A teacher and active blogger named Larry Ferlazzo has put together his list of the top education startups of 2007. The list was clearly put together with students in mind. And while I’m pretty sure that the average student can get to graduation with little more than Wikipedia, Delicious and perhaps an occasional stolen term paper to help them along the way, I’m glad to see someone highlighting tools to help students learn and present their work. The list is a good start and includes startups like Footnote, Fleck, Bookr, Sketchcast and others. Tumblr is, inexplicably, named the top learning aid. “It’s a great place for students to easily post a whole lot of their work” Ferlazzo says. But here’s what I really want to know – If you are a student, what applications are you actually using to complete your courses? And here’s a second question – if you combined all of the time you spend on all of those sites, would it even come close to the attention you give to Facebook? (and before you say it in the comments – yes, it is obviously a slow news day with the holidays) → Read More
A new site called Sketchcast launched moments ago – it’s a tool for bloggers and others to create a presentation to express an idea using a sketchpad and (optionally) a †sound recording, and then embed it into a website. Sketchcasts can also be subscribed in iTunes and RSS readers via a feed. The video below shows an overview of what it is, using the tool itself. The idea for the product first came from Richard Ziade in a July blog post where he proposed the term and the general need for such a tool. Ziade isn’t associated with the new company around the tool, but they give him credit for inventing the idea. They also say he gave them his full permission to take the idea and run with it. Which is exactly what they did. http://sketchcast.com/swf/player.swf?id=9q1zvgj → Read More
