Posts tagged learning
MIT Launches Center for Mobile Learning with Support From Google
Aug 17th
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has announced the creation of a new Center for Mobile Learning. The center will be housed at the MIT Media Lab. Google supported the creation of the center with a grant from Google University Relations. The center’s first project will be the adoption and further development of App Inventor for Android, a do-it-yourself tool for building apps for Google’s Android mobile OS with no programming skills required.
App Inventor was a Google Labs project that was discontinued last week, but Google open-sourced the code. The MIT Center for Mobile Learning’s adoption of the code comes as a relief to fans of App Inventor, many of whom worried that no one would step up to carry on its development.
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The Center for Mobile Learning will be co-directed by professors Hal Abelson, Eric Klopfer and Mitchel Resnick. Abelson’s input helped shape the initial development of Android App Inventor in 2008, aiming “to enable people to become creators, not just consumers, in this mobile world.” He says that Resnick’s Scratch software, also housed at MIT, was inspiration for the project. App Inventor uses the OpenBlocks framework, another MIT project advised by Klopfer, to visually represent blocks of code, so that App Inventor users can simply build their applications from a menu of modular options.
The center’s stated goal is “transforming education and learning through innovation in mobile computing.” Android App Inventor was popular among computer science educators because it lowered the barriers to entry for new developers and served as a teaching tool to computer science students. Its new home at MIT will reassure those who feared that this tool would become deprecated after Google stopped development.
“Google incubated App Inventor to the point where it gained critical mass,” says Dr. Maggie Johnson, Google’s Director of Education and University Relations. “MIT’s involvement will both amplify the impact of App Inventor and enrich the research around it. It is a perfect example of how industry and academia can work together effectively.”
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10+ Free Resources for Learning Clojure
Jul 1st
Clojure is a dialect of the LISP programming language that runs on the Java Virtual Machine. It’s becoming increasingly popular as a modern functional programming language. This week O’Reilly Radar blogger Stuart Sierra called it “the hot new language of the moment.” He describes Clojure as”Lisp meets Java with a side of Erlang.” Interested? Here are a few free resources to get you started.
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Trying Clojure Out in the Browser
Try Clojure and 4Clojure provide you with the chance to play with Clojure without installing anything. 4Clojure gives you a set of problems to solve using Clojure code, a bit like koans (see below) or Project Euler.
Tutorials for Beginners
- Guide to Programming in Clojure for Beginners is a nice long beginner’s tutorial, starting with installation and moving on into more advanced features. It doesn’t attempt to cover everything, instead it highlights a few key features and provides an introduction to them.
- Clojure – Functional Programming for the JVM by R. Mark Volkmann is another beginner’s tutorial that briefly covers many features of Clojure.
- Clojure Tutorial For the Non-Lisp Programmer by Moxley Stratton.
- Eric Rochester’s Clojure Series
Clojure Koans
Clojure Koans are a free set of programming exercises for learning the Clojure programming language, similar to the famous Ruby Koans project.
labrepl
labrepl is a Clojure application that you can run on your local computer or server. It provides a set of exercises for learning Clojure with step by step instructions. It was originally created for the Clojure Studio class.
Clojure Programming WikiBook
The Clojure Wikibook seems to be just getting started, but it does have its own example-driven Clojure tutorial, a Clojure cookbook and lots of links (some of which are included here). The concepts page is pretty extensive.
Learning Clojure WikiBook
Learning Clojure is another WikiBook project that is still in its early stages.
Clojure Docs
Clojure Docs is a community powered Clojure documentation site, including references for most (all?) of Clojure’s features. Like the Wikibook, it’s still in its early stages.
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Resources for Learning About PPC
Jun 26th
I’ve previously written about how to keep up to date in search and offered tips for paid search newbies. This time I’m focusing on resources from the search engines that will help anybody working in PPC – newbie or seasoned hand …
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
4 Free E-Books on Learning Objective-C, the Programming Language of iOS and OSX
May 14th
Want to write apps for OSX, the iPhone or the iPad? You can learn JavaScript and use a frameworks like PhoneGap or Titanium. Or you can learn the official language of Apple operating systems: Objective-C. The debate over whether to build mobile apps in JavaScript or Objective-C is beyond the scope of this blog post. But if you want to learn Objective-C, these resources will get you started.
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Become an Xcoder: Start Programming the Mac Using Objective-C
Become an Xcoder: Start Programming the Mac Using Objective-C by Bert Altenberg, Alex Clarke
and Philippe Mougin is a programming book for absolute beginners. It introduces basic programming concepts, object oriented programming and more. It’s available as a free PDF in English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Chinese and Arabic. Only the English version has been updated for OSX Leopard, the others are based on Tiger.
Objective-C 2.0 Essentials
Objective-C 2.0 Essentials by Neil Smyth is an introduction to Objective-C available for free online. Only the HTML format is free, those wanting an ePub, PDF or Kindle version will need to buy a copy. It’s suitable for beginner programmers, or those with some programming experience.
Learning Cocoa with Objective-C
Learning Cocoa with Objective-C by James Duncan Davidson. This is based on OSX Jaguar, released in 2002 – so it’s a little outdated. The full text is available online, but if you want formats other than HTML you’ll need to shell out for a paid version. It’s meant for those with experience with object oriented programming.
The Objective-C Programming Language
The Objective-C Programming Language is an introduction to Objective-C from the official Apple website. It assumes some familiarity with C and experience with object oriented programming.
Bonus: Objective-C for Java Programmers
Objective-C for Java Programmers is a tutorial by David Chisnall for experienced Java developers wanting to learn Objective-C.
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5 Free E-Books and Tutorials for Learning PHP
Apr 16th
As high performance languages and frameworks like Node.js and Scala become more popular, is it even worth learning a seemingly old school language like PHP? Considering the persistent demand for PHP developers, and the fact that the language is in use as sites like Facebook and Wikipedia, I’d say so. ChartBoost recently posted an article called “Running a Modern Startup on PHP” on its blog.
Furthermore, popular platforms like WordPress, Drupal and Joomla are all based on PHP. If you want to want to customize these applications, or build plugins, you’ll need to know PHP. And though you don’t have to build Facebook applications with PHP, it’s helpful know it when developing on that platform anyway.
Here are some resources to help get you started.
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Build Your Own Database Driven Web Site Using PHP & MySQL
Sitepoint’s Build Your Own Database Driven Web Site Using PHP & MySQL by Kevin Yank is a lucid introduction to both PHP and MySQL for the non-programmer. The full book costs money, but Sitepoint offers the first 168. You’ll have to fork over your e-mail address to get it, though.
However, you can much of the material on the Web in this series of tutorials by Yank.
Zend’s PHP 101
Zend, makers of the popular Zend Engine back-end for PHP, offer one of the most popular tutorials for PHP beginners: PHP 101: PHP For the Absolute Beginner by Vikram Vaswani.
Webmonkey’s PHP and MySQL Tutorials
Another popular resource is Webmonkey’s PHP Tutorial for Beginners. This can be followed by its PHP and MySQL Tutorial.
Practical PHP Programming
Practical PHP by PHP in a Nutshell author Paul Hudson is a free e-book for PHP beginners. A programming background is helpful, but not necessary, for readers of this book.
PHP 5 Power Programming
PHP 5 Power Programming by Andi Gutmans, Stig Bakken and Derick Rethans is not a beginner’s book, but we’re including it here for those looking for a next step. It’s available in print or as a free PDF download here.
PHP Manual
When in doubt, you can always consult the PHP Manual.
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Instructure Aims to Knock Down the Learning Management System Walled Garden
Apr 14th
When I first heard of the new learning management system Instructure, I confess, I was unimpressed. Even though I try to be supremely supportive of education technology startups – particularly those taking on giants in the industry – I just couldn’t get excited about yet another LMS.
To be sure, there are a lot of problems with many of the current options on the market. Blackboard, the dominant player in the higher ed LMS sector, is not well-loved by any of the students or professors I know. It’s a monster to implement, to upgrade, to use – and an expensive one at that.
Instructure promises an LMS that addresses those key pain points, and its software, Canvas, is open source as well. But then again, all the LMS competitors promise ease-of-use and simple migration, and there are a number of open source offerings on the market already, including Moodle and Sakai. So my first reaction to Instructure, despite a lot of buzz in the tech world, was that it was really no big deal.
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But I’m willing to admit that my first reaction was wrong.
Instructure’s Investment
The company announces today that it’s raised $8 million in Series B funding from OpenView Venture Partners, Epic Ventures, Tomorrow Ventures, and Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurveston. But investors’ interest in the product isn’t what has made me change my mind.
It was the simple sentence the Instructure team uttered when they gave me a tour of the product: “We want to get rid of the walled garden.”
That walled garden approach to learning management systems means that whatever content students and instructors upload – whether it’s handouts, homework assignments, discussions, tests, syllabi – is all trapped within a particular course. If you aren’t registered for a class, you can’t view it. When a course is over, you can’t view it. When you graduate, you can’t view it. As having a strong online portfolio is rapidly becoming far more important than a resume, that’s no good for students. It’s no good for education either, which despite the rising cost of tuition, should be about sharing, not restricting knowledge.
Instructure’s Features
The Canvas LMS is a browser-based, cloud-based tool. It’s offered as software-as-a-service rather than as a piece of software that schools download and manage. Its interface is clean and simple, with a look and feel of a contemporary Web app. In other words, we’re talking social streams here. There are no radio buttons. It doesn’t look like Windows 3.1, or worse yet, a BBS. Canvas has all the features you’d expect in an LMS: a gradebook, assessment tools, chat, discussion rooms.
It also has some other nifty features, including its SpeedGrader, an iPad app that will reduce the amount of time instructors spend grading assignments. Everything is connected to other Web services too, including Google Docs, Facebook and Twitter, and changes to a course’s content – whether that’s the deadline for an assignment or a grade that’s posyed – students can get notifications via email, Facebook message, or text. And students and teachers both have data portability – schoolwork isn’t trapped in that walled garden.
The Promise of Open
Moving a school to a new learning management system is no easy task – in terms of technology or in terms of contracts and licensing. But that hasn’t stopped Instructure from piquing the interest of a lot of schools since the startup launched in February – something that really is a testament to the problems with the other options on the market.
Canvas is offered free as an open source tool or as a paid version with enterprise support. Even though that open source option might be what’s touted in some of Instructure’s materials, most schools are unlikely to go that path and will probably opt to buy the commercial version.
Some 4000 schools have already expressed an interest in Canvas, and the round of funding will help scale the startup’s operations.
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Get a Great Deal on Learning Something New with TeachStreet
Apr 6th
TeachStreet, the online community that helps lifelong learners find teachers and classes on almost any subject, is joining the “deals” space today, launching a new feature with both an online and (for now) a local Seattle deal.
This week’s online deal: $59 for a 6 month access pass to Educator.com (normally $150). This week’s local deal: $25 for a 3-class package at Arthur Murray Dance (normally $59). Share the deal with 3 friends who sign up, and yours is free.
“We should have done it a year ago,” admits CEO and founder Dave Schappell. Perhaps. But the addition of deals to TeachStreet doesn’t make sense simply because of the explosion of interest in the space. Instead, TeachStreet has spent the last year or so focused on building a vibrant community of teachers and learners. There are just under a half million classes listed on the site, offered by around 100,000 teachers and schools.
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Unlike other sites that are focused on deals only and offer a range of discounted services – deals on spa services, restaurants, tours and the like – TeachStreet will remain focused on education. That means these deals will be targeted at quite a different consumer. Rather than pitching a service to someone who’s on the look out for a deal – any deal – the addition of deals to TeachStreet will benefit those interested in lifelong learning and will serve as another marketing vehicle for the teachers on the site.
It will also add a layer of virality as well, as learners are encouraged to share the deals with friends in order to secure free classes for themselves. And in many ways, classes are more fun with other friends along.
Not all teachers are required to offer deals, of course. “We offer a suite of ways to use the site,” says Schappell. That includes a number of other tools and metrics for teachers, who are able to see for example how many leads they have, how people view and click on their profiles, how many enrollments they’ve got, and so on.
Adding deals to classes makes sense as lessons are the sort of thing that you want to buy multiples of. And in turn, teachers are interested in deals as those who are willing to buy multiple sessions are probably more serious students.
But in the end, says, Schappell, it isn’t simply a matter of promoting just the deals, and he thinks the new feature will be a boon to all the other class-providers on the site.
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Fitango Helps You Keep Your Online Learning On Track
Apr 6th
There are an increasing number of educational resources available online, but the challenge today might be less a matter of finding something that you want to learn than it is a matter following through with the actual learning itself.
Fitango wants to address that by offering its users action plans, step-by-step guides on how to accomplish their goals. There are hundreds of plans on the site, including “How to Grow a Vegetable Garden” and “How to Winterize Your Vehicle.” Some of the action plans are free, but many cost money – about $10 on average.
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What comprises the plans depends, obviously, on what you’re learning: some include videos, some are text. But they all include some way to track your progress and maintain a checklist of how you’re doing.
That tracking is also highly social, so you can share your progress with others. You can find your friends via Facebook and email, for example, and you can push your updates to your social streams, should you choose. This is meant to help you keep yourself motivated, not just with a checklist of what you need to be doing in your action plan, but by having others become your tracking your progress as well. You can invite others to become your motivator so they can keep you on task and give you feedback.
In addition to selecting an action plan from Fitango’s marketplace, you can create your own plan as well. You can distribute these via the site, although these plans can’t be sold for money, as the company wants to keep the quality of its expert advice high. Like many companies that are moving into this growing space of online learning, that will be the challenge for Fitango – making sure the content on the site is worthwhile and its users’ experiences positive.
Fitango launched in December, just in time to catch the New Year’s Resolution crowd. No surprise then, many of its initial plans emphasized health and self-improvement. But since then, the company has expanded into other areas, most recently with action plans from the language-learning company Berlitz.
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6 Free E-Books and Tutorials for Learning and Mastering Node.js
Apr 2nd
OK, we won’t bore you by telling you what Node.js is again or why it’s so dang hot.
You want to learn Node.js? There’s no completely finished Node.js book out there that we’re aware of. But there’s one complete book in rough draft form, two partial guides and several other great resources for learning Node.js.
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No more excuses: Try Node.js for $0.02 or less in just a few minutes
No more excuses: Try Node.js for $0.02 or less in just a few minutes is a short tutorial from the developers of NowJS. It explains how to get a Node.js instance up and running in Amazon EC2. It’s not meant to teach you how to use Node.js, just get you a working installation of it up quick.
It’s especially useful if you’re on Windows and don’t want to try to use Node.js under Cygwin.
Up and Running With Node.js
Up and Running with Node.js by Tom Hughes-Croucher hasn’t been officially released yet, but O’Reilly Media has released a free text preview of the book as part of its Open Feedback Publishing System. Hughes-Croucher is a developer advocate at Joyent, the sponsor company of Node.js. This book seems destined to become the definitive guide to Node.js.
Our previous coverage of the book is here.
Felix’s Node.js Guide
Felix’s Node.js Guide got a lot of attention this week, particularly the Convincing The Boss section. The guide is a work in progress by Felix Geisendörfer, an early Node.js core contributor. At present, the sections are:
Node.js Beginner Guide
If you are new to node.js, this guide will take you from hello world to deploying your first app.
Node.js Style Guide
The general JavaScript style I recommend to use with node.js. A lot of this is personal preferences, but hopefully rather consistent.
Node.js Community Guide
Get to know some of the node.js community and find out where they hang out.
Node.js Convincing The Boss Guide
Find out where node.js makes sense, and how to get management to see the benefits.
Mastering Node
Mastering Node was one of the first e-books on Node.js, but it’s also a work in progress. It’s an open source book available from Github in PDF, ePub, HTML and Mobi formats. The last few sections are still incomplete.
The Official Node.js Documentation
If you really need answers about Node.js, you can always RTFM.
Bulletproof Node.js Coding
And finally, Bulletproof Node.js Coding is a concise but helpful collection of tips for Node.js programmers.
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6 Free E-Books on Learning to Program with Python
Mar 25th
Python is an increasingly popular language, and it’s also a favorite language teaching first time programmers. We’ve compiled a list of beginner’s books to choose from.
Just because they’re free doesn’t mean they aren’t good. Some of the books listed here have been used in courses such as MIT’s Introduction to Computer Science and Programming course and University of California, Davis’ Basic Concepts of Programming course.
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A Byte of Python
A Byte of Python is a beginner’s book on Python by Swaroop C H. “If all you know about computers is how to save text files, then this is the book for you,” the site says.
It’s been used in several academic programs, such as the above mentioned UC Davis course, and by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
It’s available for both Python 2.X and 3.0, but only the 3.0 version is still updated. A hard copy version is available.
Learn Python the Hard Way
Learn Python the Hard Way is a beginner’s programming book written by Zed Shaw. It was written for Python 2.6.
Shaw is known as the creator of the Mongrel and Mongrel2 Web servers, and more recently as the author of this lively manifesto.
Non-Programmer’s Tutorial for Python
Non-Programmer’s Tutorial for Python 2.6 and on-Programmer’s Tutorial for Python 3 are products of the WikiBooks project.
Python Programming
Python Programming is another WikiBooks guide to Python. It’s one of the texts of the MIT course mentioned above.
The Python Tutorial
The Python Tutorial is the official tutorial from the Python project. It’s used in the MIT course. You can find a tutorial for Python 2.7 here and for 3.0 here.
Think Python
Think Python: An Introduction to Software Design was written by Allen B. Downey an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the Franklin W. Olin College of
Engineering. It’s is available in multiple formats, including a hard copy, here. It was written before Python 3.0, but has been updated with footnotes to explain discrepancies.
There are a few variations of this book which may cause some confusion. Think Python is the online version of Python for Software Design: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist, which is an updated version of How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python. It has also been ported into other language such as C++, Java and Ruby.
Downey has several other computer science books available for free from his publishing company Green Tea Press.
See Also
6 Free JavaScript E-Books and Tutorials
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