Bettr

Bettr building

mattj — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:56:36 +0000

Well it looks like things are coming together. Conway Hall is confirmed for the 14th January which is a real winner as it is a brilliant venue that I associate with great events like Interesting, Playful and The Story. I’ve lined up considerably more speakers than I was expecting at this point – which has taken some of the pressure off. I still need to identify more people in the education start-up space as I would like a balance between the more non-profit focused speakers and the more entrepreneurial types – any suggestions gratefully received!

There is going to be a small charge for the event – no more than £20 and probably started at nearer a tenner for ‘early birds’. I still need to decide between Eventbrite and Amiando as a registration tool – once I do that next week I will probably open registration and also start to push ahead with the publicity a bit more.

I still haven’t really decided what to do about sponsorship. Tutorhub have backed the event but on the understanding I will earn back the cost of the venue (or at least give it a go!). Given the current tough times everyone is experiencing at the moment I’m not sure who would be interested in sponsoring an event like this anyway but we’ll see.

I have a few days in early September when I will be pretty much working on this fulltime so that should really give it a boost – still very excited about things.

Bringing Bettr Back

matt — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:58:07 +0000

So I’ve been thinking about trying to do another event focused on the ideas of education and learning focused start-ups. Having recently read DIY-U and met some of the people referenced in it as well as revisiting some of the posts about the Hacking Education event Union Square Ventures ran a while back I started to sketch out some ideas for something quite different from last time.

Anyway the guys at Tutorhub have agreed to back my idea for a one-day semi formal event inspired by the format of things like Playful rather than Barcamps – we have a location in mind and a date (timed to coincide with BETT again) as well as a list of very cool potential speakers who I will be contacting in the days and weeks to come.

This site will undergo so major changes soon and there will be regular updates. Time to get busy

aMap from Delib

matt — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 10:46:50 +0000

Chris from Delib did a quick presentation of aMaps at the SI Camp on the evening after Bettr and I have put together a quick and not particularly clever interactive aMap together below. I think the online version could be alot of fun and certainly has educational implications and I’m interested to see the paper versions (I wonder if there is a Moo like opportunity here – design your own aMaps and get them printed and sent out? Sure they have thought of that.)

Building the scholary web of data

matt — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:46:25 +0000

Chris Clarke from Talis did one of the first presentations on the day – to a certain extent he presented at my urging as I was a bit worried that people were not rushing to add talks to the programme (didn’t need to worry in the end but panic is all part of the fun!) but I think people still found the talk very intersting and I certainly did (despite my predjudice against some of the semantic web elements ).

Xiphos Network: Building the scholarly web of data

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: web3.0 semanticweb)

JISC Developer Happiness Days

matt — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:26:35 +0000

Another quick presentation at the end of the day was from Dave Flanders who quickly mentioned the JISC Developer Happiness Days that he is helping run. This is close to my heart as I spent five years at JISC and think this is a great idea (and a pretty radical one for JISC).

Why Portability Matters by Ian Forrester

matt — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 08:59:34 +0000

At the close of the day Ian mentioned this presentation that he had given to JISC at the end of 2008 so here it is in all its glory – well worth a look.

Why Portability matters (full presentation)

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: cloudcomputing universality)

Turning Teachers into Rockstars

matt — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 08:44:59 +0000

This is a guest post from Koichi at Edufire

Teachers have been getting the short end of the stick for for a long time now. And yet, they are probably some of the most important people in our global society. Just imagine a world without teachers. Nothing would happen, and we’d fall apart.

Yet, when you think back to your school days, did you know who the great teachers were? Sure, maybe in your particular school you had a vague idea, but what about in surrounding schools? What about surrounding states? What about teachers in other countries? Probably didn’t even cross your mind. Teachers are still just plain old teachers. Some teachers are good, some teachers are bad, and some teachers are great. Rockstar teachers? Forget about it.

At eduFire, we’re looking to change all that. Any teacher, from anywhere in the world, can join, set up an account, and start teaching. Location and age don’t matter anymore. In fact, we have a tutor in her mid-teens teaching a student in their mid-eighties! All that matters on eduFire is that you have a passion for teaching and learning. After that, a rating system, feedback, and testimonials separate the good teachers from the bad.

eduFire is a community all about globalizing education. It’s now possible to access some of the best teachers in the world, no matter where you live. All you need now is an internet connection – school buses just don’t cut it anymore.

About eduFire:

eduFire is a website that allows teachers to set up one-to-one tutoring sessions and one-to-many classes (of up to 99 students). For lessons, we use the Adobe Connect platform, which allows you to share audio and video via webcam, show PowerPoint presentations, collaborate on notes, share your desktop, conduct polls, and so much more. eduFire only takes 15% of what teachers earn after a student has paid. That way, the teacher always makes money before we do.

If you’re interested in teaching or learning via live video, give us a shot. It’s free to join, post in the forums, take (certain) classes, or access our flash cards. Looking forward to seeing you around!

http://www.edufire.com

..thankyou and good night

matt — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:58:07 +0000

I’ll be adding various links and videos as well as a couple of extra blog posts in the next of days but I thought I would quickly write a quick thankyou to all those people who attended Bettr – as with all these types of thing it is the people who make the event a success and I am extremely thankful that such an interesting bunch of people came along and contributed so much to what I hope was a useful experience for everyone who attended.

Bettr was pretty all consuming for me in the weeks before and after Christmas and the fact that it passed relatively successfully with no major problems feels like a major achievement so once again I’d like to say a big thankyou.

I learned an awful lot in the process of organising this event and I’m sure if we do ever do something similar again I can promise it will be bigger and Bettr..

Bettr event tag is #bettr

matt — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:41:31 +0000

If like me you are a Twitter addict then please be aware that the hashtag for Bettr is the easy to remember #bettr – this will mean people not at the event should be able to track whats going on to some extent and take part in the backchannel (which I’ll spend the day keeping an eye on.) If anyone decides to blog, take pics or anything else then please just stick to bettr as a tag.

As well as the Twitter activity Laura and Matt from the OU will be wandering around armed with Flip video cameras to capture the thoughts of some of those attending and if I can twist some arms we might manage some live blogging on CoverItLive as well.

Bettr / Social Innovation Camp Mashup Confirmed

matt — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:00:09 +0000

An early suggestion from Paul regarding Bettr was to link it up with the monthly Social Innovation Camp meetups for an education themed evening event. Now thanks to the hard work of Anna and Katherine from SI Camp this is a reality and will conveniently also take place at Demos starting at 18.30. This should give everyone (except me) a chance to escape Demos for a bit and perhaps grab a crafty half at a nearby public house before returning for more fun of the edu-geeky kind (though with considerable liquid refreshments available for the evening session thanks to the generous contributions of Delib).

From what I understand the SI Camp meetups have a pretty lightweight structure and are very much focused on giving people the opportunity to share ideas and I think the mix of people we have attending to Bettr will really add something to this format – especially as we have achieved some pretty impressive geographic coverage for an event in London which should add a different perspective.

To learn more about Social Innovation Camp you can visit their site (http://sicamp.org) but in short “Social Innovation Camp is an experiment in creating social innovations for the digital age” which is a nice description and not far from the kind of vision I had originally for Bettr though with much more of a education/learning focus obviously.

Anyway – its another piece of the jigsaw puzzle that is a successful event slotted into place and my stress/excitement balance is starting to tip towards excitement now.