hack-ed - Latest Comments

Re: Exploring opportunities in enhancing online education communities

Transtutors — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 09:12:30 -0000

This is a never
ending discussion with pros and cons on both sides. While some students favor
going to college others online education.

In last couple of years websites like Udacity, Coursera, EDx etc which
provide online education have grown rapidly. Now students learn at their own
pace, taking the time to fill in the holes in their knowledge to ensure a
strong foundation. This is even more comfortable for working class
professional who wants to study or complete courses on weekends / spare time.

With increase in Online education, there will be increase in demand for
websites which provide Homework help / Assignment help / Book on rentals like www.transtutors.com / chegg / coursehero etc.

Re: Mobile Live-Streaming Station

Carpets Melbourne — Fri, 17 May 2013 09:24:26 -0000

Great Blog! Keep posting for more, I will keep on track! thanks.

Re: The Hsieh Program in Business

luisa pereira — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 11:01:13 -0000

Loved the names of the study areas –already more curious about them than before. Would be interested to attend. Also like the focus on portfolios. I'd like to hear more about how time is traded exactly. My intuition is that more loose approach might work better than actually trading hour for hour.

Re: ITP2Go: Online environment for an offline community

Andy — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:45:49 -0000

Keeping track of the daily goings-on of ITP is a challenge! Perhaps focusing on one thing. The first thing that popped in my head is a map of the floor, editable by anyone at ITP, that displays the state of the floor in the moment. It would hold staging space information, class information, things like whether there's food on the floor or not, how many people are on the floor right now, and where are they sitting. Its like that map from Harry Potter, but for ITP.

Re: The Hsieh Program in Business

Andy — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:40:19 -0000

This is great! As it was mentioned below, I'm curious about the time
part. It seems to be a major part of your school. I've spent a lot of
time tutoring students with learning disabilities and who have a lot of
trouble with their school work. I think of them immediately when you
speak of a time based currency for learning, and if these students that
NEED more time are put on the short (or long) end of the stick? However,
this sounds like a graduate program, so maybe admissions would weed
these people out. But still I wonder how time plays a role. All students
need and use time in such drastically different ways. Also, I'm glad
you've decoupled proficiency from time, it's probably important that
they stay separate.

Re: The Hsieh Program in Business

Yuliya Parshina — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:24:57 -0000

I am very intrigued by the idea of a proficiency based system outside of the arts/tech community where proficiency is easiest to demonstrate (because it's product based). I would love to know more about the assessment park of the program (who, how, why, etc).
Looking forward to your presentation!

Re: Hacking Final

Yuliya Parshina — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:20:09 -0000

Just yesterday I was lamenting that, while very interested in UX and IA, I don't know where to begin learning and building a portfolio. This sounds like a brilliant way to dive in and make your first project! I might follow your lead this summer.

Re: ITP2Go: Online environment for an offline community

Yuliya Parshina — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:17:18 -0000

I want to be your first customer! Whether on the floor or off, I found it difficult to navigate everything ITP has to offer and keep track of resources, deadlines, staging, blogs, etc. Hypothetically, much of it lives on the itp.nyu.edu/help page, but practically it took me a full semester to figure out how to find every detail I need (full disclosure: I'm a slow learner bad with lists... but still!) I would love to see a better organized and "personalizable" tool to keep track of my ITP experience. I would also love a way to peak into other students' work and interests, so I know who to partner with for future projects.

Re: POINTERS*

Yuliya Parshina — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 08:57:22 -0000

Dear team POINTERS,
I think you mentioned at some point in class that the classes are taught by community members and that to take a class you should offer to teach a skill as well. Is that still the case?

Regardless of who is teaching, it might be fun to have a category for browsing teachers as well as classes. As a user, I would also love to "pitch" ideas for classes that don't exist yet.

As for the standing desks, I was skeptical in the beginning of class... and then I tried it! I am a total convert! Standing desks for everyone!

Good luck on your presentation.

Re: Connections to Creative Coding

Yuliya Parshina — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 08:49:41 -0000

I love this idea! Programming teaches kids and young adults not only about code but important modes of thinking, logic, math, etc. in a fun and creative way. Here are a few questions I have for you:

- Are you planning to provide a curriculum structure or are you leaving the programming language, learning goals, projects, etc. up to the "tutorer"?

- Would you support an online community among participants where they can display the fruits of their labor, see what others have done, etc.

- Is there a meet-up potential for students / tutorers who happen to be nearby?

- Perhaps there can be a festival of sorts where at the end of a "semester" students and tutorers around the city/country gather in one place to celebrate or hold a "science fair" equivalent for programming? (providing a "big show" goal for students to work towards)

Your project's objective made me think of TinkerTags: http://www.tinkertags.com/ TinkerTags came out of a project from Stanford where a group of students wanted to teach youths in technically-disadvantaged communities about programming. To get kids interested, they decided to use sneakers by embedding 9 LEDs on the sides and letting kids program the light patterns using a visual programming environment. There's also an online community component where kids upload their patterns and can download patterns others have made.

Re: Connections to Creative Coding

Archana Kumar — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 04:20:37 -0000

I think you guys have something awesome here! In the 'real world' too, you pair up with other programmers all the time to debug, problem solve and well just shoot ideas back and forth.I think the majority of programmers work as part of a team so they can break off and do their own thing but always have the option to find someone in the team to work through some issues with. I think this is a great way to learn, with university students teaching, I was wondering if there is some central authority deciding who gets paired with whom and if there is, how is this decided?

Re: POINTERS*

Archana Kumar — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 04:11:41 -0000

maybe some charts and feedback to get a sense of what sort of activity is going on in each class (individual/collaboration, comment discussions, viewers currently on) as well as what people are interested. It'll be great to see something what 20-30 year old men are interested in learning as opposed to women or 20-30 year olds on the east coast vs the west coast. It could provide incentive for people to come forward as experts because of the potential audience.

Re: ITP2Go: Online environment for an offline community

Archana Kumar — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 03:30:29 -0000

I do really think the first project has a lot to offer to ITP, I would defs recommend looking into the way applications like HALL integrate a variety of features as well as trello and geckoboard that businesses are using for the same. I think the issue would be you need something that's open enough that you can always keep adding new applications and APIs to it so it can always be relevant

Re: The Hsieh Program in Business

Archana Kumar — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 03:13:54 -0000

I love the idea of students graduating into practitioner/scholar status but i was wondering what would be the motivation to pay back the time once you graduate?

Re: Connections to Creative Coding

Su Hyun Kim — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 01:37:49 -0000

I am all in for the creative coding! Wish this was around when I was in high school :) Will every teacher(university students) create their own syllabus or will administrators create few and hand them out as guidelines? I do think its hard to come up with a good syllabus especially if you don't have much experience (since teachers are students).

Re: POINTERS*

Su Hyun Kim — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 01:29:51 -0000

I love this project! I am very excited about the mobile streaming station. Whenever people request to record a lecture at ITP, we can use this now! :) I wish the site can inform me about recently streamed lectures once it's recorded and archived. If I am interested in a particular subject and would like to watch every lecture out there, enrolling a subscription of some sort would be handy.

Re: Hacking Final

Su Hyun Kim — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 01:18:23 -0000

I also, was not able to get into UX class! I would love to learn from your site :)
Since it's replacing a UX class, you could make it into a dynamic, responsive site that also looks great on mobil and tablet?

Re: ITP2Go: Online environment for an offline community

Su Hyun Kim — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 00:58:49 -0000

I love both of your ideas! We can definitely benefit from both of them:) However, I would love to see specific scenario or mockups for the second idea. Just because it's hard for me to vision in my head how it is going to look. I also wonder the data that are being collected is accurate.. Exactly what kind of data are you talking about? The scale of this project seems really enormous with massive researching. Your project will help all of us tremendously though! :)

Re: POINTERS*

sergiomajluf — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 00:56:56 -0000

If I'm getting this right, I think there is a sense of community greater than the mere functionalities of Pointer* ? Is there a strategy to build that community up front? How do people engage with this?

Pointers are this things hard to explain, long to understand, and impossible to live without once you get them. Does this apply to your project also? How would you overcome the difficulty in explaining what the project actually is?

Re: A school for Montevideo | the music class I would have liked to have

jannae — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 00:49:13 -0000

I jumped on the music train before, but I just wanted to reiterate here. I love the idea of exposing the tech/math of music through creativity and art, thus making it easier to "see" and understand for students. So many opportunities!

Re: ITP2Go: Online environment for an offline community

sergiomajluf — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 00:47:26 -0000

Great! I was in the midsts of a thoughtful comment for the second idea :)
We already discussed a little bit about what it means to be in ITP and not be here. So, what are the elements of the ITP experience that you see available to be trans-mediated into a platform?

Re: Hacking Final

sergiomajluf — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 23:57:55 -0000

It's great to look smarter from the moment I sign in! :)
And the content you've been gathering and posting in you blog is really good.

My question would be about something very specific to your motivation and example. How would you encourage or embrace peer feedback among the course building and "attending" or participating?

You are doing a great job at following the syllabus, and collecting materials from the source. With that, you have part of the UX class; I'd say about 35%. The other 65% or so, will come from practice, trial, error and feedback. Is this something you are interested in including, or do you see this as anther aspect of the educational process not included in your project?

Re: The Hsieh Program in Business

sergiomajluf — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 23:32:27 -0000

I love the idea, so much, I want to enroll. I'm close to many "Business School" people, and B-Schools need to be reframed urgently. That is tough in a context like that also, where certification/accreditation means a lot if a fresh baked grad wants to get a job. If he wanted to create a job, that's a different story, right?

So, what is there needed for you to succeed? How are you making this happen, financially wise? It's a time bartering economy, but the marketplace still needs to operate right?

Anyway, I'd really like to see something like this out there. So many businesses out there with the self mission to disrupt and innovate, and you can actually make it happen at their core, their home, their b-school

Re: Connections to Creative Coding

sergiomajluf — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 23:06:00 -0000

I'll start by saying that I mostly agree with the purpose of your project.

However, I think it would be valuable to try to get an outsider perspective. Let me put it this way: The Gates, Zuckerbergs, Dorseys, and the like, would certainly benefit from a world where there would be more technically educated people to work for them (there is scarcity in this realm). Hey, the world would benefit from it, and that's the point also. Sure, this would also mean more competition, but I think we are far from over saturating that market still. So why do I agree?

It's the creative part that's interesting. I believe the world not only needs more creative coders, it needs more creative people. And coding is a good way to develop creative skills.

Have you checked wordpress' website footer note (all the way down to the right)? Go there. I'll wait.

Yep, Code is Poetry. To them Code is Poetry, because their fluency with code allowed them the be creative with it, to design a new way of facing an old problem, to out-win their competition. So even thought we love creative coding, I'll push you to remember that the coding is the means, to an unknown creative goal.

That said, kuddos for the strategy on using grad students. Fresh knowledge, energetic people, and money is always welcome. I'd love to see some more ideas on the business model. You know, I'll be happy to teach myself!

Re: Better Content Through Measuring and Increasing Engagement

jannae — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 22:55:42 -0000

I love the attention tracking idea, but I think it might end up becoming a can of worms concerning human learning, and engagement behaviors since it really seems like a lot of people behave very differently. there was an interesting idea shared in class (perhaps by Jeff?) concerning the opt-in factor and how that might change a student's behavior while being tracked. There may be something there that you could use, actually, since asking someone to opt-in gives you a certain amount of control over their responses. Perhaps you could overcome the potential plethora of issues by dictating certain queues that an attention-paying, opted in student would have to follow in order to provide engagement data.