamic exchange of best practices and tips for success
• Expert speakers sharing their views in an effective, interactive way
• A virtual networking lounge to reconnect with colleagues and make new contacts
• Real-time access to other participants through instant messaging
• Technology product and service demonstrations in our virtual exhibit hall
• Free content downloads and presentations to go
• And much more!

Attend as many sessions as you like, visit the virtual exhibit hall at any time and network when it’s convenient for you.

More information and registration

As reported in eSchool News:

A free online learning program from Microsoft is helping middle and high school students think about careers they might like to pursue and the skills necessary to attain those careers. Called CareerForward, the course has students examine their skills and interests as they investigate potential career paths and other aspects to independent living, such as financial management skills. Its four components address specific aspects of 21st-century careers. Throughout the course, students are asked frequently to reflect on what they¹re learning, to write their thoughts down as a continual refinement of their thinking, and to discuss their thoughts with other students, either in person or online.

Access this learning solution at:

http://nroc.careerforward.org/careerforward/

Campus Technology reports on a free learning solution for university lecture classrooms:

LectureTools is an open source software tool that builds on the idea of classroom response devices but goes far beyond them, allowing students to use their laptop computers, rather than clickers, to answer a wide range and type of poll questions. The software also allows students to ask questions and share responses with the class, take interactive quizzes, and mark up PowerPoint slides.

We live in a world that is increasingly interconnected. Social networking tools have taken the place of US Postal mail and telephones as communication devices. The problem is not what tool to use, it is how to get your information to the people who need it. Should you create and send your message through e-mail, post to Facebook, Twitter, then post to your blog? If you have 28 hours in the day, maybe. The solution is to use your blogging tool as a single point of entry, and leverage the RSS capabilities to give your readers flexibility in how they wish to view your content. RSS is the feature that provides a standard way many social networking tools use to display your information. Take a look at this from Common Craft for an RSS primer:

So, where does it go? Take a look at this presentation to get a feel about how one message on campus can be delivered to multiple outlets immediately:

This post is the first one since I installed the Twitter Tools. This should enable me to post this article, and then it will be placed on my Twitter account. We will see.

Aviary is a great, free suite of graphic tools for your classroom. The beauty of these tools is that they are all accessed through a web browser, with nothing to install on your desktops. The image editor, Phoenix, is comparable to Photoshop with a rich editing toolset and layering, with the ability to import to photo-sharing sites.

Why just read about it? The Aviary site has videos detailing each tool.

Phoenix Image Editor Preview:

The real reason to use this is the developer’s philoshphy.  As stated in their FAQ:

Through our interactions with the artists on Worth1000.com, we realized that while many people wanted to use digital editing software, it was very inaccessible:

• The costs were prohibitive (and many people didn’t want to risk installing a virus by pirating).
• The interface was too bloated with rarely-used features to make learning it easy.
• You actually needed to install the programs on a machine with specifications that complied with the program and suffer through any unwanted DRM malware that might also come with the software.

We have our roots in the grassroots hobbyists community. We are artists ourselves and know that there are so many other potential creators out there like us… all they need are accessible tools.

Testing the Qik service to have a live stream from the JB iPhone:

Google has revealed a new way of combining common communication tools, Google Wave.

The team behind google maps,  Jens and Lars Rasmussen,  focused on the following questions:

• Why do we have to live with divides between different types of communication — email versus chat, or conversations versus documents?
• Could a single communications model span all or most of the systems in use on the web today, in one smooth continuum? How simple could we make it?
• What if we tried designing a communications system that took advantage of computers’ current abilities, rather than imitating non-electronic forms?

E-mail has not changed much since it was invented and accepted into the mainstream culture.

From the google blog:

Here’s how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

The real question is how this learning solution may be incorporated into schools.  eSchool News reports about the educational impact:

For instance, an online teacher could add his or her students to a class Wave, update class information and assignments, hold discussions with students, and view the Wave’s history to see which students contribute to class discussions the most and which students might need extra help.

Instead of receiving 25 separate eMail messages from students, a teacher could use a class Wave to answer common questions or to hold weekly question-and-answer sessions.

A blogging feature will publish all content from a Wave onto a blog; the blog embeds the Wave, so users can still respond to the Wave. But students who might not use Google or who might be unable to participate in a Wave can still see and participate in class discussions through the blog

Google Wave is still in development, without a specific timeline for release, so you may want to go to the Wave site and sign up for alerts.