Learning Friends

Nameless Company now Big Time Science

2006-09-23T04:25:00.000-07:00

Tim Ericson of eeps.com and I decided on a name for the new company receiving an NSF SBIR grant (which he won). We chose Big Time Science (for kids). Our former project officer, Sally Nerlove, commented that naming a company is difficult. You would like to call it something like the gritty, delicious stuff you scrape from the bottom of a pan, which had a name in Bantu she learned while in the Peace Corps in Africa. Our intent is to give kids a real experience of the Nature of Science on a scale that reveals the essence of participating in a scientific community looking at a common data set and writing about it from the empirical perspective of many researchers, each of whom has a partial view. Our next step is to move the kids' tools for writing about science online so we can share them with you all. Stay tuned.

Google Science Foo

2006-09-20T00:07:00.000-07:00

Google recently invited Learning Friends' CEO, Ann McCormick and her colleague, Tim Ericson from eeps.com to the first Science Foo at the Googleplex, a remarkable event attended by 100 scientists "doing interesting things" in their fields. Among the remarkable things about this conference were the openness to new ideas of all attending, and the fact that they all "showed up" with their whole selves, including their humor and intent of being helpful to the planet and its people. Larry Brilliant spoke about ridding the world of Smallpox, and included a photo of his guru in the PPT. Tim Ericson gave a hands-on demo of science journal writing tools for kids, with real scientists trying out the prototype system along with the National Science Foundation Project Officer who awarded a new grant for continuing this work. Eric Case from Google met us approaching the campus and guided us through registration with grace and care, and introduced us to very important people, including the incredible chef from Google who masterminded food for the event. Everyone present could create their own presentation for this event, and attend any the others invented. There was an awesome science-modeling cartoonist, science fiction writer, Jaron Lanier of VR fame (Ann's former boss when she was VP of VPL Research), and scientists in an array of fields who usually don't comingle. It was great! Thanks Google, and thands, Nature Magazine.

NSF Grant Awarded

2006-03-17T23:20:00.000-08:00

Tim Ericson just won a Phase II grant from the Small Business Innnovative Research branch of the National Science Foundation. With encouragement from NSF, he invited Ann McCormick to serve as CEO for a new company that will carry out the SBIR project, creating online science collaboration software for kids who become a community of scientists running a series of miniature experiments, writing journal articles citing their hypotheses and findings, experiencing editorial review of their articles, and doing peer review.

The purpose of the grant is helping young people in Middle School and High School experience the nature of science. Tim is known for superb work in physics education, writing Den of Inquiry during the last NSF SBIR grant. The new company will focus on online applications in math and science. Ann is also CEO of Learning Friends, too, so will assure a close cooperative relationship between the companies. An NSF Project Officer called Ann and asked her to take good care of Tim, who NSF considers a National Treasure.

Children's Institute

2006-03-17T23:17:00.000-08:00

We had two great meetings with Joey Pan from the Children's Institute in Nanjing. He's helping our interns with plans for entering the China market. Meeting with him I was delighted to find an ease and trust that is rare in any country. I have great hopes for Learning Friends and Children's Institute working together.

Learning Friends

2006-03-13T21:00:00.000-08:00

We have been very busy entering every single business competition we could get our hands on! These include

BASES (Business Association of Stanford Engineering Students) Social E-Challenge

(http://bases.stanford.edu/site/socialechall/index.jsp) – We made it to 2^nd round!

William James Foundation Socially Responsible Business Plan Competition (http://www.williamjamesfoundation.org/) – We made it to 2^nd round!

HKUST (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) International Business Plan Competition (http://www.bm.ust.hk/mba/BusinessPlan2006/) – We made it to the semi-final round!

For the HKUST, we already won a $1000 cash prize, and will be flying to Hong Kong on May 4th to pitch the Learning Friends idea to top businesspeople and venture capitalists in China. This is a very exciting time for us, in which we may see our dreams come to reality!

We even had the opportunity to present Learning Friends in another competition at University of San Francisco, but had to withdraw because it was right smack in the middle of our finals week!

In the mean time, we will be very busy preparing for the next round of competitions! Looks like its going to be a very busy spring break for all of us at Stanford!

article about video/sims helping kids learn

2006-02-23T14:29:00.000-08:00

here is a recent article in the s.f. chronicle about video and computer games being great supplemental learning tools for kids in the classroom:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/20/BUG86H9SBD1.DTL&hw=video+helps+kids+learn&sn=001&sc=1000

Hand waving boosts mathematics learning - Breaking News | Print | New Scientist

2006-02-18T15:45:00.000-08:00

Hand waving boosts mathematics learning:

Gestures that complement rather than simply illustrate verbal instructions can boost children's ability to complete problems in mathematics, researchers report.

'The teachers are giving the kids two different approaches to the problem - one by hand and one by mouth - and somehow they seem to complement one another,' says Susan Goldin-Meadow of the University of Chicago, US. She adds that early findings also show that students who copy the gestures of their teachers are more likely to learn.

Goldin-Meadow and her colleagues gave 160 children between the ages of eight and 10 a set of mathematical problems to solve. The students were randomly assigned to receive either verbal instructions alone or also with gestures. Those in the latter group either received gestures that copied or complemented the spoken guidance.

As part of the experiment students had to complete the equation "7+6+5=?+5". Teachers told the youngsters that they had to make one side of the equation match the other side.

The gestures simply duplicating these directions involved the instructors pointing to the left-hand and then the right-hand sides of the equation. When using complementary gestures, however, the teachers pointed to each of the numbers on the left and then signalled the subtraction of the five on the right side by scooping their hand away from the number."

Great clarity about China in the world

2006-02-12T20:59:00.000-08:00

Dean of the School of Journalism at UC, Berkeley is quoted in an interview in California magazine. It's great to find a writer who has studied China for 50 years and also writes for Wired. Maybe we can get involved with some of his Journalism students, who are photographers, writers and have great freshness and life.

5 most spoken languages

2006-02-05T21:54:00.000-08:00

According to FactMonster, 1999, the five most spoken languages in the world are:

1. Mandarin
863 million

2. Hindi (India)
357 million

3. Spanish
352 million

4. English
335 million

5. Bengali
200 million

Other sources: Portuguese and Russian are the next most frequent (170M each).

TigerDragon

2006-02-04T18:44:00.000-08:00

We found artist Lela Dowling through Frank Cirocco of LightSource Studios, creator of Miranda Dragon who appeared in our Hewlett Foundation project, Miranda's Math. Lela agreed to let us show her delightful dragon pictures during fund raising. She created them for a Science Fiction/Fantasy convention art show. The playfulness of Lela's art inspires me, so I keep the TigerDragon close while working on the MIT laptop project. We hope to work with these incredible artists as we move forward.

Thanks Lela and Frank! You put wind under our wings.

Chinese Design

2006-02-01T22:37:00.000-08:00

As we look at design of a Shanghai Sim for teaching Mandarin, I am noticing discussions of contemporary Chinese design. Business Week, January 24, 2006 contrasts Korean, Japanese and Chinese design:

Product placements in videogames

2006-02-01T22:24:00.000-08:00

Interesting that EA decided not to put product placements in the Sims. We are considering using placements to generate revenue inside "free" learning products. What do you think?

We may supply magazines with writing at levels users can read (lots of photos, a few simple words at first), and place ads in the magazines and elsewhere in the sim.

TV shows for kids, even on PBS, on shows like Sesame Street that yields high revenue for licensed character products like Big Bird jammies. Do we want to spread this approach around the developing world?

If not, where is the sustained, long term, major funding needed to supply what's needed for kids in the third world? And how do we avoid the bureaucracy that doubles the labor and quarters the creativity of contracts with governments and publishers? There's somebody out there who would like to see wonderful, free education for 100M kids, aged 5-18. Talk about a legacy!

Alternatives to $100 Laptop

2006-02-01T22:16:00.000-08:00

Bill Gates at CES proposed the cell phone connected to a TV and keyboard as an alternative to the $100 laptop. It will be interesting to see all the alternatives proposed. Both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs offered their respective OSs to use free (at least the entry version) for the $100 laptop. Linux won out as part of the open source philosophy.

Entrepreneurial Challenge

2006-02-01T12:04:00.000-08:00

Last night at Stanford's magnificent Wallenberg Hall, we met with Stanford students who signed up at the Career Fair on campus and industry professionals interested in moving the $100 laptop project forward.

The intros included viewpoints of a creator of kinematic hair knowledgable about the physics of fish fins and how hero fish act at Pixar, a doctoral student familiar with research on entrepreneurship as the infinite corridor at MIT that has it's own sunset light phenomenon called MIThenge, which I found amusing.

A Phillipines-born computer science Stanford student said women are told, "If you don't have talent in math or science you can be a teacher" which she considers terrible. That is why, around the world, students need the "public eLearning system" we propose that stands alongside the public school system.

Ironic that although my doctoral work was on reading and Black Dialect in the US, I hadn't tumbled to the need in China for village people to learn "speaking better Mandarin," just as "speaking broadcast English" can help country people here get better jobs.

The Stanford students are going forward with an executive summary of our project to use in four entrepreneurship challenges. Chuck said, "Why not kill two birds with one stone" and Larissa Co said, "How about 4 birds." So we're looking for undergrads to help with the business side.

Hello Africa, South America and Europe!

2006-01-28T21:32:00.000-08:00

The map of visitors to our blog shows people are tuning in from around the world. We welcome you to contact us and tell us who you are! Have you heard about the MIT $100 laptop? Are you interested in having your young people learn English or Mandarin in a playful way that involves speaking and listening? What are you interested in these days? Ann

Greg Johnson and Michael McCormick

2006-01-27T20:28:00.000-08:00

Today we had lunch with Greg Johnson (one of the creators of ToeJam and Earl) and Michael McCormick. Greg is a really nice guy and I enjoyed getting to meet him and was thrilled that he wants to help us with a Sim for Mandarin/English education. He's almost fluent in Japanese and Thai and is teaching English as a 2nd language so he has lots of thoughts about language education.

For the past 25 years, Greg Johnson has been an independent game designer, establishing a unique reputation for creativity and character design. He has published seven successful software titles, winning numerous prestigious awards, and receiving wide-spread acclaim.

Greg's first titles, Starflight along with its sequel, published by Electronic Arts, sold close to one million units, and has been credited as the first successful graphic adventure game for the PC.

Throughout 1998 and 1999, Greg served as Creative Director for ePlanet, Inc., a company dedicated to developing new vision-based technology and to creating ground breaking vision-enabled software products. Greg designed several products for EP, including their flagship product, Freeblenux , a cutting edge, interactive, 3D, vision-enabled virtual character.

Greg also gave us a copy of a CD he created recently called Choo Choo Soul, it's kids music that adults enjoy too and it's pretty rad.

Integrating Emerging Telephony with Mandarin/English Language Learning

2006-01-27T10:29:00.000-08:00

Above is an initial snapshot of the cool tools and emerging telephony applications we would like to integrate with our English and Mandarin Language Learning Sim.

Learning Friends Demo

2006-01-27T10:24:00.000-08:00

Ann McCormick showed attendees and press at the E-tel Fair the Learning Friends demos, which were funded by the U.S. Dept. of Education, NSF, and the Hewlett Foundation.

IMG_0885.JPG
Originally uploaded by eesley.

We completely ran out of handouts and business cards as people crowded around our table during the two hour event to meet Ann and hear her show the demos. We again met people, one an MIT alum, who had loved Reader Rabbit and Rocky's Boots as a kid.

Tad Hirsch

2006-01-26T14:05:00.000-08:00

Tad Hirsh is a PhD student with the MIT Media Lab and is presenting his social and civic applications, built using open source technologies (including Asterisk) and focusing on Speakeasy. Speakeasy is an integrated internet and telephone service that connects new immigrants (mostly Chinese speakers) with a network of multilingual volunteers who answer questions, give advice, and provide language interpretation over the phone.

Inveneo

2006-01-26T13:56:00.000-08:00

ETel Reception
Originally uploaded by x180.

Bob Marsh from the non-profit Inveneo gave a talk on the work they are doing bringing solar-powered communications systems (voice and computing) to rural villages in Uganda.

I've enjoyed chatting throughout the conference with Aaron Huslage from Inveneo about the work he's been doing helping with the Katrina disaster.

David Isenberg

2006-01-26T12:20:00.000-08:00

David Isenberg gave a Dr. Suess-esque call to battle for less regulated communications - check out the project he's working on in Washington, DC. Freedom To Connect.

For other conference updates, see the official coverage here.

O'Reilly Conference Update

2006-01-26T11:09:00.000-08:00

Last night, Ann and I had a great time presenting the Learning Friends demos at a table at the ETel Fair. Surj was nice enough to fit us in at the last minute. All the people who came by our table gave us a lot of ideas about using telephony applications with the Sim we have planned. Ann remarked that each person was so different and it was fascinating chatting with such smart people about our project. (Pics from the Fair and our table will be uploaded soon!)

This morning featured some great speakers including Norman Lewis, Jean-Marc Frangos Senior VP Technology and Innovation at the British Telecom, Sean Egan from Google, and Michael Robertson from Sipphone.

I talked with Jean-Marc Frangos at the break and he mentioned that we should contact Orb.com.

Michael Robertson
Originally uploaded by x180.

I also spoke with Michael Robertson, who told me we should get in touch with him and a group he's worked with called FriendsAbroad, which is giving people an opportunity to meet over the internet and communicate via voice to learn languages. This is exactly what we were thinking of for use between China and the U.S. for Mandarin and English pronunciation/speaking/listening practice, so it would be a great service to integrate with along with the open source VoIP stuff that Michael is doing with Sipphone.

Telephony link

2006-01-25T12:05:00.000-08:00

The telephony angle is that the 1st product is teaching English/Mandarin speaking and pronunciation (in addition to reading/writing). We'd like to use Skype/VOIP/pod-casting to get kids in the U.S. learning Mandarin and kids in China learning English to talk with each other and work on their pronunciation that way via the app. These kids in China are going to inherit the world's superpower and to help build links and enhance communication with kids in the U.S. and the rest of the world is vitally important.

Peter Cochrane
Originally uploaded by x180.

Ann said that Peter Cochrane's keynote address this morning was the best talk she's heard in 10 years. It outlined many of the tremendous opportunities and rapidly changing trends happening in the telecommunications revolution as disruptive technologies come forth.

Peter, Ann, and I also chatted with David Isenberg, who has a long-standing interest in speech and was also involved in a number of really interesting projects. We look forward to talking with him more at lunch.

David Pollack introduced Ann to Ed Niehaus. Ed Niehaus is an advisor with Cypress Ventures. He serves as a board member and active advisor to several nanotechnology and software startups. Previously, Ed was CEO of Niehaus Ryan Wong, Inc., the public relations agency that drove campaigns for VeriSign, Yahoo!, Apple's iMac and many other brands and companies. Ed has a BSME degree from Duke University so we're both Duke alumni.

Update from the Conference

2006-01-24T16:28:00.001-08:00

Today we met many fascinating people at the O'Reilly Emerging Telephony conference. We were probably most excited to meet and talk with Norman Lewis. He is currently the director of Technology Research for the Home Division of France Telecom. Prior to this he was the director of Technology Research at Wanadoo UK (formerly Freeserve.com). Currently he is an Executive Board member of the Communications Futures Programme at MIT – a global research partnership between industry and six laboratories at MIT, Cambridge Mass.

He mentioned in our conversation that he is participating in the planning committee World TELECOM 2006 that will be held in China (Hong Kong) – the first time this event will take place outside of Geneva. Of course, Learning Friends would love the opportunity to attend this event.

He was the director of Globalisation and Power in the 21st Century (GAP21) – a not-for-profit organization set up in 1999 that aimed to bring industry, government, academia, policy makers, and civil society together to debate the social impact of information and communications technologies on 21st Century society.

Also of particular interest to our project, he is currently jointly writing a book with a leading UK sociologist on the subject of digital children and their encounter with innovation in a risk-averse culture.

We also chatted with Ann and Eric's friend Dom from Odeo. There is obviously great potential for collaboration on our project between Odeo or other voice applications and pod-casting tools since we are looking to incorporate cool new tools to connect children in China and the U.S. (and all over the world) who want to practice speaking with one another in Mandarin or English and learn about each other's countries.

O'Reilly Conference

2006-01-22T21:47:00.000-08:00

Surj Patel
Originally uploaded by x180.

We just had a great dinner and conversation with Surj Patel, who is organizing the O'Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference that we're going to this week as his guest. He was very helpful and gave us many excellent people to contact who he has worked with. We'll be following up with these people and also moving forward as he suggested with raising some funds to build an initial prototype.