Supercool School

I just spend 6 minutes doing this...

Learning Links...

...or Links about Learning, Education and the 2.0

Education Revolution Manifesto: 25 Rules to Live By ( A Must Read!)
e-learning 2.0: All You Need To Know
Top 25 Web 2.0 Apps to Help You LEARN

Sidenote: I know you guyz want to know what's happening @ Supercool School.
Just a little bit more patients...I promise it'll pay off ;) I will publish a
post with Supercool News soon on this blog!

So stay tuned!

Better World Books

I love this concept: You run a book drive on your campus and Better World Books finds a way to capitalize the books to fund and support literacy initiatives locally, nationally, and around the world. Go and visit their website to find cool books for fair prices and fund literacy around the world!

Behind the scenes:
I met Xavier Helgesen ( Co-Founder of BetterWorldBooks.com) today and he is really a cool guy! He had some great advice & ideas for Supercool School. I would love to see our 2 projects work together in the future.

Pandora Event in San Francisco - I´m Inspired!

Pandora.com hosted a meeting tonite for press and heavy users at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. I was there and I have to tell you - I´m inspired!

For all of you who don´t know pandora yet:

"Pandora is a music service where you can put in a song, say AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells.” Then Pandora will bring you other music that is similar to that. It basically builds a radio station on the fly with music that matches your tastes."

The presentation was great! It was funny that they did the whole event in a "mini-me" format of Apple events - and I mean exactly the same structure like Apple and Steve Jobs ( they even used some exact same charts Steve Jobs uses).

But the guyz from Pandora did a great job - especially the speech from Tim Westergren ( the founder) impressed & inspired me. It was the "real-deal" startup story about struggle, failure, debt, problems and persistence...I love such stories!!!

Not that I could relate to going through this kind of times as a startup entrepreneur ;)

Even Mr. Arrington was in the crowd! He published a post about the new features of Pandora even before they presented them to us ;) Go and check out the TechCrunch post to get all the infos.

And another post I want to highlight tonite - Robert wrote a great post about supporting the Pandora guyz and their great vision and service! It includes a video interview with Tom Conrad, CTO of Pandora. Good stuff!!!

Some great education links for you

Within 23 seconds I stumbled over several great educational posts and websites that I had to share with you!

Kudos to BubbleJet from the Learning Online Info blog for the post about Engines of Education. This looks like a great project and although Roger Schank claims my "education revolutionary" for himself ;) I dig his project and I want you to have a look at his online book "Engines of Education".

Also thankx to Bill Tully for telling me to go & read the post about  "How  We Can Change Our Failing Education System" written by  Steve Olson. There is a interesting discussion going on around this post and I urge you to go and have a look. You won´t regret it.

Sidenote: Both post where written on 23 March. 23 Seconds. 2 Posts. 3 Websites. Hmm...maybe I should go to the cinema to watch the movie "The number 23" with Jim Carrey?! ;)

We Are What We Do

What a great concept - starting a world wide movement by inspiring people to take action. They´ve created 100 simple, everyday actions that can improve our environment, our health, and our communities and make our planet and the people on it much happier. You can find out more about them here.

CISCI - Cinema and Science

That´s a cool concept. Here is what they say on their website www.cisci.net

CISCI will combine the two most popular media among youngsters, namely movies and the internet, aiming to stimulate interest in science.

There will be video clips and scenes from popular movies and documentaries that serve to illustrate scientific concepts and analyse their scientific content from the point of view like for example physics, biology, chemsitry and mathematics

CISCI will provide these new innovative classroom resources  for school teachers and their pupils.

Is it really possible for machines to use us as "Human Batteries"?

Click here to find out

Gapminder - Exciting Statistic Tools!!!

I really really hate statistics - but I love gapminder. It´s the coolest statistic tool I´ve ever seen ( in fact it´s the only cool statistic tool I know).

You can do all kinds of really cool & powerful stuff with gapminder - but most important for me is that I can see & UNDERSTAND very quickly connections & relationships between countries, economies, health & education data around the world.

You have to check this one out: www.gapminder.org

Gapminder is a non-profit venture for development and provision of free software that visualise human development. This is done in collaboration with universities, UN organisations, public agencies and non-governmental organisations. Gapminder is a Foundation registered at Stockholm county administration board (Länstyrelsen) (reg. nr. 802424-7721). It was founded by Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Hans Rosling on 25 February 2005, in Stockholm. Gapminder Foundation will advance software development that have been done earlier by the non-profit company Gapminder Ltd. Funding has been and is mainly by grants from Sida for the Trendalyzer project. Being a producer of global public goods Gapminder benefit from free and creative inputs from pilot-testers and other end-users in many institutions and organisations.

A Force More Powerful

This Game is just too cool! It´s a education tool for revolutionaries worldwide! I love stuff like this!

"A Force More Powerful is the first and only game to teach the waging of conflict using nonviolent methods. Destined for use by activists and leaders of nonviolent resistance and opposition movements, the game will also educate the media and general public on the potential of nonviolent action and serve as a simulation tool for academic studies of nonviolent resistance."

I´m really not an activist BUT I always felt a deep respect for people who stand up and change things that aren´t good in the world rather then just complain about them! By the way that´s the reason why I started Supercool School! I really dislike ( I didn´t want to say HATE ;-)) our old education system!

Since I see Supercool School as a "nonviolent revolution" against our old education system ( I can´t think of a violent one...what? Slap the teachers and councils with books till their heads get open to new ideas or what???) I found this game to be of high interest for me. Maybe there are some "non-business" strategies that could inspire me for our little revolution ;-)

  I hadn´t the time to play yet :-(

I just got my hands on the Game and the Book about Nonviolent Conflicts.

The first 30 pages are very interesting and fun to read...

I´ll keep you up to date :-)

But I´m looking forward to play´n´learn :-)

So I want to end with this final thought:

"Always search for new ways and perspectives to old problems!"

We´ll see what I´ll learn from studying this stuff.

Viva La Revolution!

Steli Efti, Education Revolutionary

P.S. Go to the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict for more info.