Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts

15 January 2020

MIT Nuts & Bolts of New Ventures ~ IAP Jan 2020

Nuts Logo
On Tuesday night, 21 January 2020, Joe Hadzima and I kick off the latest incarnation -- the 31st year (!!) -- of our MIT Nuts & Bolts of New Ventures course over the MIT Independent Activities Period (IAP 2020). Joe starts with the essence of business planning as a process of iterative imagination and special guest speaker Bob Jones shares how to present venture essentials. My primary topic is Team & Organizational issues, our special guest speakers (mostly MIT alums, all entrepreneurs) cover the essentials everyone ought to know about new venturing, including how to identify customers, pitch a concept, raise money, model financials, deal with legalities, negotiate with people, and holistically integrate this all together.

Sessions are evenings over the next two weeks Tue, Wed, and Thurs nights 1/21-1/30 from 6-9p in 10-250 -- i.e. in our prime MIT lecture hall under the iconic Great Dome. Folks can choose whether to attend all sessions, plus doing the (useful) written homework assignment, and registering For Credit (3 Units, Pass/Fail for 15.393 online via Websis) or to come for any (or all) nights and simply participate as a Listener. All MIT affiliates and colleagues -- including students, faculty, staff, post-docs, alums, spouses, relatives, and friends -- are welcome on a space-available basis with priority for registered full-time undergrad and grad students. We also continue to welcome students from our sister schools in Boston-metro (e.g. Wellesley, Harvard, BU, Tufts, etc) as well as Members of the MIT Enterprise Forum network. Those interested, please simply join us at 6pm in our MIT 10-250 classroom.

12 October 2018

Human Capital Index ~ Developing Youth...

BBC Africa's Farouk Chothia reports on the World Bank's Human Capital Index...
"...a new way of measuring economic success and gauges how much effort is being put into developing the youth. The higher the investment in education and health the more productive and higher earning the workforce tends to be, the World Bank says. African countries dominate the bottom of the index."
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-africa-45783166

09 May 2017

R.I.P. Peter Spier ~ Epic Dutch Inspiring Illustrator

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/05/books/peter-spier-dead-childrens-book-author.html?_r=0Richard Sandomir in the NYTimes shares the sad news that inspirational illustrator Peter Spier has passed away at 89 from congestive heart failure. My very earliest favorite book -- i.e. when I was a toddler and my parents read to me -- was about Hendrika the Cow Who Fell in the Canal but as a teen I really spent endless hours on Of Dikes and Windmills. Amazing stuff about Dutch history, epic civil engineering, and the power of nature!
https://www.amazon.com/Dikes-Windmills-Peter-Spier/dp/0385083874

15 April 2017

R.I.P. Eugene Lang ~ Financed "Dream" Tuition!

James Hagerty in the WSJ writes of Eugene Lang's passing at 98 and his spontaneous philanthropic promise at a Harlem elementary school graduation to underwrite college tuition for all who finished high school. This begat the "I Have A Dream" Foundation which to-date has supported thousands of collegiates. R.I.P.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/eugene-lang-found-giving-money-wasnt-enough-1492178400?mod=e2fb

20 February 2017

R.I.P. Hans Rosling ~ Edutainer Extraordinaire

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38900572 Pancreatic cancer has laid low Hans Rosling, the Gapminder co-founder and my favorite public health statistician and data edutainer extraordinaire.  He has many remarkable TED talks and other videos online, but I personally favor his appearance at TEDIndia speaking on Asia's Rise where he compares global growth over 200 years and predicts exactly when India and China converge with the rich!

07 February 2017

MIT Media Ventures ~ Thurs 10a-12n Spring '17

UPDATE: Due to MIT's snow closing, our kickoff class was Thursday morning 10a-12n February 16th, 2017 in Media Lab E14-633.

Our MIT Media Ventures ~ Media Lab Entrepreneurship & Digital Innovations class surveys a broad landscape of emerging media technologies interwoven with live- and historic-cases of intre- and entrepreneurship-based on new media ideas, culminating in a term project. The core goal of this Action Lab offering is for students to gain increased understanding of how emergent media and digital innovations translate into commercial reality and transform society.
http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/15/sp17/15.376/
We survey case examples of both successful and failed businesses and generally grapple with the difficulties of deploying and diffusing products and as a means of exploring a range of business models and opportunities enabled by emerging Media Lab and related innovations. This year we will be especially emphasizing urban innovations, personal data rights, health, civic engagement, financial service innovations, mobile transactions, and social media generally with special focus on social networks, quantified self and society, AI, robotics, automation, and data analytics. Join us at first class Thursday morning 10a-12n February 9th, 2017 in Media Lab E14-633.

24 January 2017

MIT Nuts & Bolts of New Ventures ~ IAP 2017

On Tuesday night, 24 January 2017, Joe Hadzima and I kick off the latest incarnation -- the 28th year (!!) -- of our MIT Nuts & Bolts of New Ventures course over the MIT Independent Activities Period (IAP 2017). Joe starts with the essence of business planning as a process of iterative imagination and special guest speaker Bob Jones shares how to present venture essentials. My primary topic is Team & Organizational issues, our special guest speakers (mostly MIT alums, all entrepreneurs) cover the essentials everyone ought to know about new venturing, including how to identify customers, pitch a concept, raise money, model financials, deal with legalities, negotiate with people, and holistically integrate this all together.

Sessions are evenings over the next two weeks Tue, Wed, and Thurs nights 1/24-2/2 from 6-9p in 10-250 -- i.e. in our prime MIT lecture hall under the iconic Great Dome. Folks can choose whether to attend all sessions, plus doing the (useful) written homework assignment, and registering For Credit (3 Units, Pass/Fail for 15.S21 online via Websis) or to come for any (or all) nights and simply participate as a Listener. All MIT affiliates and colleagues -- including students, faculty, staff, post-docs, alums, spouses, relatives, and friends -- are welcome on a space-available basis with priority for registered full-time undergrad and grad students. We also continue to welcome students from our sister schools in Boston-metro (e.g. Wellesley, Harvard, BU, Tufts, etc) as well as Members of the MIT Enterprise Forum network. Those interested, please simply join us at 6pm in our MIT 10-250 classroom.

30 January 2016

MIT Media Ventures ~ Thurs 10a-12n Spring '16

Our MIT Media Ventures ~ Media Lab Entrepreneurship & Digital Innovations class surveys a broad landscape of emerging media technologies interwoven with live- and historic-cases of inter- and entrepreneurship-based on new media ideas, culminating in a term project. The core goal of this Action Lab offering is for students to gain increased understanding of how emergent media and digital innovations translate into commercial reality and transform society.
https://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/15/sp16/15.376/
We survey case examples of both successful and failed businesses and generally grapple with the difficulties of deploying and diffusing products and as a means of exploring a range of business models and opportunities enabled by emerging Media Lab and related innovations. This year we will be especially emphasizing urban innovations, personal data rights, public health, financial service innovations, mobile transactions, and social media generally with special focus on social networks, quantified self and society, and "Big Data" analytics. Join us at first class Thursday morning 10a-12n February 4th, 2016 in Media Lab E14-633.

19 September 2015

Teaching Teachers ~ PEN Hands-On in Ghana!

Our MIT alumna Dr Heather Beem and team ran a big handful of workshops this past Summer 2015 for over 300 science teachers in Ghana, introducing them to the Practical Education Network (PEN) method of providing inexpensive, DIY physical experimental examples of the concepts taught in the standard core primary and secondary school curriculum!

03 September 2015

Development Ventures ~ Exponential Prosperity!

My MIT colleague Alex (Sandy) Pentland and I are offering our Development Ventures action lab class this Fall 2015 at the Media Lab starting Thursday September 10th from 10a-12noon, with special focus on frugal, DIY, and ultraffordable technologies as well as exponential innovations including mobiles, big data, and analytics. This will be our 15th year!
http://developmentventures.org
Every year, we look forward to the latest new venture concepts our students propose -- in domains ranging from Health & Wellness, Energy & Sustainability, Education & Creativity, Commerce & Financial Services, Civic Engagement and beyond -- and we try to help the most motivated teams and promising ideas actually start and thrive! Alumcos since 2001 include FirstMileSolutions/United Villages, blueEnergy, WAY Systems, Dimagi, Howtoons, CellBazaar, Global Cycle Solutions/GCS, Assured Labor/EmpleoListo, ClickDiagnostics/mPower/ClickMedix, Dinube, Sanergy, WoundPump/WiiCare, ESSMART, Wecyclers, Ghonsla, Logistimo, Apportunidades, CrowdSOS/WiseSystems, MoringaConnect, TrueAfrica, MDaaS, MAX, and more. What will blossom this year?

22 June 2015

Morrill Act ~ Catalyzing Land-Grant Universities!

Many thanks to New America Foundation's Ted Widmer, Boston Globe Ideas columnist and BU Presidential assistant, for reminding us all about Justin Morrill, the man behind America’s higher education -- including MIT, UCBerkeley, and a hundred more...
"Morrill is hardly a household name today, but his legacy is immense, felt in every single state. That’s because of a single bill he proposed, the Morrill Land-Grant College Act of 1862. In the midst of some of the worst fighting of the Civil War, Congress passed a visionary piece of legislation that created more than 100 universities and reshaped the way Americans thought about higher education. [...] The result was nothing less than the creation of a new educational order for the United States. Older institutions did not lose their preeminence, of course. But new kinds of universities came into existence, with a broad reach and a public purpose. Both the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were born of the Morrill Act, a fact of no small relevance to the state’s future economic development. [...] Many of the most eminent African-American colleges, including Hampton and Tuskegee, also owe their origins to Morrill’s bill. Native American schools would also be added. In other ways, the Land-Grant Act became better over time. Many of the land-grant schools were early advocates of co-education and advanced the cause of educating women. Morrill added new legislation to fine-tune the program and secure additional funding. [...] Morrill’s is a legacy that is simply too large to calculate and expands every spring as millions of future Americans [and untold International students too] graduate from public universities."
Wow! Epic and extraordinary.  Truly heroic in the best sense!  Check out Uni map... http://ext.wsu.edu/identity/logos/maps.html

02 February 2015

MIT Media Ventures ~ Thurs 10a-12n Spring 2015

Our MIT Media Ventures ~ Media Lab Entrepreneurship & Digital Innovations class surveys a broad landscape of emerging media technologies interwoven with live- and historic-cases of inter- and entrepreneurship-based on new media ideas, culminating in a term project. The core goal of this Action Lab offering is for students to gain increased understanding of how emergent media and digital innovations translate into commercial reality and transform society.
http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/15/sp15/15.376/
We survey case examples of both successful and failed businesses and generally grapple with the difficulties of deploying and diffusing products and as a means of exploring a range of business models and opportunities enabled by emerging Media Lab and related innovations. This year we will be especially emphasizing urban innovations, personal data rights, public health, financial service innovations, mobile transactions, and social media generally with special focus on social networks, quantified self and society, and "Big Data" analytics. First class is Thursday morning 10a-12n February 5th, 2015 in Media Lab E14-633.

01 January 2015

Educational Games ~ SimCityEdu by GlassLab

BBC Future asks Can games create an education fit for the future? and teach systems thinking and more...
"Video games usually get in the way of homework. GlassLab, however, is a collaboration between educators and technologists. Uniting commercial game studios and educational groups the aim is to embrace gaming technology to transform the learning process and make it more relevant to the demands of the 21st Century."

01 November 2014

Effective Lessons ~ J-PAL on Edu Investments...

From last year's Science special issue on Grand Challenges in Science Education here's MIT J-PAL Executive Director Rachel Glennerster speaking about her teams piece on The Challenge of Education and Learning in the Developing World summarizing lessons from randomized control trials (RCTs) of programs that aim to improve the learning outcomes of school-age children...

01 September 2014

Development Ventures ~ Solving Global Problems

My MIT colleague Alex (Sandy) Pentland and I are again hosting our Development Ventures action lab class this Fall 2014 at the Media Lab starting this Thursday September 4th from 10a-12noon, with special focus on frugal, DIY, and ultraffordable technologies as well as exponential innovations including mobiles, big data, and analytics. As always, we look forward to the latest new venture concepts our students propose -- in domains ranging from Health & Wellness, Energy & Sustainability, Education & Creativity, Commerce & Financial Services, Civic Engagement and beyond -- and we try to help the most motivated teams and promising ideas actually start and thrive!

28 August 2014

College Bound ~ Graduates Beating the Odds!

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/08/27/dorchester-college-bound-program-helps-troubled-students-follow-their-dreams/s1p7XyIy4UxAdDjGrmNy3H/story.htmlTodd Feathers of the Globe spotlights the very compelling Students who had been written off now heading to college...
"College Bound focuses its attention on those considered unlikely to succeed. They seek out dropouts, gang members, inmates, and others with setbacks in their past and aggressively push them toward college. [...] The paths taken by the students to reach Wednesday’s graduation ceremony are filled with heartbreak and hard choices. [Says rising graduate Sanjoana Fernandes-Centieo] “I am so proud about myself because I struggled so hard,” she said. “It’s not the end, it’s just one step to continue my education."
This is epic and I salute the graduates as well as their supporters!

09 April 2014

ScratchJr ~ Kickstarting Young Kids Coding!

Excellent to see progress on Kickstarter for the ScratchJr project from the MIT Media Lab and Tufts which enables Coding for Young Kids!
"Coding is the new literacy. With ScratchJr, young children (ages 5-7) learn to program their own interactive stories and games. [...] Children snap together graphical programming blocks to make characters move, jump, dance, and sing. Children can modify characters in the paint editor, add their own voices and sounds, even insert photos of themselves -- then use the programming blocks to make their characters come to life. ScratchJr was inspired by the popular Scratch programming language, used by millions of young people (ages 8 and up) around the world. In creating ScratchJr, we redesigned the interface and programming language to make them developmentally appropriate for younger children."

03 February 2014

MIT Media Ventures ~ Thurs 10a-12n Spr 2014

Our MIT Media Ventures ~ Media Lab Entrepreneurship & Digital Innovations Action Lab seminar surveys a broad landscape of emerging media technologies interwoven with live- and historic-cases of inter- and entrepreneurship-based on new media ideas, culminating in a term project. The core goal is to gain increased understanding of how emergent media and digital innovations translate into commercial reality and transform society.
http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/15/sp14/15.376/
We survey case examples of both successful and failed businesses and generally grapple with the difficulties of deploying and diffusing products and as a means of exploring a range of business models and opportunities enabled by emerging Media Lab and related innovations. This year we will be especially emphasizing personal health care, financial service innovations, mobile transactions, and social media generally with special focus on social networks, quantified self and society, and "Big Data" analytics. First class this Thursday morning February 6th, 2014 in Media Lab E14-633.

MIT Imaging & Fab Ventures ~ Tues Spring 2014

Ramesh Raskar and I are teaming up with Doug Hart, Joe Jacobson, and John Werner to run our expanded and enhanced MIT Imaging & Fabrication Ventures seminar Tuesday mornings this Spring 2014! This is an Action Lab class designed to help students conceive of and launch great startups.
http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/MAS/sp14/MAS.533/
We study the landscape of imaging developments, plan and prototype new ventures & products, and brainstorm towards a startup, business unit, non-profit or citizen sector organization. To bring imaging research to the real world, the students will be encouraged to build teams and craft a business plan. We'll be exploring venture opportunities in some of the fastest changing technology domains including all things Imaging -- e.g. cameras, displays, visual computing, analytics and apps -- and Fabrication -- including robotics and automation, rapid prototyping, smart customization, 3DPrinting, DIYkits, peripherals and accessories to mobiles and tablets, fast venturing, crowdfinancing, issues of local and global sourcing and more. Please spread the word to those you think might be interested. First class is next week Tues morning February 11th, 2014 in Media Lab E14-525.