Join the new "Education Czar" at Rap Genius Edu (RGedu), Jeremy Dean (see Vialogue below), for a free kick-off BBQ this Saturday! (Here is the invite to RSVP!) The goal of the BBQ is to share Rap Genius Education's offerings with "educator evangelists" and edtech connectors who might be willing to Alpha Test the platform and share their insight. Join them! Eat delicious food! Enjoy thematic cocktails!

If you do go, please add your +1 below and add your 2-cents afterwards to the blog!

Finally, check-out my blog post from this past November that helps announce Rap Genius... and this post covering the Real GZA + Science Genius event here at Teachers College this past December.

Demetri and I are sitting-in on and adding Twitter comments to a Google+ hangout hosted by McGraw Hill exploring the role of the flipped classroom in Higher Education.

Kelly Walsh of College of Westchester and Emerging Edtech is the moderator and professors from Bunker Hill Community College, Ohio University and Minnesota State University join him in the chat and weigh-in on their experience.

Hi Everyone! Here is a potentially valuable event hosted by EDesign Lab (Read the New Learning Times article on EDesign Lab here) @ Alley NYC:

Details:

Date: Saturday June 15th from 2 to 5PM

Location: AlleyNYC (500 7th Ave., 17th Floor, New York)

RSVP here.

There will be snacks!

From EDesign Lab:

This year's Labbers have been hard at work in our second Design Cycle.
We’ll have demo stations so you can try out our 3 new prototypes, and
brief conversational presentations:

-“Round Robin”: A web app facilitates the peer review process in writing

-“Breadcrumbs”: An ipad app for reflecting on problem solving

-“Because” - A web-app a real collaborative analysis of cause and effect.

There will be ample opportunity for Q&A, and for you to share your
thoughts/ideas.

Inspired by a quick conversation with Daniel this morning... I thought I would create a blog post to share our thoughts around Apple's WWDC keynote yesterday. What are your thoughts regarding the new focus on streamlined, "literal" design (no more "skeuomorphism")? What was your favorite new release? Thoughts on iOS7? Was "education" and "learning" missing this year?

Here are some of mine:

-I am glad that "literal" design elements like fake bookshelves might be a thing of the past... the Readmill founder mentioned this during his EdLab seminar)

Knewton has announced a new partnership with publishing behemoth, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH). Knewton has developed an adaptive learning platform that creates personalize learning experiences that will be paired with HMH's more traditional print materials. Both parties hope the partnership will create new blended learning experiences for the millions of students in the HMH network.

From VentureBeat:

As schools shift to new models of blended and online learning, startups like Knewton claim they will form the “foundation” for a new way of teaching. By teaming up with HMH and Pearson, Knewton can augment core curriculum materials that are widely used in schools.

Do you feel partnerships this this will be the way forward for learning? Why or why not? How might a traditional educational setting benefit?

NYU has just launched (June 3rd) their new immersive 10-week Summer Launchpad program for recent graduates via their NYU Poly Incubator located on Varick. I discovered the program when Alex from Kinvolved sent a group message to our EdTech Women's Listserve (Laura S. has spoked with her as well). The program is described in the press release referenced above as:

Summer Launchpad is an intensive program that will support startup ventures through the notoriously difficult stage of early development and will provide them with resources, personalized instruction, guidance, and connections to increase the likelihood of their success. Participating teams will be steeped in lean startup principles using techniques for testing hypotheses, experimentation, and iteration as they search for a commercially viable business model.

For those of you who wondered what division created both Google Glass, autonomous cars AND did not develop a fabled "space elevator"... the answer is [X]. Google [X] that is. The group also hosts an annual TED-like conference that convenes "Moonshot" thinkers, called "Solve for X."

Led by an individual named, Astro Teller (family with deep science roots - Manhattan Project etc.), and involving Sebastian Thrun of Udacity fame among others, the lab is literally a meta "skunk works" within Google (or just adjacent to). With an ethos that embraces the "moonshot idea" and does not intend to take every one of those ideas to market. Google X labs resemble a modern mash-up of the original Apple product dev teams and US tech-focused think tanks like Xerox Park or Bell Labs. However, hopefully, unlike the later, hopefully many Google X products will eventually go to market and thrive (come-on Glass deniers, they look COOL!).

Add your brilliant thoughts to the vialogue embedded below and learn more about today's seminar here.

In light of recent conversations re: how to inspire and motivate young people to enter the field of computer programming, I thought I would share, "A is for Array. This children's alphabet book was created by a programmer for his young child, and is meant to introduce programming terminology and concepts at an early age.

VentureBeat.com recently wrote a piece entitled, " Why your 8-year-old should be coding, " do you agree? Should we introduce young children to these concepts as early as Pre-K? How soon is too soon? What are your thoughts? Any possible down-side? What additional resources besides an alphabet book might be useful to teach these concepts?

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