So I took Dr. Miller up on the offer of attending the evening portion of the CSIA conference last week on Thursday. It was a good conference there were eductional sessions during the day (which I unfortunately missed) but I got to walk about the showcase were companies displayed their products. Here's a list of the companies I liked and what they did.
Acadium, Inc. has a system that combines TV, video phones, and GPS to create a live classroom.
Developing Minds has software serving developmentally disabled children that uses how the student interacts to direct and and adapt the learning for the student.
Kerpoof is an animation company where anyone can create art, stories and animated movies using a kid friendly interface.
Lijit Network, Inc. is a blog search engine. You put it on your blog and tell it which blogs you subscribe to and you and your readers can use it like an advice column where you type in a question and it pulls up information from all the blogs you've chosen to susbcribe to. Kinda like asking a author you've never met for advice or an opinion.
OpenWorld Learning long for OWL is building a network of peer teaching through technology. Several metro elementary schools are using OWL as an after school enrichment/reteaching.
TinyEYE Technologies Corporation enables Speech-Language Pathologists to use a head-set and webcam to connect to clients, caregivers, educators, and colleagues for consultations and therapy services.
With the exception of the last company all of them are Colorado Based. After the showcase was a speech from a Google VP (I didn't even know they had an office here), and he talked about the "9 Notions of Innovation."
1. Ideas come from everywhere
2. Share everything you can (I think the global learners are doing well at this)
3. A license to persue dreams (apparently google allows 20% of the employees day to persue their own interests which is where snowball and adsense came from)
4. Innovation, not instant perfection
5. Don't politic, use data
6. Creativity loves restraint
7. Worry about usage and users, not money
8. Don't kill projects - morph them into something else
9. Technology is no substitute for humanity
During the speech Tim Armstrong continued to re-emhasize that no matter the product you use, the main concern needs to be on the end user and how it affects them.
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3 comments:
Thanks for mentioning Lijit in your CSIA round-up. We are excited that academic bloggers are discovering the value of our search tool and would love to hear any feedback that you may have concerning our service. Relevancy is key and having the ability to search an expert's network makes for a better sharing of knowledge!
John,
I liked some of the same companies you did. You did not miss anything at the education strand. I attended all the sessions and left a little disappointed. I believe there is some arrogance among the business sector with respect to the future of education. The speakers routinely lauded Indian workers and even lauded the Indian education system (this was suspicious to me). Each session started with a nod to the fact that increasingly it is difficult to hire technical workers in this region. Very little emphasis on good teaching and learning and no real commitment to be in classrooms doing the heavy lifting with teachers. It seemed that charter schools and technical schools were the darlings of this group.
Only one session focused on good teaching and learning and it was sparsely attended.
Also checkout: http://www.madkast.com/
By far the coolest product on display at DemoGALA. It is the little share button next to each blog post.
Hi,
Thank you so much for blogging about us at TinyEYE. We really do appreciate it.
Marnee Brick, MSc and the Team at TinyEYE
http://www.TinyEYE.com
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