Welcome the Alumni for Reunion 2012
Posted: April 19, 2012 at 9:11 pm
Friday, April 20 | Saturday, April 21 | Sunday, April 22
First Floor, Allen Building Major Impact highlights the journeys of Duke alumni who have found success while pursuing their intellectual passions. In this exhibit, and on the website, alumni share stories of struggle, triumph, and resilience, encouraging Duke undergraduates to pursue studies they care about. By channeling intellectual passions into professional pursuits, these alumni found joy in unexpected places, and discovered that there are countless ways to be successful and make a Major Impact.
Bianca C. Williams '02, co-curator Jamaica Woodyard-Gilmer, photographer and co-curator
Explore the labs and classrooms of this state-of-art-facility as you interact with faculty and students.
(Entry to the Nasher Museum is free for all alumni wearing a reunions name badge, including entry to Angels, Devils and the Electric Slide and Romare Beardon. Entry to Alexander Calder and Contemporary Art is $10, but alumni wearing a reunions name badge when purchasing their ticket at the Nasher receive a $2 discount.)
Alexander Calder and Contemporary Art: Form, Balance, Joy provides a fresh perspective on modern sculptor Alexander Calder (1898-1976) and his influence on a new generation of artists. This exhibition pairs 32 master works by Calder with works by seven young artists: Martin Boyce, Nathan Carter, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Aaron Curry, Kristi Lippire, Jason Meadows, and Jason Middlebrook. Dont miss this rare opportunity to explore Calders influence on an exciting new generation of artists; to see their work side by side with that of Calder; and to compare the creative use of materials to define space and explore form, balance, color and movement.
Angels, Devils and the Electric Slide: Outsider Art from the Permanent Collection includes Outsider artists Minnie Black, the Rev. Howard Finster, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Mose Tolliver and Purvis Young. Outsider art refers to the visionary work of contemporary artists who have never had formal training. The artists in the exhibition hail from across the Southeastern United States, and their art ranges from painting to ceramics to sculpture in wood or metal. All of their works give voice to an interior worldthose personal fantasies, meditations on everyday life and unspoken fearsthat most people cannot put into words or images.
Bus departs from Blue Zone at 10:30 a.m. What little the world knows about lemurs comes almost exclusively from the internationally known research facility, the Duke Lemur Center. See the worlds largest collection of lemurs and other endangered primates in an enclosed woodland habitat. Because of gravel paths, walking shoes are necessary. Space is limited.
Lemur Center Tour 2: 1:00 2:30 p.m., Friday Lemur Center Tour 3: 3:00 4:30 p.m., Friday Lemur Center Tour 4: 8:45 10:15 a.m., Saturday Lemur Center Tour 5: 1:45 3:15 p.m., Saturday Lemur Center Tour 6: 3:30 5:00 p.m., Saturday
Auditorium, DUSON Join Dean Catherine L. Gilliss for the presentation of the 2012 awards.
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Welcome the Alumni for Reunion 2012
XEROX "Documenter" — Sales Training
Posted: at 9:11 pm
Video portfolio sample. This is a sample of a corporate-industrial training video written, produced, and directed in 1986 by John-Michael Battaglia for his client, Xerox, to educate the Xerox sales force how to strategically position their graphically-oriented "Documenter" desk-top publishing work station against the competition, which, in the mid-eighties consisted of Aldus PageMaker (version 1.0) on the Macintosh, and not much at all on the DOS-based IBM personal computer in the dark days before that imitative, graphical interface called Windows arrived on the scene. Computer geeks and software historians may derive some eye-opening, entertainment value from this glimpse into the past. They can peek back in time to observe what the state-of-the-art was in desktop publishing hardware and software in the mid-eighties. As part of a multi-faceted, day-long training program, the complete video on competitive analysis ran for 90 minutes, and it provided an in-depth, head-to-head comparison of the features and benefits of the Xerox "Documenter," PageMaker on the Mac, and DOS programs on the PC that have fortunately disappeared without a trace. But no one needs to suffer through that much agony to get a nostalgic taste of what things were like then, so only the conceptual overview provided in the opening 14 minutes is being shown in this excerpt. A pretty narrator introduces the topic of desktop publishing, and then she goes on to briefly compare and contrast the three hardware ...
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XEROX "Documenter" — Sales Training
Education games for children – The univers of Wilby – Free games for children – Video
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Education games for children - The univers of Wilby - Free games for children - Video
The Many Uses of Online Learning Webinar – Video
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The Many Uses of Online Learning Webinar - Video
From Silicon Valley, A New Approach To Education
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Four major universities are joining forces with Coursera, a Silicon Valley startup, to offer free online classes in more than three-dozen subjects.
Four major universities are joining forces with Coursera, a Silicon Valley startup, to offer free online classes in more than three-dozen subjects.
Last year when Andrew Ng, a computer science professor at Stanford University, put his machine-learning class online and opened enrollment to the world, more than 100,000 students signed up.
"I think all of us were surprised," he says.
Ng had posted lectures online before, but this class was different.
"This was actually a class where you can participate as a student and get homework and assessments," he said.
The class was interactive. There were quizzes and online forums where teaching assistants, fellow students and Ng answered questions. In the end, tens of thousands of students did all the same work and took the same tests that Stanford students took; thousands passed.
"Stanford has always been a place where we were not afraid to try bold new things, often without knowing exactly what the consequences were going to be," said Jim Plummer, the dean of engineering. "And this is an instance of that."
Now Ng and Daphne Koller, a Stanford colleague, are launching a company called Coursera to bring more classes from elite universities to students around the world for free online.
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From Silicon Valley, A New Approach To Education
Craftsy sews up $15 million
Posted: at 9:11 pm
By Dan Primack April 18, 2012: 12:43 PM ET
Online education site snares new funding.
Sympoz, an online education company focused on the crafting space, has raised $15 million in new venture capital funding. Tiger Global Management led the round, while existing shareholders Foundry Group, Harrison Metal and Access Venture Partners also participated.
The Denver-based company was founded two years ago by a group of eBay and ServiceMagic veterans, and is focused on producing high-quality educational videos that sell for between $30 and $60 each.
To do so, it identifies a topic and then seeks out talented instructors who may already be known to niche communities via trade show appearances or blogs. It then flies them out to Denver to produce the videos, and keeps them involved by having them respond to student questions (which can be left at specific minute marks within the video -- with all students also being able to see and respond).
So far, Sympoz has sold approximately 142,000 videos.
The company's initial focus is on crafting -- videos on quilting, knitting, etc. -- via a vertical called Craftsy. It also is beginning to branch into other areas like cooking and gardening, although it's unclear if a second vertical is planned.There also is an e-commerce piece, although it is secondary to the videos.
Sympoz previously raised around $6 million. Some of the new funding will be used to increase headcount to from 50 to between 75 and 80.
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Craftsy sews up $15 million
Online Education Startup Coursera Lands $16M From Kleiner & NEA, Adds John Doerr To Its Board
Posted: at 9:11 pm
It has already been a year since Peter Thiel called public attention to the bubble growing in American higher education. Yet, the cost of receiving a college degree in the U.S. has continued to grow, as student debt in the U.S. today has pushed north of $1 trillion, with the average debt per student standing at more than $25,000.
With the current fiscal trajectory of our educational system now unsustainable, an infusion of new blood has begun to enter the space, and a growing number of startups and entrepreneurs have turned their focus to upgrading educations legacy infrastructure. In turn, investors now seem ready to provide edtech companies with the type of capital that has typically been reserved for consumer businesses.
The latest example of this trend is the Mountain View-based Coursera, one of a growing set of edtech startups looking to combat the rising costs now endemic to higher education with smart, scalable, web-based solutions. Traditionally, online education has been seen as an underwhelming, ineffectual approximation of its on-campus sibling defined by micro-correspondence courses that are supplemental to the classroom experience, rather than a viable alternative.
Thats why Coursera is on a mission to bring Ivy League-caliber courses to online education for free. To help steer it down this path, the startup is today announcing that it has raised $16 million in venture funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and New Enterprise Associates (NEA). As part of its investment, veteran investor, long-time KPCB partner, and public education reform advocate John Doerr and NEA General Partner Scott Sandell, have joined the startups board of directors.
The startup plans to use its new capital to expand its content and feature set and to continue developing partnerships with institutions in the hopes of increasing its global student body. And part of what I think defines this new set of edtech companies is the understanding that, to bring true innovation to education, issues cant be addressed from the outside. In democratizing content and in bringing historically exclusive material to the masses, for it to be most effective, this cant be something that is forced on institutions by entrepreneurs, but instead, in partnership.
Like edtechs top-funded 2tor and newly capital-flush StraighterLine, Coursera is partnering with top-tier universities to co-develop course material. Unlike 2tor, which focuses its web and mobile platforms on post-graduate education, and thus specific vocations, (and just like StraighterLine), the startup is looking to provide courses across a broad range of disciplines, including medicine, literature, history, and computer science.
The cool part about StraighterLine is that its courses are ACE Credit recommended, meaning that they can be transferred for credit at a number of degree granting institutions. Its solution acts as a great complement to community colleges and equivalent feeder programs that funnel students into four-year institutions. In our coverage last week, I noted that the one thing missing was big name institutions accepting StraighterLine credit.
Coursera, on the other hand, seems to be going directly after top-tier universities. Accompanying its funding news, the startup also announced that Princeton University, Stanford University, the University of Michigan, and UPenn will be using its platform to make web-based courses available online for free. The startup believes that it is the first education platform to host content from multiple top universities in one place.
The one drawback, however, is that its courses, while emanating from respected institutions, arent offered for formal credit. Theres a chance they might offer certificates, but the startup will likely need to work this out if it has hopes of building a legitimate online university. Or making money, for that matter.
Of course, all this theoretical talk is fine, but we have yet to address what Courseras platform actually does. Currently, the startups platform includes video lectures with interactive quizzes, mastery-building interactive assignments, and collaborative community forums that encourage students to participate actively with classmates from across the globe. In other words, Courseras offers lectures that are broken down into 10 to 15 minute-long video chunks, with these interactive quizzes embedded into its lecture videos. It also enables students to complete auto-graded exercises that provide them with instant feedback.
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Online Education Startup Coursera Lands $16M From Kleiner & NEA, Adds John Doerr To Its Board
Online education panel to address Faculty Senate on Thursday
Posted: at 9:10 pm
In its first meeting of spring quarter, the Faculty Senate will hear a five-member panel including John Mitchell, special assistant to President John Hennessy for educational technology discuss online courses at Stanford.
The panelists are:
Last month, Stanford announced it was introducing new online classes, following a successful pilot last fall that drew more than 350,000 participants around the world.
A company founded by two Stanford professors, Coursera, is hosting the free online classes, including Game Theory and Cryptography. Stanford expects to launch five more free online courses next week: Automata, Computer Science 101, Compilers, Introduction to Logic and Machine Learning.
The online classes are taught by regular Stanford faculty and are highly interactive. Participants view short video clips that include live quizzes and instant feedback that allow them to quickly determine their understanding of the material and to work on problem areas. At the same time, participants help each other through online discussions similar to a comment thread on a social networking site.
Those enrolled in the free classes do not get Stanford credit for their work, but they do receive a statement of accomplishment if they successfully complete a course.
For Stanford students, online content supplements the classroom experience.
Professors teaching online courses are experimenting with a "flipped classroom," shifting classroom time from lectures to interactive activities such as solving problems, reviewing difficult material and working in teams.
The senate meeting will begin at 3:15 p.m. in Room 180 of the Law School. Discussion is limited to members of the senate, but members of the Stanford community may request to attend the meeting by contacting the Academic Secretary's Office at 723-4992 or Trish Del Pozzo at delpozzo@stanford.edu.
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Online education panel to address Faculty Senate on Thursday
Online Education Venture Lures Cash Infusion and Deals With 5 Top Universities
Posted: at 9:10 pm
April 18, 2012 1:00 pm
By JOHN MARKOFF/The New York Times
SAN FRANCISCO -- An interactive online learning system created by two Stanford computer scientists plans to announce Wednesday that it has secured $16 million in venture capital and partnerships with five major universities.
The scientists, Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, taught free Web-based courses through Stanford last year that reached more than 100,000 students. Now they have formed a company, Coursera, as a Web portal to distribute a broad array of interactive courses in the humanities, social sciences, physical sciences and engineering.
Besides Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley, where the venture has already been offering courses, the university partners include the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton.
Although computer-assisted learning was pioneered at Stanford during the 1960s, and for-profit online schools like the University of Phoenix have been around for several decades, a new wave of interest in online education is taking shape.
"When we offer a professor the opportunity to reach 100,000 students, they find it remarkably appealing," Dr. Koller said.
Last fall a course in artificial intelligence taught by Sebastian Thrun, then at Stanford, and Google's director of research, Peter Norvig, attracted more than 160,000 students from 190 countries.
The free course touched off an intense debate behind the scenes at Stanford, where annual tuition is $40,050. Ultimately, the 22,000 students who finished the course received "certificates of completion" rather than Stanford credit. And Dr. Thrun, who also directs Google's X research lab, left his tenured position at Stanford and founded a private online school, Udacity.
Coursera (pronounced COR-sayr-uh), based in Mountain View, Calif., intends to announce that it has received financial backing from two of Silicon Valley's premier venture capital firms, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and New Enterprise Associates. The founders said they were not ready to announce a strategy for profitability, but noted that the investment gave them time to develop new ways to generate revenue.
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Online Education Venture Lures Cash Infusion and Deals With 5 Top Universities
Lincoln Life Coaching – Video
Posted: April 1, 2012 at 11:03 pm
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Lincoln Life Coaching - Video