LinkedIn Rolls Out Pages for Universities

in Business | August 20th, 2013

As part of a larg­er effort to attract a younger demo­graph­ic, LinkedIn announced this week the launch of Uni­ver­si­ty Pages. Over 200 schools have built their pages so far — schools like New York Uni­ver­si­ty, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia San Diego, Fun­dação Getúlio Var­gas, Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan, Vil­lano­va, Rochester Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois, and INSEAD. And, over the next few weeks, thou­sands more schools will get their chance to build pages that high­light what their insti­tu­tions have to offer. Down the line, LinkedIn sees these pages becom­ing cen­tral to the recruit­ment process — to match­ing stu­dents to the right uni­ver­si­ties, and then lat­er to the right jobs. You can learn more about Linked­In’s edu­ca­tion­al offer­ing here and here.

One day we’ll maybe have a LinkedIn page. For now, you can fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

750 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

550 Free MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties (Many Offer­ing Cer­tifi­cates)

 

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‘Pride and Prejudice’ Author Jane Austen Will Appear on the £10 Note

in Business, Literature | July 26th, 2013


Jane austen Note
Ear­li­er this year, the Roy­al Mail released a stamp col­lec­tion com­mem­o­rat­ing Jane Austen’s six nov­els. Now, word has leaked out that, prob­a­bly start­ing in 2017, the author of Pride and Prej­u­dice will appear on the £10 note. Said Mark Car­ney, the new gov­er­nor of the Bank of Eng­land, “Jane Austen cer­tain­ly mer­its a place in the select group of his­tor­i­cal fig­ures to appear on our ban­knotes. Her nov­els have an endur­ing and uni­ver­sal appeal and she is recog­nised as one of the great­est writ­ers in Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture.” Only three women have appeared on Eng­lish ban­knotes since they start­ed por­tray­ing his­tor­i­cal fig­ures in 1970. Austen will be the fourth. The Guardian has more on this good sto­ry here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Stamp Col­lec­tion Cel­e­brates Six Nov­els by Jane Austen

Read Jane Austen’s Man­u­scripts Online

Jane Austen, Game The­o­rist: UCLA Poli Sci Prof Finds Shrewd Strat­e­gy in “Clue­less­ness”

Find Jane Austen’s Works in Our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks Col­lec­tions

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Free Business Courses: Discover Our New Collection (and Offer Your Own Suggestions)

in Business, Online Courses | June 26th, 2013

business free online course photoAlmost dai­ly, read­ers write us and ask for cours­es that can deep­en their pro­fes­sion­al edu­ca­tion. Some want to learn new tech skills. Oth­ers want to bone up on sta­tis­tics and cal­cu­lus. And still oth­ers want to learn about project man­age­ment. We decid­ed to address this by cre­at­ing a new col­lec­tion of Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es. So far, we’ve com­piled a list of 145 busi­ness-ori­ent­ed cours­es and relat­ed resources. Some cours­es come from lead­ing  uni­ver­si­ties. Oth­ers come from gov­ern­ment, non-prof­its and the occa­sion­al MOOC provider. The list is fair­ly rich. But we will keep adding to it over time. If you know of a great course (or a great busi­ness resource that’s free) please tell us in the com­ments below, or send us an email via this page. We would love to ben­e­fit from your col­lec­tive wis­dom. And you will be help­ing many peo­ple in the process, dur­ing a tough eco­nom­ic time. Vis­it: 145 Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es.

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Bitcoin, the New Decentralized Digital Currency, Demystified in a Three Minute Video

in Business, Economics, Web/Tech | April 15th, 2013

They sound like some­thing out of sci­ence fic­tion, but Bit­coins are get­ting just a lit­tle bit more real every day. They’re intan­gi­ble and invis­i­ble, but bit­coins recent­ly attract­ed some real invest­ment cap­i­tal from the Win­klevoss twins, who first dreamed up the idea for Face­book — or so their law­suit argued.

A bit of back­ground: Bit­coins are a vir­tu­al cur­ren­cy sys­tem. They were pro­grammed by an anony­mous programmer(s?) in 2009. There are a lim­it­ed num­ber of pos­si­ble bit­coins that can ever be traded—21 million—and the “coins” become avail­able incre­men­tal­ly. That process is crowd­sourced (any­body can mint bit­coins) but it requires solv­ing com­plex encryp­tion prob­lems. Most bit­coin min­ers have an army of com­put­er hard­ware to do the work for them.

What can a bit­coin buy? It depends. The currency’s val­ue has been gyrat­ing wild­ly in recent weeks, from a val­ue of just a few dol­lars up to $266 and then back down to about $100. So far bit­coins are accept­ed as cur­ren­cy by some­what shady elec­tron­ics web­sites that claim to be send­ing a mes­sage to big retail­ers: start accept­ing the vir­tu­al cur­ren­cy or miss out on a big mar­ket share (that hasn’t devel­oped yet).

Last week came the announce­ment that Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss—former rivals to Mark Zuckerberg—own one per­cent of all the bit­coins in cir­cu­la­tion, the biggest stake so far. That news inspired debate over what, exact­ly, bit­coins are and whether they’re impor­tant.

They aren’t the first vir­tu­al cur­ren­cy and they aren’t being used wide­ly in com­merce. Some econ­o­mists have weighed in to say that unless peo­ple stop hord­ing bit­coins as an invest­ment and start spend­ing them, they are mean­ing­less. The bit­coin exper­i­ment may show the way to a dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy of the future. But, until it pans out, we rec­om­mend that you hang onto your dol­lars. And if you’re still try­ing to get your arms around the whole con­cept of the bit­coin, we sug­gest spend­ing a few min­utes with the video primer above.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Vis­it her web­site: .

 

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Flashmob Recreates Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch” in a Dutch Shopping Mall

in Art, Business | April 8th, 2013

The Euro­pean bank­ing sec­tor may still be on shaky foot­ing. But it’s not stop­ping Euro­pean banks from putting togeth­er a good flash­mob. Last year, the Span­ish bank, Ban­co Sabadell, brought togeth­er 100 pro­fes­sion­al musi­cians and singers to per­form the anthem of the Euro­pean Union — Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” from his Sym­pho­ny No. 9. And mov­ing­ly so. It all hap­pened in the Plaça de Sant Roc in Sabadell, Spain, a lit­tle north of Barcelona.

This year, we trav­el north to the city of Bre­da in Hol­land, where the Dutch multi­na­tion­al bank ING paid per­form­ers to recre­ate Rem­brandt’s famous paint­ing, The Night Watch, in a shop­ping cen­ter. The occa­sion? The re-open­ing of The Rijksmu­se­um in Ams­ter­dam on April 13 after a long 10-year ren­o­va­tion.

via The Guardian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art

Imag­in­ing Rembrandt’s Face­book Time­line

16th-Cen­tu­ry Ams­ter­dam Stun­ning­ly Visu­al­ized with 3D Ani­ma­tion

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You

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The Big Problem for MOOCs Visualized

in Business, MOOCs | April 2nd, 2013

mooc completionMOOCs — they’re get­ting a lot of hype, in part because they promise so much, and in part because you hear about stu­dents sign­ing up for these cours­es in mas­sive num­bers. 60,000 signed up for Duke’s Intro­duc­tion to Astron­o­my on Cours­era. 28,500 reg­is­tered for Intro­duc­tion to Sol­id State Chem­istry on edX. Impres­sive fig­ures, to be sure. But then the shine comes off a lit­tle when you con­sid­er that 3.5% and 1.7% of stu­dents com­plet­ed these cours­es respec­tive­ly. That’s accord­ing to a Visu­al­iza­tion of MOOC Com­ple­tion Rates assem­bled by edu­ca­tion­al researcher Katy Jor­dan, using pub­licly avail­able data. Accord­ing to her research, MOOCs have gen­er­at­ed 50,000 enroll­ments on aver­age, with the typ­i­cal com­ple­tion rate hov­er­ing below 10%. Put it some­where around 7.5%, or 3,700 com­ple­tions per 50,000 enroll­ments. If you click the image above, you can see inter­ac­tive data points for 27 cours­es.

If you’re a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist, you’re prob­a­bly a lit­tle less wowed by 3,700 stu­dents tak­ing a free course. And if you’re a uni­ver­si­ty, you might be under­whelmed by these fig­ures too, see­ing that the aver­age MOOC costs $15,000-$50,000 to pro­duce, while pro­fes­sors typ­i­cal­ly invest 100 hours in build­ing a MOOC, and anoth­er 8–10 hours per week teach­ing the mas­sive course. And then don’t for­get the wince-induc­ing con­tract terms offered by MOOC providers like edX — terms that make it hard to see how a uni­ver­si­ty will recoup any­thing on their MOOCs in the com­ing years.

Right now, uni­ver­si­ties are pro­duc­ing MOOCs left and right, and it’s a great deal for you, the stu­dents. (See our list of 300 MOOCs.) But I’ve been around uni­ver­si­ties long enough to know one thing — they don’t shell out this much cash light­ly. Nor do pro­fes­sors sink 100 hours into cre­at­ing cours­es that don’t count toward their required teach­ing load. We’re in a hon­ey­moon peri­od, and, before it’s over, the raw num­ber of stu­dents com­plet­ing a course will need to go up — way up. Remem­ber, the MOOC is free. But it’s the fin­ish­ers who will pay for cer­tifi­cates and get placed into jobs for a fee. In short, it’s the fin­ish­ers who will cre­ate the major rev­enue streams that MOOC cre­ators and providers are cur­rent­ly rely­ing on.

We have our own thoughts on what the MOOC providers need to do. But today we want to hear from those who start­ed a MOOC and opt­ed not to fin­ish. In the com­ments sec­tion below, please tell us what kept you from reach­ing the end. You’ll get extra points for hon­esty!

via O’Reil­ly

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Start Your Startup with Free Stanford Courses and Lectures

in Business, Entrepreneurship, Online Courses, Stanford, Technology | February 18th, 2013

Last spring, Ken Aulet­ta wrote a pro­file of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty in the pages of The New York­er, which start­ed with the ques­tion: “There are no walls between Stan­ford and Sil­i­con Val­ley. Should there be?” It’s per­haps an unavoid­able ques­tion when you con­sid­er a star­tling fact cit­ed by the arti­cle. Accord­ing the uni­ver­si­ty itself, five thou­sand com­pa­nies “trace their ori­gins to Stan­ford ideas or to Stan­ford fac­ul­ty and stu­dents.” The list includes tech giants like Google, Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo, Cis­co Sys­tems, Sun Microsys­tems, eBay, Net­flix, Elec­tron­ic Arts, Intu­it, Sil­i­con Graph­ics, LinkedIn, and E*Trade. And stay tuned, there’s more to come.

Stan­ford is one of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing incu­ba­tors, and the rear­ing of young entre­pre­neurs does­n’t take place by mere osmo­sis. No, Stan­ford stu­dents can take cours­es focused on entre­pre­neur­ship, which give them access to sea­soned entre­pre­neurs and financiers. If you head over to eCorner, short for Entre­pre­neur­ship Cor­ner (Web — iTunes — YouTube), you can watch “2000 free videos and pod­casts fea­tur­ing entre­pre­neur­ship and inno­va­tion thought lead­ers” who have paid vis­its to Stan­ford. Per­haps you’ll rec­og­nize a few of the names: Mark Zucker­berg? Lar­ry Page? Maris­sa May­er? Reid Hoff­man (above)?

Or, if you go to YouTube and iTunes, you’ll gain access to entire cours­es ded­i­cat­ed to teach­ing stu­dents the mod­ern art of start­ing star­tups. Two cours­es (both housed in our col­lec­tion of 650 Free Online Cours­es and our col­lec­tion of 150 Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es) war­rant your atten­tion. First, Chuck Eesley’s course, Tech­nol­o­gy Entre­pre­neur­ship (YouTube — iTunes Video) intro­duces stu­dents to “the process used by tech­nol­o­gy entre­pre­neurs to start com­pa­nies. It involves tak­ing a tech­nol­o­gy idea and find­ing a high-poten­tial com­mer­cial oppor­tu­ni­ty, gath­er­ing resources such as tal­ent and cap­i­tal, fig­ur­ing out how to sell and mar­ket the idea, and man­ag­ing rapid growth.” The course fea­tures 28 video lec­tures in total.

Once you have a broad overview, you can dial into an impor­tant part of get­ting a new ven­ture going — rais­ing cap­i­tal. Hence the course Entre­pre­neur­ship Through the Lens of Ven­ture Cap­i­tal (iTunes Video — YouTube), a course cur­rent­ly tak­ing place at Stan­ford that “explores how suc­cess­ful star­tups nav­i­gate fund­ing, man­ag­ing, and scal­ing their new enter­prise.” It fea­tures guest speak­ers from the VC world that fuels Sil­i­con Val­ley.

It goes with­out say­ing that Stan­ford offers many world-class cours­es across oth­er dis­ci­plines, from phi­los­o­phy and physics to his­to­ry and lit­er­a­ture. You can find 68 cours­es from Stan­ford in our ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ford Launch­es iPhone/iPad App Course on iTune­sU

Biol­o­gy That Makes Us Tick: Free Stan­ford Course by Robert Sapol­sky

The Stan­ford Mini Med School: A Free Course Now Online

The Art of Liv­ing: A Free Stan­ford Course Explores Time­less Ques­tions

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Beat Writer William S. Burroughs Spreads Counterculture Cool on Nike Sneakers, 1994

in Business, Literature, Television | February 14th, 2013

Nike footwear and celebri­ty ath­letes usu­al­ly go hand-in-hand. When you think Nike, you think of Michael Jor­dan, Bo Jack­son and Mia Hamm. And let’s not for­get the now trou­bled duo of Tiger Woods and Lance Arm­strong too. Fit, lithe bod­ies gen­er­al­ly sell sneak­ers, we know that.

But then there’s the bizarre, odd excep­tion. Let’s rewind the video­tape to 1994, when Nike enlist­ed William S. Bur­roughs to sell its Air Max shoes. That’s right a decrepit 79-year-old Beat writer, known for his hero­in addic­tion, manslaugh­ter con­vic­tion and cut up writ­ing. William S. Bur­roughs is pret­ty much the anti-Mia Hamm. And yet the ad works in its own way. Just like the Gap could use Jack Ker­ouac to lend hip­ster cred to its stodgy khakis, so Bur­roughs could bring a main­streamed coun­ter­cul­ture cool to Nike shoes as his head, appear­ing in a TV set pro­claims, “The pur­pose of tech­nol­o­gy is not to con­fuse the brain, but to serve the body, to make life eas­i­er, to make any­thing pos­si­ble. It’s the com­ing of the new tech­nol­o­gy.” That new tech­nol­o­gy being, I guess, the cut­ting edge cush­ions in Nike’s shoes?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

How Spike Lee Got His First Big Break: From She’s Got­ta Have It to That Icon­ic Air Jor­dan Ad

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky (find it also in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books)

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.