Beanbag Learning
Take a look at beanbaglearning.com.
Beanbag Learning – Beanbag was the first Jiva product and provides a matching service for parents and private tutors. Read the rest of this entry »
Tutorhub
Tutorhub is a new service that provides a simple, cost-effective way to get instant homework help and revision support from a tutor. We call it ‘micro-tutoring’.
Type in a question and knowledgeable, CRB checked tutors will come back to you with offers to help. Pick a tutor and start an online, IM-based tutoring session to tackle your problem. It’s a conversation with a knowledgeable tutor, just when you need it: when you’re stuck. When you’ve finished, you contribute feedback to a proprietary tutor-rating algorithm. Charging is by the minute, so you only pay for the bits you don’t understand.
Here Comes Everybody
I’m currently reading Here Comes Everybody: the power of organizing without organizations by Clay Shirky, which is a cracking good read. There is one passage early in the book which really resonates with what we are trying to do with Beanbag.
From Sharing to Cooperation to Collective Action
For the last hundred years the big organizational question has been whether any given task was best taken on by the state , directing the effort in a planned way, or by businesses competing in a market. This debate was based on the universal and unspoken supposition that people couldn’t simply self-assemble; the choice between markets and managed effort assumed that there was no third alternative. Now there is.
The Web is enabling people with shared interests and common goals to come together to tackle old problems in new ways and to challenge the status quo. It allows large numbers of people with wildly varying levels of time, energy and commitment to all contribute meaningfully to a collaborative effort without the overhead traditionally associated with building an organisation. A group can be much more fluid and correspondingly more efficient at realising its goals.
Educational Podcasting – The Future, Today…
As someone relatively new to the media industry, I am excited by the latest trends on the internet. Social networks, wikis, blogs and podcasts are now all the rage, but have a long way to go before they form part of day to day life for the man on the street. I see massive opportunities for podcast media in particular to support children in learning. Our research has found that parents are interested too!