Supercool School

Interview with a Mike Del Ponte - Principal of the Sparkseed School

Mike is a friend who we got to know through Sandbox. He is the founder of Sparkseed - an accelerator for social entrepreneurs. The Sparkseed School kicked off with a fantastic webinar on funding with Tom Suddes that I recommend to everyone who is seeking fresh inspiration. 

 

1. Mike we are huge fans of Sparkseed. Please tell our readers why Sparkseed is meant to be a game changer?

 

Sparkseed is a game changer for two reasons. First, we aim to incubate the most impactful social ventures in the world. To do this, we target an especially creative and bold group of entrepreneurs: college students. Knowing that college students have founded companies like Microsoft, Dell, Apple, and Facebook, we know they can start social ventures that are equally significant. Therefore, we have three programs that identify the top student-led ventures in the U.S., incubate them, and then invest in them like a venture capitalist would…Which leads me to the second reason why Sparkseed is a game changer. We are a 501c3 non-profit organization, but we are also committed to earning our own revenue. By making equity investments in some of the ventures we incubate, we will be able to eventually fund all of our programs with the investment income we earn. Once we prove this model to be effective, it can be replicated by scores of other organizations in the nonprofit sector.

 

2. What impact does social entrepreneurship have today already on our global society?  

 

To answer that question we need to agree on a definition of social entrepreneurship, which is a long-standing debate. To make things easy (yet still accurate), let’s just say that a social entrepreneur is someone who builds an organization with business best practices to address a significant social or environmental issue. This person – the social entrepreneur – could lead a for profit or nonprofit organization, so long as she does it like an entrepreneur would in a regular business (as opposed to government or traditional nonprofits). With that said…

 

Social entrepreneurship has had a varied impact on the world and the results are still out on many ventures. I thin there are two important things to note. First, social entrepreneurship changes the way do-gooders operate. I think less things are taken for granted. For example, when you have to generate your own income, making payroll takes on a who new life. You have to be scrappy, innovative, lean…and all the other entrepreneurial clichés that are actually very important when you’re building a social venture. Secondly, social entrepreneurship is, perhaps, more empowering to those it helps than hand-outs. For example, microfinance helps people start small businesses and generate their own income, so they are paying for their kids’ education, food medicine, and so on, rather than the government or NGOs giving hand-outs. This has an important psychological effect that will pay dividends for generations.

 

3. What role does the Sparkseed School play within the Sparkseed universe?

 

The Sparkseed School is the place where our webinars and video conferences are held. Each month we host a webinar on topics that are important to social entrepreneurs – business planning, managing a team, pitching to investors, etc. We’ve tried a variety of platforms and Supercool School has been the best.

 

We are also starting peer-to-peer video conferences for our student innovators around the country so they can learn from one another. Supercool School allows us to do this.

 

4. How can people get in touch with you if they want to join Sparkseed? 

 

They can reach out to me directly at [email protected]. They can also follow us on Twitter @sparkseed.

 

5. Anything else you would like to share with us?

 

The biggest lesson that I’ve learned is that success is often predicated on one’s ability to 1) discover what people are best at and what they love, and 2) give them opportunities to do those things for one’s venture. At Sparkseed, we’ve been blessed to have incredibly talented people help us and help our ventures. We are excited to meet more of those people, perhaps through this blog post.

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Build your own online school here: http://www.SupercoolSchool.com 

 

The premier space for educators - an interview with the Principal of Educators 2.0 Benjamin Stewart

Supercool School wants to give people worldwide access to education by empowering educators and people who want to become educators to build their own schools.
 

Educators 2.0 is an aspiring school built on the Supercool School platform for educators from around the world to meet up and learn from one another. Benjamin Stewart is the principal of Educators 2.0. He is a phd student in education and a teacher at the university Autónoma de Aguascalientes in Mexico. 

 

1. Benjamin, we have experienced you as a truly innovative educator. 

What do you think are the must do & must haves for a modern educator?

 

I think a definite must is to realize the importance of developing one’s personal learning network (PLN) and making the PLN work for you (i.e., as a teacher and a learner) in finding innovative ways to better engage the learner.  Certainly today’s technologies provide affordances in developing a PLN that we did not have before, but it also means that teachers must also be comfortable about sharing experiences with others, reflect on those experiences as to how to improve in the future, and also not be afraid of making a mistake in front of others.  It’s about making one’s learning an ongoing, transparent process that ultimately influences others within the social network.  If I give you a dollar, and you give me a dollar, then we both just have one dollar.  If I give you an idea, and you give me an idea, then we both have two ideas!   

 

 

2. For about a week now you took over the lead for Educators 2.0. 

What do you have on mind for the future of Educators 2.0?

 

Educators 2.0 is a community of teacher leaders dedicated to providing a more equitable education for everyone.  I feel everyone has something to teach and that everyone should have the right to an open learning experience based on one’s needs, interests, and learning preferences.  It’s this reason that terms like teacher and student are really not an accurate way to describe the people who make up our community because we all are teachers and we all are students depending on the particular moment and the kind of interaction that is taking place.  Whether you are a Ph.D. working at a university or someone who likes to teach on the side, Educator 2.0 provides the support necessary to build one’s personal learning network in a way that develops the understandings, skill set, and dispositions required to be a teacher leader in the 21^st century.    

 

The vision that I have for Educators 2.0 is to become the premier space for educators to interact on any given subject at any given level, and a place where teachers can brainstorm, share experiences and knowledge, and reflect on new ways of promoting creativity through social interaction. This can be done by building both interdisciplinary and intradisciplinary learning networks through diverse and open dialog while promoting life-long learning skills in the process. 

 

3. How is being a principal of an online school different from a school offline?

 

Well, since I don’t have the luxury of meeting most of the educators face-to-face, I must reach out to them through both synchronous and asynchronous communication in order to provide the support they need to succeed.  Integrating the latest technologies will definitely be required as I will carefully need to use the appropriate written and spoken discourse to communicate most effectively.  It’s important that educators feel they have an adequate support system, so I will have to use a variety of technologies to make that happen (i.e., emails, forums, live classes, recorded classes, etc.). 

 

4. What is your vision of how Supercool School as a platform & movement will change education?

 

Supercool School (SCS), I feel, will have a big influence on how we will begin to merge the traditional notions of formal and informal education.  Formal institutions will begin using SCS to open up their classes to the community, and those pursuing an informal education will begin seeing opportunities to get accredited.  SCS is in a great position to make both of these happen.

 

Also, SCS empowers people by creating learner autonomy.  Since anyone can request or create a class, the typical teacher and student roles begin to disappear as I’ve mentioned above.  Imagine an environment where students can freely request a class or teach a concept recently covered in school with people outside their own classroom.  These same students could also create a meeting, presentation, debate, etc. directly with the local or global community thus creating a more authentic experience that directly benefits society.     

 

SCS will bring the social element of learning to a new level.

 

5. How can people contact you if they want to get involved with Educators 2.0? 

If anyone is interested in learning more about Educators 2.0 feel free to send me a message on Educators 2.0 or post a comment in my blog: http://bnleez.blogspot.com/

The Principal of HAITIREACT - the Haiti Recovery Accelerator

Imagine to accelerate Haiti's recovery process from 30 to 10 years. This is what HAITIREACT is striving for.

We are very proud to support Haiti recovery process by donating our technology. Thanks to all the people who committed to support the Haiti Recovery Accelerator and most off all thanks to Daniel Donet who is the coordinating force behind this ambitious project.

The following is an interview dedicated to Daniel Donet the Principal for the Haiti Recovery Accelerator. Stay tuned for the launch of the platform in the coming days.

 

 

1. Daniel what inspired you to start the Haiti Recovery Accelerator?

After the natural disaster in Haiti I wanted to help, but my obligations didn’t let me move from The United Kingdom. Sending money wasn’t enough, so I started thinking what else could I do. During that time the news were speaking about how much time will take to recover Haiti. Experts were speaking about 30 years. For me, it was clear that the knowledge and people spread around the world are the key to make an early recovery possible.

2. What impact are you striving for with the Haiti Recovery Accelerator?

The aim of Haiti Recovery Accelerator is to reduce the 30 years that the experts say that Haiti will need to recover. We want to make possible a recovery in less than 10 years. To do so, we will connect the people and knowledge spread around the world with the needs of the people and organizations that are in Haiti.

3. How can this platform help Haiti?

The platform is the space where people and knowledge will meet. We are looking to have interviews, classes, meetings and services focused in the acceleration of the Haiti's recovery. The imagination of the people will be the limit of what solutions and support we could provide to the people and organizations at Haiti.

4. Where can people help you?

The most important is that everybody can help, because everybody has skills and knowledge that would improve the work that organizations and individuals are doing in Haiti. Here some examples:

- If you like history, sociology, geography, economics, politics... you could have an online meeting or conference to help volunteers and organizations to understand the country and its society.

- If you are good with people, you could help to dynamism the community and motivate other people to join.

-If you have expertise in a specific field, you could use Haiti Recovery Accelerator website to advice organizations that are or will be soon in Haiti.

Those are only some examples. The possibilities are limitless, because in Haiti Recovery Accelerator everybody from anywhere can have a role in the acceleration of the Haiti recovery.

Do you want to help as well?

- Connect with Daniel directly at danieldonet at gmail.com or add him on facebook 

- Add yourself to this list

- Tell your friends about it

Short Interview On The BART With Aaltoes Entrepreneurship Society

Below you can find a short interview that our friends from Aaltoes made with me while on our way to Startup School in Berkley :)

Interview with Steli Efti from Super Cool School from Aaltoes on Vimeo.

Supercool School Interview With Edukwest

A couple of days ago we had the pleasure to talk to Edublogger Kirsten Winkler from Edukwest about the future of education and Supercool School. Check out it!

My PodTech Interview : Learning by Embarrassment

podtech.net has published a video interview with Robert Scoble and
me ( recorded 6 weeks ago). Interview length = 26 minutes. Time I needed to watch it = 65 minutes. I don´t know how many times I pushed that pause button but boy it was alot of pausing!!!

It´s interesting how much we learn about ourselves when we see some video material. It was my second day in the US and I´m not happy with how I communicated the vision behind Supercool School but I´m already looking forward to compare the next video interview with it and to see the progress.

I used to do alot of video coaching and training back in the days and today I remembered why :)

You can acquire true wisdom by watching yourself on video - confucius would have loved it!

I even thought about not publishing it on my blog. That´s when I knew that the only right thing to do was to publish it! We are such ego driven creatures - and overcoming ego means true learning.

So without further ado...I bring to you...

***And by the way: you can read my first peopleized interview here. Now, I´m officially podteched & peopleized ;)

UPDATE: My bro Jim from BlackInBusiness posted an interview on his blog we made about the status of education for black students in America. Check it out since he asked some very interesting questions. Seems like today is the supercool interview day ;)

SECOND UPDATE: Wow - have a look at this clever guy - he asked me some questions @ peopleized and I just answered them because I wanted to support my buddies Halil & Euripidis. His questions seemed to be pointless at first. Now go and read what he had in mind when he interviewed me - damn clever & devilish sharp!

Supercool Interview with Mihaela

I had the honor of giving an interview recently to Mihaela Lica from eWritings and Pamil Visions PR & Brand Development. Mihaela is one of the most warm-hearted, helpful & creative person I met whilst blogging and we really have become close friends. She is a great support for Supercool School  and I cannot express how much I already learned from her. Read the Supercool Interview here if you are interested in this project and stay for a while to read more from Mihaela. It´s definitely worth it. Enjoy!

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On April 30th 2007, the Blogosphere will hold a One-Day Blog Silence in honor towards the victims of Virginia.  33 died at the US college massacre.

We did our best. Now we need your help - Find out what to do.

Supercool Interview with Steve

I had the pleasure of giving an interview recently to Steve Aitchison from Change Your Thoughts Blog. He asked questions about Supercool School, the 7 Lessons You Learned Ebook and Blogging.  You can find the Supercool Interview here. Enjoy!

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On April 30th 2007, the Blogosphere will hold a One-Day Blog Silence in honor towards the victims of Virginia.  33 died at the US college massacre.

We did our best. Now we need your help - Find out what to do.

 

Supercool interview!

I had the pleasure of giving an interview recently to Sam from LeveragingIdeas.com. You can find the supercool interview here. Enjoy!