It’s an exciting announcement from some heavyweight institutions but what will it actually accomplish?

1) It will definitely increase the number of people that have access to top tier classes from both MIT and Harvard. People who traditionally couldn’t afford, couldn’t travel, or couldn’t get accepted will all have free access online to the content.

2) The fact that they are open sourcing the platform’s code and allowing the community to not only use it in their own environments, but build on and improve it is an excellent move by them.

3) It continues to add legitimacy to online education. With big name universities like Stanford, MIT, Havard providing access to online training their brands are helping people realize that online education can be as good and better than classroom training.

4) It helps connect learners from around the globe. Today’s world is a global economy and its very important that students learn as soon as possible how to use technology to work together with people they may not see on a daily basis or ever in person. Currently I work with a team that is 30+ employees in our may office and 20+ scattered across the US, Brazil, and other countries. Additionally, I have regular contact with customers in Asia, Africa, and Australia. The skills you learn just from having to communicate with remote instructors and students will be valuable in the future workplace.

What kind of challenges are they going to face with edX?

1) A big one I see is kinesthetic learning. Currently it’s quite expensive to develop emulation software for web platforms. The technology is as a point where more and more options are available, but there are just going to be some lessons that if you don’t have access to the appropriate items you won’t be able to get the full immersion learning.

2) Motivation. There are many psychological triggers that help motivate students when it comes to education and a system like edX can absolutely incorporate some that aren’t easily incorporated into a classroom at Havard or MIT today, but one that is missing from edX is the monetary cost of attending a school of their caliber. When a person knows they are spending $38,480.00 (current annual cost for full time undergrad at Havard according to the website) there is a monetary cost to skipping a class or dropping out. You can’t get that money back. Knowing that, people subconsciously do a risk reward analysis and can be motivated to take action. When the sunk cost is $0 I would expect the motivation and completion rate to be much lower. No longer do people feel like “I better get to class or I’ll lose out on a luxury car worth of education!”

3) How do they attract the right people? A huge advantage that a school has with current models that allow limited number of students creates exclusivity. Exclusivity is an attraction to motivated and success driven A Players. Part of what makes someone successful after graduating from an elite school isn’t the schooling, but actually DNA and personality traits that got the person into the university in the first place. By opening the curriculum to everyone you are going to reach more of these motivated people than you could with the constraints of a physical school, but it will also allow others who don’t have those traits as well.

Overall, I’m really excited about this announcement and look forward to getting my hands on edX myself. It is great to see university pushing forward and utilizing technology to increase the availability of quality education. This isn’t MIT’s first venture into the arena and at SXSW I had an opportunity to talk to some of the team behind MITx and hear some of the early successes. It’s my hope that some of the “branding” and influence that Harvard, MIT, and Stanford have flows down the ranks into more K-12 administrators and teacher and helps improve the education opportunities to younger students as well.

I looked at my list of blog post ideas from the past year and realized the majority of them were inspired by another event, article, or conversation I had. Many of them are still relevant, but they never got down on paper(or digital text in this case.) I could still write them today, but they wouldn’t have the same voice, the same drive, and the same excitement that they would have had months ago when the inspiration was there. So going forward I’m going to put forth a plan that when an idea hits I just start writing. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be in the form of a post right away. It may just be sentences, ideas, research items to enhance the idea, but it’s going to be written. Then when the time comes where I have a block to work on a post it’s not wasted on seeking artificial inspiration. The inspiration has already been captured. At that time, it’s just a matter of making sure there’s a message to the post, refining, cutting anything that doesn’t enhance it, and adding anything that is missing. My hope is this makes for much better posts.

Let’s see how it works and hopefully you can be the judge in the coming days and weeks. I’m also interested to hear: How are you inspired to write your posts? Do you just sit down and grind it out? Or do you make notes of ideas and come back later?

Thanks You!

What are the books hot topics:
It’s all about the games and how you can increase your effectiveness of marketing, customer loyalty and more with gamification (Gamification: the use of game play mechanics for non-game applications a.k.a funware.*) This book is a great introduction to the new wave of marketing and customer loyalty programs. You’ll get a great overview of “player types”, how to correctly make your campaigns social, the good and bad of points and badging and more.

There are some good case studying including the US Army, Airline FFPs, McDonald’s among others and how they are using gamification to recruit, sell more, generate customer loyalty and more.

Who should read the book: If you are developing marketing campaigns, looking to reach customers under the age of 35, or just getting into any type of social, mobile web app development this book is for you. If you’re looking for a step by step guide to gamify your marketing or product, this isn’t it, but it will give you the introduction and overview needed to get started down that path.

Must Read Chapter(s): Chapter 3 – Social Networks & Leaderboards & Chapter 6 – The Ultimate Funware: Frequent Flyer Programs

Overall Conclusion: This is an easy to read book that stimulates the mind. I give this 4/5 – its a good book and a definite read if you’re marketing to Millennial/Generation Y or Generation G, if you’re looking to start a customer loyalty program in today’s digital age, or if you’re looking to stand out from the crowd. The concepts of gamification covered in Game Based Marketing will give you the insight and knowledge to separate yourself from the worn out interruption marketing efforts that are so commonly blocked by people today.

Have you read “Game Based Marketing”? Let me know what you thought about the book in the comments below.

* Definition of Gamification from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification

What are the books hot topics:
As a great leader you must create an environment where the crew(team) makes decisions. Through training and preparing the team for the most difficult situations they will be able to succeed in good and bad times. A trained team member is empowered to make decisions and because of the training those decisions are as good or better than ones you make. You will also trust that persons decision and in turn they will trust you because of the training and empowerment.

Communication and vocabulary is key to running a successful team. “Word Magic” is the value of choosing the correct words as they can lead to greatness or failure if chosen incorrectly. Fears thrive in silence therefore communication is vital, but you must communicate purpose and meaning at the same time.

Who should read the book: If you are a manager or someone staving to be a manager this book is for you.

Must Read Chapter(s): Chapter 4 – Communicate with Purpose and Meaning & Chapter 9 – Build Up Your People

Overall Conclusion: The tone of this book is much different than other business books. It is easy to read and Captain Michael writes with a tone similar to conversations you’d have with a friend over coffee. I give this 3.5/5 – its a good book and suggested read, but not a must.

Have you read “It’s Your Ship”? Let me know what you thought about the book in the comments below.

Why is this a big deal? Think of what you can promote with this feature:
- Do you have a email/newsletter list? Give your users a nudge to sign up with a “Get all the latest news and deals from us. Sign up here [link]”
- Do you have a killer YouTube channel you want promoted? “Check out out these free help videos on [link]”
- Want someone to buy you new book? “Get lost in the pages of this the greatest book ever [link]”

The possibilities are endless and they even let you put an RSS feed into it. If you look at the top of the page as I wrote this (until I come up with something better) I just decided to let people know and go to my personal blog.

But wait, there’s more. In the settings you’re able to manage a handful of different hello bars, so you can have one for your content pages and one for your home page and one for your personal site, or just about any combo you can come up with. You’re able to customize the color and they have a few good themes to help fit and standout on your site. Then in the settings you can get fancy controlling when it shows up, does it hide, how it effects the rest of the page, where does the link open, can the user close it, does it wiggle? (haven’t tried this setting yet) and which side of the page the tab show up.

Ultimately, I think this is a fantastic little tool that doesn’t require any coding and does give you a lot of flexibility. Once you’ve saved your hello bar all you do is drop the embed script they give you into your webpage just like a YouTube embed. Quick and easy. Right now Hello Bar is currently in beta and you’ll need an invite. I have a few left so contact me any way you know, leave a comment and its first come first serve.

In basic terms, a PE crystal is material that when it is pressed, squeezed, or vibrated it generates a small voltage of electricity. Alone this isn’t remotely enough to generate any kind of sustainable power, but when you put them together in a collaborative environment then the possibilities start to take form. Think about the vibration that cars make as they drive across a highway. What if we put PE crystals lined underneath the road to collect all those vibrations and turn it into electricity to power the street lamps and signs. You’d still want to have a fail over form of energy to provide electricity for the roads less traveled, but its just one way PE crystals can help us use energy that is otherwise wasted.

Think of possibilities: computer fans that help power the computer, city sidewalks helping power the city, motors that help power the electronics in a car, clothing that turns human movement into charging stations for phones and other electronics in the pockets.

It all may seem a little space age right now, but all it takes is one person to put this to good use and we could have a whole new source of electricity. For more on Piezoelectric Crystals check out Wikipedia or Green Energy Help Files

Oh and now that answer to how has almost everyone held a PE crystal in our hands? PE crystals are used in electric lighters to create the electricity that causes the spark when you push the trigger down. Did you guess right? Let me know and share some of the ideas you have for uses of PE crystals in the comments.

***Update*** May 2011 – India just broke ground on a gorgeous solar-powered sports complex that will harvest piezoelectric energy from the crowds that enter its gates. See more of this great new sprts complex including rendered diagrams here: http://inhabitat.com/solar-powered-piezoelectric-sports-stadium-breaks-ground-in-india/