For the past years, we’ve seen the emergence of many online platforms from around the world such as Asia and Europe; all appearing to grab a piece of the pie from this E-learning market. Every online learning platform start-ups try to attract online teachers and students to teach or learn foreign languages on their platform by distinguishing themselves from their competitors in the service offered as well as platform features and fees.

Benoit Archambault, CEO of Acdam used a similar concept, but gave it a twist to put local tutors and students in touch, yet providing the flexibility to allow tutors to learners worldwide to connect through Acadam’s virtual classroom.

Tutors and Students interaction

Teacher Search on Acadam

With Acadam, students can create tutor requests explaining the areas they need help in, getting immediate replies from tutors in their e-mail. Parents and students alike can browse the Tutor Directory to find the tutor that they feel best suits their needs. With this kind of open communication, new tutors won’t find themselves having a well-written profile and terrific courses, but sitting in the dark with no students.

Tutors will also be given feedbacks from students for their tutoring services. All students will be able to post comments and evaluate the quality of the services received on the tutors’ profile. As these comments will be visible to other students, this is how tutors can build their credibility and attract more potential students to use their service.

Tutoring topics and subjects

As tutors, you may offer tutoring services in any subjects that you specialize in on Acadam. The array of subjects and topics offered on the site includes languages, music, test preparation courses, academic subjects and more.

Fees

The beauty of Acadam is that it is absolutely free for tutors to sign up and promote their tutoring services, but most of all, Acadam does not take any commission on tutors’ salary. Yes, that’s right! Unlike many of the online platforms that take commission for providing online tutors with conveniences, tutors keep all the money earned. Acadam does offer at an additional paid services that help tutors find more students if needed.

Acadam features available to Tutors

Tutors are their own boss. They can create their personalized profile with a photo, choose your hourly rate, schedule and subjects. Tutors are pinpointed on Google Maps with their range of travel, making it easier than ever for students to find a tutor near them.

Tutors can be sure that they receive payment securely by linking their Paypal account to their Acadam profile. All they have to do is create an invoice through Acdam and send it to students. This gives a great control to tutors on managing their payments.

If your are a tutor looking to join a local tutoring company in your area, this would be the place to look. Acadam is also a listing site for tutoring companies who wish to create a profile and make themselves visible to potential clients.

Acadam not only provides tutors a way to connect to students worldwide, but also locally which makes it a preferred meeting place for both tutors and students.

Acadam

Website: acadam.com
Twitter: @acadam_com

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by George Machlan (@myeslfriends). He is an online ESL teacher, founder of My ESL Friends and thought leader of the Edupunk movement.

Mau, or Mauricio Büchler is an enigma for me. I mean what kind of name is that? And, he calls himself “Mau” like a friendly Hawaiian or Chinese gang member. I suppose it fits with his free-wheeling lifestyle that has yet to be pigeon-holed by me yet. But I like what I see. Even the A.D.D. style of his projects seem to be ready to go “whither the spirit leadeth”.

He has been trying a lot of things over the last couple of years and seems to be blazing some trails for the Millennial learner. I have only looked superficially at him. There is surprising little available, in spite of his degree in marketing he seems to be stretched very thin and not well presented for easy codifying.

I like him primarily because of his first impression of passion and as an entertainer. He knows how to connect with a crowd and edutainment is the second name for us at The Edupunk. We are also heavily committed to gaming applications (android app writing classes have started on our channel) for our long-term strategy. This guy is worth your evaluation and possibly financial support. I am trying to get in touch with him but until then I thought you would like the couple of things I have found about his activities.

I hope to get him connected with our diva interviewer Kirsten to really drill down to the essence of his paradigm. I hear him saying that his heart is that for both the learner and teacher, IT SHOULD BE FUN!!!! Amen, brother, you are preaching to the choir! You get an honorary pass to The Edupunk.

Oh, BTW he is cute, while not a requirement for your consideration, most of the Edu-geeks that Kirsten finds are rather old (like me).

First embed is his long and almost boring TEDx video:

Second, his BIO_PREZI (he can use modern tools too!):

Website: tripppin.com
Facebook: facebook.com/tripppin
Twitter: @tripppin

NMSU undergraduate Adam Duran together with Stanford Assistant Professor Adrian Lew and Stanford Doctoral candidate Sohan Dharmaraja created something ground breaking during a two months summer immersion course at Stanford’s Army High Performance Computing Research Center.

The team created an application that turns tablet devices into an eight key Braille writer. Other than the usual devices on the market that cost up to $6000 USD and have a fixed keyboard, the Braille writer application automatically adjusts the keyboard to where the writer puts the fingers.

The application also enables the visually impaired user  to switch between different keyboards for example chemistry.

Via: Gizmodo
Source: Stanford

No more searching through your desk for piles of cluttered papers or sketch drawings or even flipping through endless pages of notes. This highly, talked about tablet is something that anybody will love especially students, business professionals, artists and designers.

On October 3, 2011, Improv Electronics introduced its latest e-writer tablet. Boogie Board Rip™ LCD Writing Tablet adds the ability to save notes and sketches, and then port them across to your computer as PDFs. It is the newest model to join the company’s growing family of paperless Boogie Board® eWriters.

Improv Electronics introduced Boogie Board eWriters in January 2010 with the Boogie Board 8.5 LCD Writing Tablet as a paperless replacement for memo pads, sticky notes, scratch pads and other writing and drawing mediums. It received high global demand quickly. Since then, different colors of the tablet became available and in June 2011, several additional Boogie Board tablet models with different LCD sizes and accessories were launched.

With this new Boogie Board Rip, users can experience the paper-like writing experience by recording written notes or images and save them as pdf files. Afterwards, upload the files to a computer for editing, sharing, organizing or simply for archiving. The ability to save notes and sketching make it an ideal paperless replacement for paper notebooks, note pads as well as sketch books.

Some of special features for Boogie Boar Rip includes:

• Internal memory for 200 typical images
• High resolution, vector .pdf file format
• Micro USB port
• lightweight design, thin but durable
• Integrated stylus holder; includes stylus
• Erase lock button
• Rechargeable batteries with one week between charges under average use

Just like the other Boogie Board eWriters, the Boogie Board Rip tablet does not require any power to create or keep an image. The only time power is required is for erasing, saving or uploading stored files to a computer.

The tablet’s simplicity and diverse functionality have been praised by major media outlets. Since its introduction, the Boogie Board Rip tablet has generated the highest volume of visits to the Improv Electronics Web site and created a global buzz.

The Highly Anticipated Boogie Board Rap is available for preorder for customers in the United States and Canada through improvelectronics.com for $130 USD. Customers in Europe can preorder in the coming week. Free ground shipping for all preorders within the continental United States and Europe.

Via: Engadget

My latest post at KirstenWinkler.com was about the devaluation of handwriting in schools though this skill has important ties to creativity and it is a part of our identity.

Hence I was stoked to see this Kickstarter project of PointScribe. Interestingly, the company have already been working on the product for a couple of years and they started with Windows devices around 2005 already, so fwell before the day touch screen devices became popular thanks to the launch of the first iPhone in 2007.

In the Kickstarter promo video Kevin Maher, the developer of PointScribe makes an interesting point. Since the stone age we might have changed our writing tools but never the way we teach handwriting. If you think about it, the process of teaching handwriting is pretty inefficient as the teachers constantly need to interact with the student.

PointScribe teaches children to write through a combination of games, animation and automatic feedback based on the performance. Children can learn on their own for the first time without the need of a teacher. The only time a teacher / parent needs to be involved is probably at the beginning to explain how the system works. PointScribe also teaches cursive.

PointScribe is pledging for $32,500 to port the product to Apple platforms including Mac and iOS devices. This should be something of interest for my educator following and you can actively support the project at Kickstarter.

With iPads making their way in more and more classrooms worldwide, new challenges surface and may it be something relatively trivial like charging or syncing multiple iPads at the same time.

This might sound like a small issue but only at first glance because when you teach a class you want the technology to be ready, you want a painless process because your goal is teaching not struggling with infrastructure or technology. Same is true when you’re a principal, you want your teachers to teach and not to deal with the IT department.

Well, you might find it interesting to hear that Griffin put an accessory on the market that allows you to charge 10 iPads at the same time. Griffin MultiDock even gives you the possibility of chain-lock three of these units which enables you to charge and sync up to 30 iPads from one Mac at the same time. This is sufficient for even large classes but, of course, can also come in as handy for businesses.

IT administrators who usually work behind the curtains will immediately understand what a time saver Griffin MultiDock is for them. Instead of installing a new application on each single iPad, admins now can sync all of the iPads at once. Besides that, the towers are also an ideal storage unit and it keeps the iPads charged.

The only disadvantage comes at the end, and yes, you might have guessed it already: it’s not cheap. Each of these charging towers prices at $700 but if your school is equipped with iPads or strongly thinking about investing in them, it might be wise to plan on one or two of these devices in the overall budget. Your IT admin will love it!

Via: Engadget
Source: Griffin

They’re finally here! Bamboo Connect, Bamboo Capture and Bamboo Create are all part of the new Bamboo line of tablets by Wacom. Wacom is the world’s leading manufacturer of interactive pen displays, pen tablets and digital interface solutions.

The new-line of Bamboo tablets take the users to the next level with its elegant design and value added software. The tablets offer computer users the freedom to bring ideas and creativity to life by delivering a flexible and fun computing experience with many of the innovative features. As Rick Peterson, the Director of Consumer Products for Wacom Technology Services Corp. states, “With Bamboo, inspiration and expression become one, allowing people to explore computer input in ways they never thought possible.”

With the different users kept in mind, they’ve created the new line targeted to different user profiles. The Bamboo tablets work with Mac® and PC operating systems and will support Windows® 8 by Microsoft®.

Let’s take a closer look at each Bamboo choice.

1. Bamboo Connect is designed for visual communicators in a home or office environment who want to express their ideas visually and collaborate with digital inking functionality in the latest version of Microsoft®’s Office® Suite . It’s also great for just doodling or white-boarding because Bamboo Connect brings to life the pen-on-paper feeling. Bamboo Connect also comes with Autodesk® Sketchbook Express, a creative software application with multiple inking tools and colors for sketching and painting. ($79.95 USD)

2. Bamboo Capture is the ideal choice for the photo enthusiast or novice designer who wants to have fun editing or retouching photos with the benefits of Wacom pen input. This line offers pen and multi-touch input in a single device and includes software, Adobe® Photoshop® Elements and Autodesk’s Sketchbook Express. Bamboo Capture allows users to switch between pen input and multi-touch ; the newly improved touch experience has a highly responsive multi-finger touch and improved data sampling. A wireless module is also available as an accessory to allow for wireless connectivity. ($99.95 USD)

3. Bamboo Create is perfect for home arts, craft projects and photo editing. Of the three Bamboo choices, Bamboo Create lets users do the most. It provides the most complete creative software application bundle in the line; it supports the Bamboo wireless module and ships with Corel® Painter™ Essentials, Adobe Photoshop Elements and Autodesk Sketchbook Express. Just like Bamboo Capture, Bamboo Create also feature multi-touch input capabilities, giving users up to 16 touch points for gesture-based input such as scrolling, zooming and much more, depending on application support and also enables wireless connectivity. Worry free of mistakes… the pressure-sensitive eraser on the other end of the pen can fix errors. It definitely provides twice the work space than Bamboo Capture which lets the customers move freely when making broad pen, pencil or brush strokes on the tablet surface. Its compact size enables users to fit into any laptop bag or backpack. ($199.95 USD)

As briefly mentioned above, Bamboo’s pressure-sensitive, battery-free and cordless pen delivers precise input control and a true pen-on-paper feel. Regardless of the activities performed, whether it is note-taking, editing or sketching, the pen is the ideal tool to use when working with software applications. The eraser on the pen gives users the freedom to make mistakes and makes way for perfection.

The new Wacom Bamboo tablets are available now at most consumer electronics retailers as well as online at Amazon and Wacom’s online store.

Teagueduino is a great example of an entertaining way to teach and learn 21st century skills like coding and embedded development. You learn by building light-enabled alarm clocks and other fun projects even if up to now you cannot program a VCR.

The Teagueduino set consists of a variety of building blocks. The center piece is the open source electronic board in which you can plug in different modules like a speaker, lights, propeller and much more. The user interface then lets you bring your project to live with a single line of code in real time.

If you pledge $160 you will receive a full Teagueduino kit containing:

Each board has 5 inputs and 5 outputs, and a full kit comes with a variety of each (knobs, buttons, speakers, lights, servos, and more). These can be easily combined in countless ways and programmed using the Teagueduino software and then shared with the community to use and build on.

• 1 Teagueduino main board with Teensy++ loaded and ready to go.
• Inputs wired and ready to use (2 buttons, 2 potentiometers/knobs, 1 switch, 1 magnetic field sensor, 1 light sensor, 1 temperature sensor)
• Outputs wired and ready to use (2 piezo speakers, 1 red LED, 1 green LED, 1 blue LED, 1 Vibration motor)
• Servo bundle (2 servos, 1 servo power-up board, 1 5V DC power supply)

To get a better idea of what you will be able to create with Teagueduino, watch the video below.

And if you would like to pledge, visit Teagueduino on Kickstarter.

Popplet lets users share ideas, creations, inspirations on the platform. This is a New York based start-up, with a dedicated team of 6 very creative and talented people. They create fun, gestural and visual experiences for both web and mobile web. It is currently still in the beta version.

All of us are quite used to using PowerPoint for making presentations and using whiteboard and other drawing applications for creating drawings and charts. All this can be done on Popplet! One will find several unique tools for creating, organizing and sharing complex idea all in one place which sure do make things easier.

For teachers, Popplet can easily be integrated into your teaching and make your lessons more visual, colorful, and interactive. .

So what kind of features do Popplet have to make teachings come alive?

One of the many great features on Popplet is being able to link ideas by using the creation of flow charts, mind mapping or even cluster mapping which are wonderful for teaching writing lessons. Teachers can turn brainstorming into an interactive activity by using the Invite feature to invite students to join in on the brainstorming process. What’s even more eye-catching about it is the Sharing feature. Once a chart is created, teachers can either email it to students or post it on Twitter or Facebook to share with the entire class.

click to view Popplet

Images can also be uploaded with notes written next to it. This feature is a wonderful tool for teaching new vocabulary words or simply for presenting a new concept to students. This is can be done using PowerPoint, but even simpler using Popplet.

click to view Popplet

In addition to linking ideas, uploading images, other features on Popplet includes embedding videos, or drawing images.

For iPad lovers, available on the Apple store is Popplet for iPad… New updates with connection to popplet.com and also allows for users to collaborate in real-time.

Collect, create, and share your ideas, projects and inspirations using Popplet!

Website: popplet.com
Twitter: @poppletny
iTunes: Popplet iPad App

If you are studying religion or are just generally interested in history you can now read through five of the famous Dead Sea Scrolls online.

The Israel Museum got some help from Google and together they launched The Digital Dead Sea Scrolls today. The scrolls were written between the third and first centuries BCE and then hidden in eleven caves in which they remained hidden until 1947 when a Bedouin shepherd found them.

The scans are done in very high quality so you are able to zoom in on the smallest details. One of the scrolls, the Great Isaiah Roll is also searchable via Google.