Steve Wozniak announces tech education platform Woz U
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Inspired by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer, we specialize in technology and career-based programs designed to get people into the workforce quickly and affordably...Led by higher education experts, Exeter Education, students will learn the skills necessary to take flight within the technology industry.
It looks like Woz U is affiliated with Exeter Education and Southern Careers Institute. Exeter Education appears to be a new company in Arizona (more info at http://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/tech/2017/10/1... and https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2017/04/14/former-g...).
Southern Careers Institute (http://www.scitexas.edu/) seems to be a vocational school of sorts. Neither of these are bad things, but they temper the initial excitement I had around "Steve Wozniak is launching an online education platform."
Isn't this the idea behind Patreon?
Viewed as a pyramid it's one that goes only one level deep and markets only yourself as a worthy cause to support ;-)
I feel the same way. This is part of what he had to say in a comment [1] he wrote in 2013, discussing the then-released Jobs film. It absolutely speaks volumes about his character:
"And when Jobs (in the movie, but really a board does this) denied stock to the early garage team (some not even shown) I'm surprised that they chose not to show me giving about $10M of my own stock to them because it was the right thing. And $10M was a lot in that time."
I was unable to link to his comment directly. Also, I had to click the "View previous comments" link in order to view his comment.
From the footer at https://woz-u.com/: "Part of SCI"
From http://www.scitexas.edu/programs/full-stack-javascript/: "SCI-tech Academy’s 3-week Coding From Scratch course provides free prerequisite training in coding basics, including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript basics for those who have little to no coding experience."
From https://www.codercamps.com/coding-from-scratch/: "New to software? Start with Coding From Scratch Courses"
From https://woz-u.com/curriculum-software-development/: "SWD100 | Coding From Scratch"
(Full disclosure: my company is a competitor to Coder Camps.)
So, fuck you, you beautiful tech community and I love you, you horrific tech community..
This is literally what democratization of actual information looks like.
> Woz U will offer an app to help people understand which field of tech they’re best suited for, so they can set up their curriculum accordingly.
If you follow that link, you can see a very (very) poorly-designed application that is built by a company called Coder for Rent, LLC. This doesn't really invoke a sense of confidence for me - sounds like someone with an idea just reached out to the first app development team they could find. However, looking into this company, they have a website: https://www.coderforrent.com.
Following that link will redirect you to the organization I am guessing is teaming up with Woz for this: Coder Camps, with offices in Redmond and Scottsdale. Steve Wozniak is not listed anywhere on the "Team" page on Coder Camps' website, so this has to be some kind of business partnership. I believe that even more after seeing the page for the Woz U application in the App Store: the first 'screenshot' is his image covering the screen. Below his face is one of his quotes: "Wherever smart people work, doors are unlocked."
I get the vibe that I am supposed to think all of the smart people will be using Woz U because "Steve co-founded Apple!"
Anyway...back to work.
Its also possible that Woz isn't going to be part of the regular faculty, as great as that would be.
IMHO the course structure and content, is more important than the platform code details.
[1] https://www.techinasia.com/talk/steve-wozniak-walking-billbo...
[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-best-recruiter-app...
Your english teacher wasn't very engaging either, I guess?
I disagree with the person you responded to, but want to thread this here.
Mathematics can be taught at early ages. Unfortunately, we tend to teach mathematics by rote. We teach arithmetic and not mathematics.
What we could be doing is teaching mathematics as a language. Mathematics is a language, it's an expressive language that relies on logic. Like any language, it is unconstained by reality and can be used to express concepts and ideals. In conjunction with other languages, it can express complexities and trivialities.
Unfortunately, we never seem to teach kids why, but simply teach them the method. We teach them a process, by rote and enforcement. We don't encourage discovery, nor do we try to explain the totality. In part, I believe, this is due to many who give instruction not actually having the knowledge to do so.
Tempting as this is to turn this into a novella, I'll try for brevity. It is true that mathematics isn't an easy subject, but a part of that difficulty comes from the way in which we teach it.
If not Problems, maybe modify the Theory a little and show which Problems are unsolvable now?
Are those two in the Why included? What else do you think should be included?
Regards.
No, problems where someone uses a theory isn't enough. They should understand why they use it and know what alternatives exist. They should be able to process this linguistically.
Basically, "The problem is this and I want to solve this problem this way, because this way gives me the resulting information needed."
They should know as much as they can, it should be progressive and taught like we teach languages. Mathematics isn't just a language for solving problems, it can express problems just as easily.
Absolutely, people should be encouraged to try different things. Much like we are encouraged to write an essay, we should encourage people to compose a story with mathematics and it's very much okay to mix it with a second language. Physics is such a thing. In physics, you use both mathematics and your language to expresss and prove. Without both math and a traditional language, some concepts aren't able to be expressed. This is why published papers contain both text and math.
I am not sure about your 'why.' The why is to enable more people to understand the language of mathematics and to enable them to use it to their advantage.
I think that it can be done by increasing exposure and teaching it with greater complexity. It's fine to memorize addition and subtraction tables, but understanding the concepts behind those things is more important.
To be fair, for a short while, we do sort of teach it as a language. This fades out and becomes rote. In early education, we will teach with an abacus and countable objects. We will teach the less than and greater than as a fish that eats the bigger number. Eventually, that stops and concepts aren't considered while memorizing rules is.
I will share a brief story...
I hated mathematics. I absolutely hated it. I didn't understand it. I just did what I was told and gave the answers because I followed instructions.
When I was in sevent grade, I was working on problems which required me to return the area of right triangles. My teacher had stood behind me for some time, I'm not sure how long, before they spoke up.
I remember exactly what they said, to this very day. "You know, all you have to do is square those triangles, find the area, and divide that number in half."
That one instant, my life was permanently altered. At that moment in time, it all clicked. It wasn't easy from there on out. It wasn't a magic moment where I understood everything.
No, it was the moment that I understood that it was a language and that there were many ways to say the same thing. It was that moment when I actually understood that the symbols where actually telling a story. It was that moment when I realized that it was expressing an idea, a concept, and that it was descriptive.
I still stay in touch with that teacher, though they are old and frail. Had it not been for them, my life would be very different. Had it not been for them, for that moment in time, for that effort to make clear, I'd be a very different person.
Most of us can probably have that moment, but little instruction is given that allows for it. We aren't given the chance to see math as a language that is as rich as it is. If we want people to excel at math, we need to find a way to give them that moment.
This is one of the reasons I never felt it valuable to memorise times-tables (literally chanting them in classes). IMO, it's much more useful, and generalises better, to be comfortable taking, say, 9x8 and saying "OK, it's 10x8 - 8 = 72" (instead of just memorising 9x8=72).
It may be a fraction faster, but being comfortable in those manipulations still helps when tackling something more complex (e.g. 99x89) whereas mere memorisation doesn't.
Now I am wondering what resources can I use at home to teach my daughter (and future) kids about math as a language more than as a chore? Do you know of any good books or other resources meant for kids and parents?
?
I couldn't imagine any better or more relevant experience than that.
Teaching in the real-world probably gives you quite a lot of insight into the nature of learning. Math is pretty close to CS, of course, CS is a 'branch' of Math!
https://www.techinasia.com/talk/steve-wozniak-walking-billbo...
https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Steve_Wozniak_Un...
A lot of people who know him personally - and I know of them personally, so it's second-hand corroboration to be clear - say he was never anywhere close to the same after the accident.
Also, changes in personality do not automatically mean changes in intellect.
Again, while I don't know him personally, I hold in great regard people that do and am simply relaying what they've told me, which is that whatever the nature of the change happened, be it personality or intellect or interests or whatever, it set him on a different path and likely robbed all of us of whatever the fruits of his previous path would have borne.
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/31/technology/next-they-ll-sa...
''I remember, at Comdex in 1987, walking around and having some of the competitors from two of the original typing products come up to me and say: ''What a coup! How did you get Mavis Beacon to endorse your product? We've been after her endorsement for years.' '' Mr. Abrams chuckled. ''And when they did that, I knew we had a hit.''
My question is, is this really all it takes to get a job in a startup/tech company? Would YOU hire somebody who just knew these things?
For an intern / very junior position, yes. For anything else, no.
I like to think I'm a decent engineer; I have a BS in Computer Engineering, but I use very little from most of the classes I took to get that. Actually, my most in demand skills seem to be systems level debugging, which wasn't discussed in any courses; it's something I've learned on the job, because it was never in any of my courses. Some of the courses don't get used often, but it is nice to have seen topics, so if they come up, I know it's something that's been studied, and I just have to find it again. A straight-up occupational training in programming is going to leave you without a lot of that, unfortunately.
I think they are like completely banking up on the Woz name to get students and companies use their services.
I'd expect if a guy like Woz is jumping behind it, it should be INNOVATIVE. A new method of training that is better than what we have today. Similar to how code school/treehouse/codecademy were innovative 5 years ago.
Like, I'm interested in making things so that my code can interact with the real world, so I tried Coursera's embedded development class.
Holy hell. It was awful. Way worse than a lot of free youtube tutorials I've watched, and they were charging money. The course files flat-out did not work. The course VM with the cross-compilation toolchain and everything was incapable of booting; good thing those things are easy to install. The assignments told you to do different things from the grading criteria; I wound up erring on the super generous side with grading, especially since the lectures were often largely unrelated to the tasks. And there was no embedded platform involved at all, full stop. In a months-long course.
I learned much more in a week with Google and a $10 ST Nucleo board. That's where online education could still use a lot of work, IMO. The sort of thing that requires lab segments.
And to be fair to Coursera, that's a tough thing to get right. It would be nice if they actually verified that they were selling courses that functioned at all, and that soured me personally to their platform, but at least you can get a refund. They also have a power electronics class I was interested in, but there's no chance in hell I'd risk it now. I don't mind throwing a few hundred dollars and hours after education, but that stuff is potentially really dangerous and I don't want to risk getting it wrong because a lecture on transformer winding wasn't vetted...
Would be great if you could get Amazon, MS, Apple, facebook, etc on board to start the revolution in education.
Frankly, I have to say I'm skeptical. I don't see what makes them suitable or incentivized to create a real school, rather than a pipeline into their businesses.
For anyone interested in K-12 coding education, I have been working on a project called BlockSchool. We connect students ages 6-13 with teachers from top colleges and companies via video chat. We have developed a fun 3D block-based world where everything is programmable.
We already have students in 4 countries! If you're interested in a free trial, email me at tony@block.school with Hacker News in the subject line :)
He is just a (from the looks of it -- I don't know him) nice, thoughtful, successful person. But he is just a human being. He can't magically make an educational system that makes you study front-end frameworks anymore than the 1000s of other nice, thoughtful people can do that.
The learner still has to sit down and apply themselves and there is no magic around that.
As a software engineer, I've always felt my physics background is lacking. Can anyone recommend a decent physics learning platform that starts from QM first principles and then goes to more complex topics?
There are two books available specifically tied to The Theoretical Minimum [2], but I'm not sure how they related or tie into the video lectures as I have not read them myself.
[0] http://theoreticalminimum.com
Though initial criticism of the name "iPad" died pretty quickly.