Dr. Lisa Snyder

So does this mean we give tablets to kids and education is magically transformed? Hardly. Fortunately we have one of the thought leaders in this space in our backyard. Her name is Dr. Lisa Snyder, she is the new Lakeville MN School Superintendent, and we were pleased to have her on the show to talk about their new iLearn initiative, whether or not it’s magic, how tablets and tech fit in to it, and her perspectives on the challenges adopting new ways of teaching and learning.

Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson
Music: Dave Hole & the song “Keep Your Motor Running” from the podsafe Music Alley.

Discussed during the show:

• Tablet and E-book reader Ownership Nearly Double Over the Holiday Gift-Giving Period
• It’s the iPad announcement anniversary: January 27, 2010
• 350,000 Textbooks Downloaded From Apple’s iBooks in Three Days
• How Apple is sabotaging an open standard for digital books (Borsch doesn’t think so: “Too Many Don’t ‘Get’ iBooks Author”)
• Lakeville Schools Using State Funding to Help Technology Push
• Finding Good Apps for Children With Autism
• A Perspective on iPad’s Impact on Your Mind
• Are Tablets Ready for K12?
• Little Falls Gets Real About iPad technology
• Silicon Valley Wows Educators, and Woos Them
• One Laptop Per Child Launches XO 3.0 Tablet 
• Pinterest draws interest online
• JAMF Software 
• The Problem With The iOS Home Screen

Upcoming Events:

• February 10-11: Startup Weekend Twin Cities III, U of M Carlson
• February 23rd: WordPressMSP at The Nerdery
• February 23rd: How to Leverage Digital Media to Raise Capital (a DealPen event at CoCo. Promo code for free ticket: dealpenfriend)
• February 24-25: MinneWIC (Women in Computing)
• March 16-17: Mobile March (Mobile 3D) (Call for speakers)
• April 7th: MinneBar, Best Buy headquarters

Minnov8 Gang 154 – iPad, iLearn is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

I was stunned to learn it is a scam. Not only that, based upon the sheer volume of complaints I found shows that this is rampant, apparently is seeing little-to-no preemptive action on the part of the wireless carriers, and many, many mobile users are being charged monthly fees. This fraud is commonly known as cramming.

I am writing this post for the express purpose of bringing this issue to your attention and that of Lori Swanson, our State Attorney General, in order to get some action and protect consumers. If *I* can get scammed (and I am VERY cautious, careful and savvy about online scams and still don’t know how my number was discovered). I can only guess how pervasive this is in Minnesota and that it appears the carriers are likely complicit in perpetuating these cramming scams due to conflicts of interest and their subsequent inaction.

THE SCAM
This is a mobile SMS (text message) scam which automatically subscribes the user to a monthly plan, in my case a $9.99 one as you can see from the screenshot to your right. What’s curious is that many people on several complaint forums I discovered recommended replying “STOP” to cancel since that would be an explicit opt-out. In my case I didn’t respond (never do to spam) and instead called AT&T Customer Service.

The charges were applied anyway which, I now know, is a common cramming practice. AT&T removed the charge and I explicitly requested they place a “subscription block” under my parental controls for all phones on my family plan. This part of the adventure burned up 45 minutes of my time.

During my short investigation last night for another 30 minutes, I came across these links to other people who have been victims of cramming from this same provider and have had similar charges:

• 800 Notes, a website for 800# scamming, had these reports
• SMS Watchdog, a website for text scamming, had these reports
• Text Complaints had these reports
• Plus all of these other ones…

…and so on and so on. But wait until you see how this cramming is potentially worth tens of millions of dollars per year for the scammers!

AN EXAMPLE OF AN ALLEGEDLY SIMILAR SCAM
While I have NO idea if the company identified below is responsible in any way for the cramming scam which I encountered last evening, I also was not aware of how huge this fraud could be. This example below illustrates the scope of the problem so well I had to include it (and, especially, the video which explains the tactics used by these cramming scammers and how it works).

During my investigation last night I came across another geek site, AZ Disruptors, a tech incubator whose website is similar to Minnov8‘s and Tech.MN‘s but for Arizona. The site’s founder, who is also CEO of Axosoft, Hamid Shojaee, discovered early last year what appeared to be an alleged Scottsdale-based mobile scammer named JAWA, a dba of Eye Level Holdings, LLC, and one of several dba’s of this LLC.

Last March Shojaee wrote a post about how he discovered he’d been a victim of cramming. Two days later he wrote another post explaining how this sort of text messaging cramming scam worked and the video he created to explain it is below. Shojaee’s explanation will give you a good sense of what’s going on with this cramming scam:

After writing subsequent posts JAWA’s lawyers sent Shojaee a cease-and-desist, shut down his blog temporarily, but the AZ Central paper wrote this article pointing out that Verizon alone froze $19 million in charges…so I can only imagine the millions JAWA and the aggregators have already raked in:

Lawsuits filed by Verizon Wireless and the Texas attorney general allege that cellphone-applications developer Jawa used shell corporations, false business addresses, websites that did not comply with industry standards and diversionary software to deceive customers to buy its services.

Beyond the lawsuit, Verizon Wireless has taken other business actions. It instructed four companies, known as aggregators, to freeze $19 million in charges for messaging services already provided by Jawa and for which customers already have been billed.

Aggregators, known as mobile-transaction hubs, enable wireless messages to be delivered to a customer and compile and transmit charges to the customer’s carrier.

As it turns out, Verizon kept 30% of the fees collected and passed the other 70% to the aggregators (see this article). Other articles I’ve read say the same thing about all carriers: they keep 30% of the fees. If those fees number in the tens of millions of dollars, one can see why the carriers have zero incentive to be on their customer’s side and proactively terminate these sleazy relationships.

In my cursory search I was unable to learn if there has yet been a resolution to the Eye Level Holdings, LLC. suit by the State of Texas and Verizon. AT&T and Sprint are also investigating them so there might be a resolution that, if JAWA/Eye Level Holdings, LLC is guilty of cramming, puts these guys behind bars and confiscates their assets.

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO
But as we all know for every scumbag caught there are usually others. Check your mobile phone bill for charges you didn’t authorize. Consider putting a block on your account so, even if a crammer gets your mobile number, they cannot include you in their scam.

If you have already been a victim of this cramming scam, immediately file a complaint with the Minnesota Attorney General’s office.

Mobile Text Message “Cramming” Scam is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

A guy from the Inver Grove Heights Community Schools Office of Communications, Johnny Germscheid, reached out to us here at Minnov8 to tell us about the event. Its focus is about technology, education and breaking down the communication barrier between children and adults. I’m guessing there will be a lot of learning occurring on both sides (student-as-teacher and adult-as-student).

Students in grades K-12 will be teaching adults how to use iPads, iPods, and other devices and software programs. Conference highlights include:

• Produce and publish an eBook using rich multimedia content.
• Create a digital scrapbook to capture family memories.
• Design a webpage or blog to share your story on the web.
• Find out how to set up and manage your own social networking profile.
• Collaborate electronically to edit documents in a more efficient manner.
• Compose original songs to add flavor to your movies.
• Learn how to get the most out of that new iPad.

This is the second year Inver Grove Heights Community Schools has offered this Student Led Technology Conference. Turns out the Inver Grove Heights school district (ISD 199) was nationally recognized in Washington DC by the Consortium of School Networking (CoSN) this winter for this innovative concept.

The conference is free and open to anyone in the metro, or our entire State for that matter. To check out details about the conference, which takes place on Saturday, February 25th from 8:30am until Noon, visit the event mini-site here.

Student Led Technology Conference is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Nick Martin, vice president of innovation and R&D at UnitedHealth Group, gave a quick tour of the booth and some of the innovations within (listed here, by the way):

One thing has surprised both our tech peers in Minnesota as well as we here at Minnov8: Who knew UHG was so active delivering tech innovations? Some of these include: UHC.tv; OptumizeMe (an iPhone/Android app); and Optum’s NowClinic, a virtual Doctor visit/prescribing platform with a corresponding smartphone app.

Might be that these “innovations” are targeted directly at corporate customers and to their respective employees who are under a UHG health plan. It’s interesting that each of their branding, user interfaces and integrations seem to be in separate silos, with no overall direction discernable from their presentation online. Still, it’s good to see a Minnesota employer innovating in the internet and web space.

UnitedHealth Group’s Booth at CES is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

As a fanboy of Workface (disclaimer: was at one-time a services vendor to them too), I pay attention to pings from the CEO, Lief Larson. He just alerted me to their announcement of the first version of the Workface “Chat Live” status button which is rolling out now.

Huh? You’re doing a post about a “status button” Borsch? Yes, but only because I’m personally connected to organizations who are using the Workface toolbar within their sites and would find this instantly useful. These companies are connecting their folks directly to prospects and customers with a toolbar that makes anyone in customer-facing roles like inside sales, support, community management and other functions immediately available to a site visitor in the Workface toolbar.

Brainerd Savings Sam Horn has her Workface status set for "Online! Chat Now". (click for larger view)

Even though that Workface toolbar can be resident at the bottom of a website at all times, some organizations load it only on specific website pages (e.g., a sales or support page). The problem has been that people are usually listed on one or more company pages, like this first-to-deploy Workface customer did on their team page at Brainerd Savings & Loan. This Status button means that wherever a person is listed on their website anywhere their status can be available to a visitor at the click of a mouse.

This Workface Status button alerts visitors to your website whether or not you’re online. If you’re connected to the internet, it says, “Online! Chat now”. When a visitor clicks on it, they can go directly into live text, audio, or video chat communications with you. It can easily be deployed for one person, or the whole company. When you’re no longer connected to the Internet, the button automatically changes to say, “Send a Message” and then your website visitor can drop you a message.

The entire Workface team is eating-their-own-dog-food and using the new Workface Status button. Check it out at Workface and consider signing up for their service.

Workface Adds Status is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Walker Art Center new website (click for larger view)

Earlier this week I had a friend send me a Twitter DM saying, “Man…you MUST check out the new Walker Art Center website.” So I headed over there that evening and spent over an hour reading, poking around and seeing what they’d delivered.

To say I was impressed is an understatement: the design is fresh, exciting to view and the content compelling. The breadth and depth of coverage of art and design quickly shifted my mind toward a completely different place, one of consideration, thought and ideas instead of my typical focus on the tech “flipper-flappers” and “eye candy” of this new website they’d delivered.

Others agree. In his post at ArtInfo “Why the Walker’s new website is a big deal“, Tyler Green calls it a “game changer” since the Walker site is atypical for a museum, usually an informational site intended to lead visitors to the art institution’s building and its exhibits. Instead, argues Green, the site redefines how the Walker sees its role: as both a physical and as a virtual hub.

Walker Art executive director, Olga Viso, wrote this article about their new site, saying in part:

“As the Walker’s name signals, we’re a center: a hub that brings together various pursuits related to contemporary art, from presenting the visual, performing, and media arts of our time to publishing the latest scholarly research; collecting art objects and commissioning new works to hosting artist residencies and convening public discussions about art and ideas. Given these activities—and more importantly, our mission to investigate the questions that shape us and inspire us as individuals, cultures, and communities—I’m excited to introduce our new website, an online hub for ideas about contemporary art and culture, both inside the Walker and beyond.”

Talking about the why of launching such an ambitious site redesign, Viso said, “The intent of the new site is to make visible our role as a generative producer and purveyor of content and broadcast our voice in the landscape of contemporary culture.”

Any downsides or critique? Two, but the first is a biggie and the second not so much.

Neither of these gripes is a deal-killer for the new Walker website, but this first one needs to be fixed immediately.

My preferred device for consuming content is, like many of us, an iPad. The only issues I had on the new Walker site was while attempting to watch videos on the Walker Channel as you can see below. If I did click on the “…direct link to the video on YouTube” link it would, of course, make Safari on iPad go away and then it would launch the YouTube app! NOT a good user experience and one UX hiccup in an otherwise awesome, designed experience that the team should fix ASAP.

Walker Channel won't display YouTube videos on iPad (click for larger view)

The other, more minor issue was the homepage load speed — it loaded quickly on a computer (under 4 seconds) but took over 13 seconds to load on my iPad (that on a non-cached-Safari & wireless connection speed averaging 19mbps download speed. Testing occurred one evening at 8pm, 11pm and 9am the next morning). Thinking it might be a Safari issue, I tried loading it on the iPad using alternative browsers Opera Mini, Terra, Atomic Web and iCab Mobile. All delivered the Walker site between 12 and 14 seconds on average.

Speed matters not just for a great user experience, but Google has been very explicit about pagerank and speed starting in 2012. Part of their algorithm will be set to rank based on current standings and links in, of course, but speed is a close second. It’s because Google’s use of computing resources and bandwidth are so enormous that they are trying to drive us all toward making our sites as efficient as possible so as to reduce their consumption of resources and bandwidth. The unknown is how Google will rank “mobile friendly site speed” in their algorithms and I’ve not tested the site on an Android tablet in my same wireless conditions, so cannot attest to the user experience on Android tablets.

Walker website grades at "C" with performance at 73 (click for larger view)

Running YSlow on the Walker homepage gave it a grade of “C” and a performance metric of 73. As a comparison, Minnov8 gets a “C” and a metric of 72, but we’re a bunch of hacks compared to the top-notch team at the Walker, and we’re long overdue for a site redesign.

I was impressed to see, however, that the Walker team has deployed nginx (pro. “engine x”), a web server known for its speed. When you take in to consideration the richness of their magazine-like homepage, it’s tough to fault them for not having a score in the 90s quite yet. I suspect they will continue to optimize the site over time.

AN ACHIEVEMENT THAT IS AN ASSET TO MINNESOTA
To the team at the Walker, we salute you for an ambitious and amazing new site. There is no doubt it will prove to the world that the Walker is a first rate, thought leading institution that comes from a State with a creative class that is also second-to-none in the world. Your new site will also raise the consciousness of the imperative of great design in everything we touch, the products and services we deliver, and the need to recognize artistic beauty in new ways.

Walker Art Center’s Awesome New Website is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Datuit

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) was a major stimulus initiative enacted by the 111^th United States Congress and signed into law in 2009 by President Obama. The primary objectives to this law were focused on immediate objectives in saving and creating jobs. The secondary goal was to provide short-term relief programs to industries decimated by the recession and also to provide investments in areas like health, infrastructure, education, and ‘green’ energy initiatives.

The healthcare industry received 19.1% percent of the $787 billion in funding at the time this was signed into legislation. The largest allocation of these funds within healthcare went to Medicaid funding, which was followed by health information technology (HIT) investments and incentive payments. For example, these federal guidelines will provide incentives for clinics to meet meaningful use thresholds. Among other things, this would require clinics to adopt structured documents whenever feasible and ubiquitous patient access to self management tools. 

The SafeIX platform is designed to help meet those requirements. Datuit is building this sophisticated platform around document standardization, interoperability, and the concept of having one master patient record. Therefore they are storing data as documents formatted in standards such as the HL7 Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) and the ASTM Continuity of Care Record (CCR). These standards specify a universal structure and semantics for clinical documents. Because of the small and distributed nature of these documents combined with the inevitable speed and volume requirements, the SafeIX platform relies on scalable NoSQL technology and a cloud-based infrastructure. This patent-pending system allows for big data to be retrieved and combined with other information from structured documents.

A recent report by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) on big data found that if U.S. health care “were to use big data creatively and effectively to drive efficiency and quality, the sector could create more than $300 billion in value every year”. Clearly, there are other incentives than just those outlined in the ARRA.  The possibilities for health care related research and data analytics is also endless, with the ability to search and aggregate information from patients as well as from physicians and other healthcare organizations.

McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) on big data (click for larger view)

While there are obvious broad benefits to this platform, there are inherently some challenges in this industry, primarily around privacy. Searching across medical records or merely integrating records remains a controversial issue in the United States. Firms like Google recognized there was an opportunity for an entity like Google Health, which started in 2008. However, after three years Google pulled the plug on the service after it failed to achieve the utilization it had hoped. Microsoft HealthVault, which launched in 2007, is still striving for adoption by marketing itself as a “trusted place for people to organize, store, and share health information online”.  There are also some smaller players in this space, showing a very fragmented and immature market.

The healthcare sector will remain transformational for the foreseeable future because of rising costs and an aging population against a backdrop of competitive cost-reducing technologies and federal incentives. As a result, Datuit is planning to complete their prototype by January with an alpha release by Q3 of 2012. Commercial Launch is scheduled for Q2 2013, well in advance of the aggressive Stage 2 regulations anticipated to take effect in 2014. Through their accessible platform, this Minnesota based startup is hoping to tip the scales in health care reform.

Big Healthcare Data is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Our pals at Workface have rolled out yet another great innovation: their chat platform now boasts an integration with Facebook that ensures that your Facebook Page is connected directly with those in your company you want customers and prospects to have access to in an instant. (disclosure: Workface was a client of my Innov8Press group).

One of the keys to Facebook engagement with customers is being there for them. Since the social media “community management” discipline is typically focused on watching, listening and waiting for a customer to post, send a tweet or otherwise go out of their way to connect, often prospects and customers don’t take the time to reach out. Since the Workface platform is embedded directly in your Facebook Page and with one click the engagement happens.

Take a look at the press release below and, especially, the companies who have already jumped on this platform to ensure they receive meaningful results from their Facebook efforts. 

SOFTWARE DEVELOPER WORKFACE BESTS CHAT PLATFORMS

FOR ONLINE ENGAGEMENT AGAIN WITH FIRST-EVER FACEBOOK INTEGRATION

Technology places field sales and services personnel across the Facebook ecosystem where customers spend time online; for new business potential through largest social media channel

 Minneapolis—Nov. 1, 2011—Workface^® Inc., (www.workface.com) a pioneer in online customer-interaction technology continues to raise the bar on online customer-engagement experiences with integration of its portable profile-based customer-engagement platform into the Facebook ecosystem. The only online company with the ability to integrate with Facebook,Workface enables companies to live “virtually” where their prospects and customers are, elevating the online engagement and driving new business through the world’s largest social media platform.

“Companies want to be ‘liked’ on Facebook, but the real issue is how does that develop meaningful relationships with prospects and, more importantly, generate leads,” said Lief Larson, president and product strategist, Workface, Inc. “Workface’s portable Profiles uniquely mobilize field sales and service teams across Facebook to engage at the moment of interest with online prospects, providing an experience that most closely replicates a face-to-face meeting—literally bringing a company’s social media presence to life.”

Integrated into a company’s Facebook page, Workface profiles enable prospects and customers to connect and converse with sales and service representatives while remaining within the confines of the social network. The ability to engage with customers in this manner creates opportunities that traditional online chat solutions are unable to cultivate and nurture.

Unlike online chat solutions, Workface literally gives a “face” to a company and its representatives, and empowers customers and prospects to find and select the right sales or customer service person on their terms. Through Workface, customers can quickly and easily interact with companies in a manner and at a time when they are interested and engaged.

Early customers of Workface using the Facebook application include: Atomic Data Centers, The Foundation, NE Minneapolis Homes, Red Ribbon Realtors, Titan Outlet Store and Travel Leaders of Fargo.

“In Facebook, you can chat with individuals who are your friends, but you can’t chat with a company,” explained Larson. “With Workface in Facebook, prospects can select an individual from an organization and engage in a conversation without having to make the commitment of ‘liking’ them. The added bonus is that the prospect can learn about the background and expertise of the company rep they’re interfacing with in a way that’s much more personal and rewarding than traditional, faceless online chat.”

In addition to the virtual interaction with customers, Workface integration enables Facebook users to share and refer sales and service personnel profiles with among their personal networks. Unlike static Facebook posts, a referral using Workface embeds the sales or service representative’s profile onto the individual’s wall without losing the functionality of the online customer-interaction technology.

Ideally suited for companies with field sales and service organizations/agents that rely on personal interaction to sell and support products and/or services, the Workface platform improves how they react and interact with online customers and prospects that prefer online communication but are turned off by the impersonal nature of most online communications experiences like chat.

About Workface (www.workface.com)

Workface Inc., headquartered in Minneapolis, Minn., is a pioneer in developing online customer-interaction technologies that humanize the Web. The company’s first-of-its-kind product, the Customer-Engagement Platform (CEP), enables organizations to mobilize their field sales and service teams throughout the Web, and to replace the impersonal, dehumanizing, and frustrating interactions of legacy chat platforms.

Workface puts customers or prospects in control of the interaction by letting them choose whom they want to interact with, in what manner, and in which web venue. It uses groundbreaking interactive, searchable, and portable content web-containers called “profiles” (the “Workface”) that are personalized by individuals to help online customers and prospects at the moment of need. These profiles can reside anywhere on the Web, so they can be placed anywhere someone might go on the Web to look for help or ask questions, including being available on company websites, search engines, high-traffic websites, and social media.

More than 75,000 professionals in over 2,500 different companies are now using Workface technology.

###

Workface Integrates Real-Time Engagement with Facebook is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

The Walker Art Center blog, one I recommend you follow if interested in any aspect of art and design, had this post which pointed to a highly interesting factoid about Minnesota:

“A new National Endowment for the Arts survey finds there are 2.1 million Americans employed as artists, including more than 42,000 right here in the Land o’ Lakes. Minnesota ranks fairly well: We’re among the top 14 states that have the highest percentage of the workforce employed in the arts: 1.5 percent, compared to the nation-leading New York, where 2.3 percent of the labor force is involved in arts industries. Minnesota leads the nation in the concentration of jobs in book publishing, with eight times more publishing jobs — largely in the Twin Cities — than the national average. Minneapolis’ concentration of theater jobs is twice the national average.“

Why should you care? If you are a technologist, startup or entrepreneur in tech than you know how great you are at engineering but (hopefully) are aware that your artistic and design skills most likely suck. If you want to ensure your products are embraced by the masses, then make certain you are engaged and collaborating with people whose artistic and design sense is equal to your engineering abilities.

You have A LOT of talent to choose from in our State.

Minnesota, the Arts and Innovation is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

I cannot express enough my thanks for all who helped out:

Lerner Publishing: Kathleen Clarke responded to a blind email request of mine and she put together a big box of brand new, amazingly high quality books, perfect for the English program at Strisuksa school

Meg Knodl

Meg Knodl: As senior librarian in Communications and Community Engagement with Hennepin County (Minn.) Library, Meg had great suggestions on buying surplus books from the library system (a sale was just ending and she connected me with the right folks).

Paul Schroeder

To show the power of social media, I’d placed a plea and link to that Minnov8 post mentioned above on my Facebook wall. Two people responded immediately with a third who joined in:

Paul Schroeder:  A fraternity brother of mine who read about my plea on Facebook responded by collecting several dozen books and even cajoled a friend of his in participating with some novels. These novels, while not perfectly targeted to the students, surprisingly were very welcomed by the teachers!

Sherry Collins: She had several ideas I took advantage of and then recommended a site I’d never heard of, FreeCycle, a kind of “Craigslist for free stuff” and I placed a post in the Minneapolis Group

The very generous donation by Beth Sullivan, volunteer for The Women's Prison Book Project

Beth Sullivan: She responded with 75 classic (and new!) books that were extras from a non-profit she volunteers for, The Women’s Prison Book Project.

As these great volunteers were putting forth such kind efforts to gather books, I’d been interacting with my contact at the school, Lynn Brown. Mentioning the phenomenal work of Project Gutenberg, I asked her to go through the books there and make recommendations and we’d download the books for her (since their internet connections are pretty minimal at the school).

What happened next surprised even me and set me on a course I hadn’t expected. 

Ms. Brown and her colleague in the English department chose 108 Project Gutenberg books. Discovering that the Project Gutenberg books are available in a variety of formats — and offers over 36,000 free ebooks in ePub, Kindle, HTML and simple text formats – I decided to download all of them in these formats as well as two potentially useful for a country in Asia (i.e., Plucker and QiOO Mobile).

After downloading and organizing them in folders I thought, “Hmm…this is going to be tough for the students to find, and download, the books of their choice in their chosen format” so I did what any geek would do: I built an HTML website “front end” for the files.

An (AJAX) dropdown for each book reveals its formats (click for larger view)

Website "front end" for ebooks (click for larger view)

Realizing that the directories with the ebooks in them totaled over 8GBs — and now knowing exactly what technologies they had at their disposal in Thailand — I wasn’t certain if they could read DVD-Rs, would appreciate a bunch of CDs (which, of course, would possibly break the links in the mini website front-end) so I bought a couple of 16GB thumb drives so they would have two copies.

Ms. Brown and her colleagues were quite enthused about receiving this and she then exclaimed, “Oh my gosh…we can put this on the “school” server (vs. just the English department server) and make it available to all students!”

Wish we could have done more for them. Also wished there was a way to get tablets in to the hands of students (or even cheap Kindles) if there was a reliable way for them to download ebooks. Got to think more about this and possible solutions.

So again, thank you to those who helped out and I’ll follow up when I hear how the kids are doing with what you donated!

“Thank You” for the Books for Thai School is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

MIMA Summit 2011: Interview With Tim Brunelle and Ed Boches is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

It turns out, of the 10 startups that were selected to present at the event, none even comes close to the level of adoption these guys have achieved to date, which they announced at the in their presentation at #EduTechMN: 1,000,000 students using the platform, in more than 80,000 classrooms. And all that from a startup that began as just a sideline for Matt to use in his own classroom!

Here’s my interview:

The founders describe their creation this way:  Kidblog is a platform that provides students with an authentic, engaging, and interactive learning experience. It’s designed for elementary and middle school teachers who want to provide each student with his or her own, unique blog. It has simple but powerful tools that allow students to publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroom blogging community. Teachers maintain complete control over their students’ blogs. And a teacher can set up a class with no student email addresses. 

Matt likes to say it’s “built by a teacher, for teachers, so students can get the most out of the blogging process.” He also points out that teachers who’ve tried other blogging platforms (perhaps with limited success), such as Blogger, Edublogs, or WordPress.com, “will notice the Kidblog difference immediately.”

Best of luck to this emerging, homegrown Minnesota edutech company!

[This post first appeared yesterday on Tech~Surf~Blog.]

Minnesota EduTech Startup KidBlog Now Reaching One Million Users is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

[This post was originally published earlier today on Tech~Surf~Blog.]

I felt it. I didn’t know it then, but it may have been at the precise moment Steve was passing. I was sitting in a room of about 100 people, mid-afternoon, listening to a panel of educators at the EduTech MN conference at the University of Minnesota. I was actually finishing a blog post on my MacBook Air, and hadn’t even intended to stay for the panel (the startup pitches were over).

But I was surprisingly drawn in by the discussion. I was blown away by what these people, senior educators, were saying — showing so much passion, speaking from the heart, talking about how kids are learning today. They just lit up as they described how the new tablet and mobile technologies are opening up worlds for these kids like nothing they’d ever seen before. The iPad, the iPod Touch, and all the great software these Apple devices have engendered.

I found myself beaming from ear to ear as I listened to them describe their real-life experiences, with such excitement in their voices.  These aren’t boring educators, I thought!  These are really dedicated, committed people who work on the front lines, whose worlds revolve around how our children learn, and how they can make that process better for them, every single day. And, thanks to technology and a certain company named Apple, they have more and more amazing tools to help them do that. It was a special experience for me, as someone not involved much in the world of education. I’m so glad I stayed.

I sat there and thought to myself — right at that very moment — “Wow, would Steve Jobs be proud to be hearing this right now.”

I like to think he was.

Steve, you didn’t just change technology, media, music, and retailing forever.  You changed education, too — in a big, big way. We thank you. We will greatly miss you.

But we know we’ll see the mark you made on this world for a long, long time to come, in the eyes of children everywhere.

[Left to right on the panel: Jesse Thorstad, technology specialist, Fergus Falls school district; Dave Eisenmann, director of instructional tech, Minnetonka school district; Jennifer Sly, MN Historical Society; and Jay Haugen, Superintendent, Farmington school district. The panel was moderated by State Senator Terri Bonoff.]

Something Amazing Happened at #EduTechMN Yesterday – Steve Jobs Was in the Room is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

I’ve known of the Center for quite some time and been interested in what they describes as their mission to, “…enhance health and well-being by educating health professionals, empowering consumers, and fundamentally transforming the delivery of health care through the creation of interdisciplinary academic, research, clinical care, and outreach programs that advance integrative health and healing.”

Mary Jo Kreitzer, PhD RN

No question that new models of integrative healthcare are accelerating and what the Center is exploring is proving to be the right path. But an iOS app?

In order to understand a little more about the Center and to understand more about why they delivered an app, I talked with Dr. Mary Jo Kreitzer, the founder and director of the Center and someone who brings more than 20 years of leadership and expertise to the field of integrative health and medicine.

I started off asking Dr. Kreitzer to give me some background on the Center and we took it from there…

U of MN Center for Spirituality & Healing’s Mobile App is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Can you help with books?

I’ve never been to Thailand, but because my wife has put on workshops for Thailand’s Department of Export Promotion three different times, I’ve met many of her contacts from Thailand (and their kids) and they are incredibly delightful people. My bride has also told me so many stories about the country, its people, and how she loves them so much she’d move there, I was very receptive to Lynn’s request to help gather books for her students.

Map of Thailand showing Roi Et (click image for larger view)

The Thailand school Strisuksa (Stree-suk-sah) is located in a province called Roi Et. It is relatively far from Bangkok—which means they are internet-challenged as you’ll read about below—but they have a student group who will be visiting MN in October (arriving late in the week of October 3rd) and will be at Cambridge-Isanti High School in Cambridge, MN . Each student will be allowed 2 pieces of checked luggage. They hope to make the most of that luggage allowance by returning with books for their library.

If you have any ideas (or books!) that might help them gather up English books suitable for 7-9th graders and then upper secondary (10th-12th grade)—and let me know where we can pick them up—that would be terrific! Contact me, Steve Borsch, by email or by phone at 952.232.5040. I will compile a list of those who have helped and publish it here on Minnov8.

Below I go through more information about the school, student learning in English there, and what Minnov8 is doing to help.

Lynn Brown

What Minnov8 is Doing
Besides contacting multiple organizations about them possibly donating English books suitable for 7th through 12th graders learning English, the school also doesn’t enjoy fast internet access which is similar to much of Thailand outside of major urban centers. During our discussions, I pointed Lynn to Project Gutenberg, an online compilation of classic books (many with accompanying audio books for many of them). Lynn was intrigued and she, and another English teacher in the school, compiled their wish-list for me, but Lynn then was lamenting the fact that they’d never be able to download them at the school since the connections are far too slow.

As a consequence, Tim Elliott and I will be taking their desired list of 100 titles from Project Gutenberg, and burning them to CD for them to take back to Thailand and make available throughout the school. We’ll be meeting with Lynn Brown late in the week of October 3rd to give her the CDs and arrange for the books to be delivered to her students with empty suitcases.

More Info from Lynn Brown
The town population is roughly 36,000, with a total of 1.2 million or more in the province. The town of Roi Et has 4 major secondary schools, of which we are the second largest with an enrollment of 4,300. Although originally opened in 1917 as a girl’s school, it is now co-educational, however girls continue to outnumber boys. The largest school in town is the boys school, also co-educational. Both schools maintain such high enrollment figures because students come from all over the province and board in town. Many people feel the quality of education is much better at these two larger schools.

I started teaching at Strisuksa in the first year of the program. At that time, the library consisted of one book case in the teacher’s office / lounge and held about 100 books. The second year we were able to obtain a bit more space and added a second book case, purchased some books and called it a library corner. Next came a small classroom furnished with more bookcases and the real effort to obtain books. We purchased many, and then became aware of the Books for Asia Foundation. A large number of our non-fiction books have come from that source. A second resource was Thailand Book Drive. This foundation was begun in the USA by a young man who knew of the need for English books in rural Thailand. We’ve obtained over 2,000 books from this foundation, and have shared 100′s of surplus books (mainly duplicates) with other schools in the province. ((We feel that others can benefit from the books too, and if we have too many or ones that our students aren’t reading, maybe someone at another school will. We’ve helped at least 4 other secondary schools in this manner.))

Students in Thailand study in lower (7-9th grades) and upper (10 – 12th) secondary levels for 3 years each. At the conclusion of the lower secondary, they have the option of continuing at their current school or transferring to another. The English Program is offered to students at both the lower and upper levels. The Ministry of Education Thailand has set a limit of 70 students per level in lower secondary for the English Program. We split this to two classrooms of 35 each. The upper secondary is limited to one class of 35 students. We have consistently been receiving applications for many more students than we can accept in the upper level. In the upper level students can choose from a major in Math, Science, or language. In addition to English, they may also choose to study Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, French, or Korean.

The English Program must follow the same core curriculum as all Thai classes. Students receive instruction in Thai and English each day from separate teachers. There are now 12 native English speaking teachers on staff to meet the needs of the classes. The only subjects not being taught in English are Art and Music. We have two English teachers who really encourage the students to read – giving both class and outside reading assignments.

Again, if you can help contact me, Steve Borsch, by email or by phone at 952.232.5040. As mentioned above I will compile a list of those who have helped and publish it here on Minnov8. Thanks!

English Books for Thai School – Can You Help? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Their startup coincides with a rising trend in game play and specifically an explosion in online games. Further, promotional forces like Dr. Jane McGonigal, an influential author and occasionally controversial visionary from U.C. Berkley believes that games can solve real-world problems through increasing the amount of time spent playing games to 21 billion hours per week by 2020. There is little doubt that gaming will continue to be an extremely important global activity.

The introduction of platforms like the Nintendo Wii, the Apple iPad, and the Sifteo Cubes has opened up a variety of new options for games. The social-gaming company Zynga has been steadily building innovative games delivered over social networking platforms like Facebook. The MIT Technology Review reported last week that Zynga is planning to produce a drastically more complex, strategic, and socially interactive gave than ever before. In a TechCrunch article last year, it was estimated that half of all Facebook users play games and that 40% of the time spent on Facebook is devoted to social games like those developed by Zynga. Clearly, there is an extensive amount of activity and data being generated through these evolving social interactions in massively multiplayer online games (MMO). 

The founders of Ninja Metrics have designed a technology platform, called the Katana Engine, to understand players’ behaviors in these new online communities. This platform provides a dashboard to help users understand patterns and predictive information which is computationally generated behind the scenes of the system. Dr. Williams describes this business as “providing analytics in social spaces, with both monitoring and predictive work.” These analytics, which consist of both proprietary algorithms and standard methods, are initially being applied to game data generated by players and collected by developers.

The Katana Engine enables analysis about what gamers did in-game, providing key insights into game mechanics.

This product is largely based on collaborative interdisciplinary research from the areas of social science and computer science. Specifically, social science theories have been meshed with advanced methods from artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to assist in accurately predicting human behavior in this system. Dr. Williams goes on to describe a particular competitive advantage from their research which has been baked into the product. He said, “Our primary innovation is an algorithm that can measure social influence within friendship groups. Whereas many companies know how to take advantage of social network research and report who is most connected or central, we can provide who influences whom, and to what extent.” Determining these social influences provides insight into value characteristics of players or actors in the network.

These benefits can extend outside the context of social gaming to industries like telecommunications, retail, and healthcare. While this team’s initial focus is MMO or casual game analysis, which applies to thousands of titles in an exploding online space, their platform is suitable for anyone with large-scale data where people interact. Walmart beefed up its online presence through sophisticated social identity analysis with the purchase of Kosmix to form the entity @WalmartLabs. There is a compelling case for Minnesota-based Target, which recently brought its online stores control back in-house from Amazon, to pursue similar strategies.

Ninja Metrics is utilizing social analytics to help make sense of human behavior, whether it is through game interactions or mountains of data from established industries. Their research-oriented methods, partnerships with universities and overall passion in this space are all a function of innovation for this Minnesota company. 21 billion hours per week of game-play by 2020? We’ll have to see.

Predicting Human Behavior through Games is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

TST Media CEO and co-founder, Justin Kaufenberg noted the fundraising as “transformational”. He notes that “To a degree, prior growth has been consciously checked in favor of reinvesting in our technology core…that patience and focus has set the stage for us to efficiently deploy these proceeds and exponentially enhance a proven platform and business strategy” In plain speak…TST has got plenty of fuel to power growth to the next level.

That point is further driven home as Kaufenberg commented on El Dorado Ventures. “As a venture partner, El Dorado brings an impressive track record of successfully aiding and nurturing the rapid growth of innovative technology companies.” With TST boasting 100% growth over the past three years and some 200 clients in 50 states and six different countries, Jeff Hinck of El Dorado was happy to note, ”In TST Media, we found a company with a best-in-class technology platform. Unlike other players in the space, their NGIN platform has been architected for extendibility and growth.”

Also providing fuel for the local job market, TST Media will be adding more than 20 new positions this year including Software Engineers, UI/UX Designers, Development Operations, Project Managers, Technical Support and Sales.

Local start-up growth, more jobs, a growing platform. Light this candle!

More Fuel for NGIN is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

While they are in a prelaunch phase, they do have the fledglings of a product. Founder Colin Tuggle was kind enough to give me the backdrop on his firm and where they are headed. He explained that “ProduceRatings is an online community that helps users find and rate produce in their local communities.”

Tuggle went on about the origins of ProduceRatings, “It started out in the summer of 2010 as a conversation between brother-in- laws over a few pieces of Minnesota peak season sweet corn. Both wanted to figure out when and where to get peak season corn without having to try every stand in the Twin Cities. A few beers later, ProduceRatings.com was born. Our sites ratings differ from others in that our ratings are time-sensitive. We have a rolling window for ‘what’s good now’ versus other sites that aggregate years of ratings in their current rating. We also differ in that we rate products, not sellers/locations. What we want to answer is ‘Where can I get the best sweet corn right now?’ Of course, you can substitute sweet corn for your favorite produce in that sentence.”

The beta site is starting out on a very small scale, focusing only on local Minnesota produce. Their basic algorithms for determining produce ratings are therefore operating against a minimal data set, which is currently a function of user data and produce attributes. Over the next year, they anticipate providing over a thousand ratings for only a few hundred users. As they scale up over the next year, they intend to increase both consumer and business usage while also improving their analytical capabilities. The technologies that they utilize like PHP and MySQL, combined with commodity storage and processing architecture, is expected to easily support the Big Data challenges ahead. By incorporating more mature data mining techniques and additional data, they can provide rather interesting insights for researchers, produce sellers, growers, distributors, and restaurants.

The results of the produce ratings will be fed back to users through an alerting mechanism. Real- time feedback in the form of e-mail, SMS, and mobile applications are all part of their product roadmap. Through these alerts, this system can provide time-sensitive and granular product information to both businesses and consumers.

In addition to alerts, they plan to provide analytical reports. According to Colin, “We want to provide businesses with interesting and actionable analytics that can make them more competitive in the produce market, better understand consumer preferences, source better, make marketing decisions, etc. We intend to do this through prepackaged and custom reporting”.

Produce Ratings is committed to being a leader in discovering high-quality produce. Through sophisticated technology and by collaborating with local sellers, farmers, distributors, and researchers, they hope to accomplish this goal.

Discovering High-Quality Produce through Actionable Analytics is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Offering a complimentary subscription until October 16th, the StarTribune iPad app joins many daily newspapers who are hoping that tablet access will shift people away from newsprint versions and bring in non-newspapers readers (i.e., the under-35 crowd). Ironically the current StarTribune website offers a great experience already on an iPad, so it will remain to be seen if people will choose a native iPad app over the website itself.

The app loads quickly, stories load fast, and there is little of the latency one expects with ad serving, a typical problem on many newspaper websites where page loads stall while ads are fetched from an ad server elsewhere. With its minimalistic and clean look, it’s a pleasure to read.

One startling and glaring omission is the lack of social sharing, especially if the StarTribune truly cares to go after those non-newspaper readers mentioned above. While most smartphone and tablet news apps enable the reader to send an article via email or to Twitter, Facebook and other social platforms, StarTribune has only enabled email. This makes the app significantly less useful for anyone using social media technologies.

The other aspect of using the app that was troublesome was how obvious it now is that the StarTribune — like most daily newspapers around the country — reprint articles from major dailies like the New York Times, Washington Post, LATimes and also from the major newswires like the Associated Press and Reuters. Unfortunately for the StarTribune, there are so many apps with which we can access these same stories, that it makes StarTribune reprinted ones far too obvious and redundant. (For more on this problem and others in the newspaper business, see my personal blog post, “How to Save Newspapers (But do we even care?)“).

StarTribune’s new iPad app is an acceptable first effort, but getting in to the game so late we expected more from this hometown paper. The good news is that they will be able to take feedback and iterate the app so new features will (hopefully) be added over time. We’d like to see more social features added, a larger emphasis on local vs. national news (especially “above the fold” on the first page after launch), video and audio (e.g., podcasts), ongoing reference material that would be “evergreen” and always available (e.g., directories, restaurant reviews, visitor information, guides) and other content that would make using this app (and paying for a subscription come October) a much richer, and more local, experience.

StarTribune Debuts iPad App is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

They appear to be well on their way as tech incubator Project Skyway and many small start-ups and individual have already set up shop in the shadow of the  ”big board”. Project Skyway’s, Cem Erdem noted that their first class of companies will begin working in the space starting today.

See more from Cem as well as Don and Kyle in the short video below.

Congratulations to all on the launch of another resource to further innovation at all levels. We’re looking forward to the day when the hackers figure out how to turn the big board into a ginat tweet wall. Well…maybe.

Opening Night at the Minneapolis Grain Idea Exchange is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.