November 03, 2008

Rubert Murdoch & Australian PM Join Education Revolution

Yes, it's true, Rupert Murdoch and the Australian Prime Minister join the education revolution. See what PM Kevin Rudd said:

"An education revolution is our response, investing in the quantity of money we put into the education system, the quality of that investment." (Source)

Now, should be noted that they might mean different things then we mean when we talk about an education revolution.

No matter what you think of Rupert Murdoch - he's a "big picture guy", and he says some things that we at Supercool School have been vocal about for some time already. For example - that we are still stuck with a 19th century education system in the 21st century.

Maybe we should recruit Rupert for SCS? (Na, wouldn't work... that guy has a different vibe) ;-)

Something more serious... experts warn that some of the steepest price increases in college tuitions might be just around the corner - pushing education yet further out of reach for many. Government always likes to cut the edu-budget. That's just another reason to take things in our own hands.

(I just have a friend visiting from Guinea. Education is basically being run by NGOs from what she told me, because the politicians are busy "mange l'argent" (eating money). But internet connectivity is really good in Konakry and lots of young people start to get into IT. That might be a good sign - maybe Africa will soon have it's own "Bangalore" success stories).

Ramin

May 30, 2008

Supercool Summer Internship for Passionate Programmer

We are offering an exciting summer internship position at a fun and fast paced early stage San Francisco based startup. A great opportunity for someone to come in and contribute directly to the development of Supercool School (www.supercoolschool.com). This is an excellent chance to work with a "Supercool" team and have "Supercool" experience.

Internship position:
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We are looking for somebody who can be an effective and productive team member.

The candidate
- Must be familiar with Windows and Linux development environments
- Must be have basic knowledge of web based database driven applications
- Must have working knowledge of HTML, Javascript, CSS, SQL and Ruby on Rails
- Preferred: Experience in building scalable web sites

Please send your CV and a short coverletter to steli@supercoolschool.com

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please feel to distribute this message
thanks Max

May 13, 2008

Supercool School now officially launched the public Alpha

Dear supercool folks

Yea it's true we are live! You can request, learn and teach classes through our Facebook application. We will of course remain Beta as we keep innovating and pushing ourselves for your best online learning experience - so please send us your feedback, constructive critique and praise ;-)

Naturally we have milked our supercool heads to develop a fundamental revamp of the FaceBook interface, so for those of you who have already signed up to the application, there are some very exciting functionality improvements which make it even easier to cruise straight to supercool learning.

1) CLASSES OPEN FOR TEACHERS TO SIGN UP FROM THE BEGINNING
We listened to what many of you requested - NOW classes dont have to be full with 8 people before the teacher seat can be taken. Instead the teacher seat is open for sign-up right after the class is created. This will greatly increase the turn-around time before a class is happening.

2) IMPROVED EASY CLASS SCHEDULING
When a class is created the learner indicates one or two dates when it suits him/her best to participate in the class. This way all other students and the teacher have a point of departure as to when the class should happen.

Also we added the functionality to make it super easy for you to add the class date to your preferred calendar (Google-Calendar; Outlook, etc.)

3) BETTER BROWSING & POPULAR LEARNING THEMES
On the main navigation we added a browse classes feature. There you can go through all the classes and get an overview of what are the hot learning requests.

4) SCREENCAST
The best way to get a quick overview of how Supercool School works is by watching our *new* screencast.


Let's spread the word and make supercool learning part of everybody's daily routine

Steli Efti
Supercool Principal

Max Senges
Supercool Housemeister

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