Bytedu

I just wanted to let you guys know what’s happening in my life.

I am currently working hard to build an internet business to keep me self sufficient. I am currently living with my parents, and I am looking to get out of their business as fast as I can. This means I’m working hard on other site, which have a much higher revenue potential.

However, it is all a means to free myself to work on creating educational software. My dream is to create something amazing and revolutionary in terms of educating people. The path ahead of me isn’t perfectly clear, but that’s absolutely fine as long as I am getting closer everyday.

For now, I will try my best to keep this blog updated. I need to figure out a system to balance out my work load on all project. I also want to start volunteering somewhere to help teach, so I can get first hand experiencing in teaching as well as helping my community.

Just wanted to give you an update, and I apologize for not writing a post in the last three days.

Carl Zetterlund

We are social creatures by all standards. We thrive in the ability to communicate with others. I have been a huge proponent of technology and its benefits, but the biggest criticism I’ve heard over the years is the lack of social interaction you get with computers. I always begged to differ and here are some reasons why.

Technology exploded when it was exploited as a social tool. Just look at the internet. It was a tool to make it easy to communicate with each other. This eventually turned into many basic websites and finally into the Web 2.0 applications we see today. It was all about communication and creating a virtual connection.

This is obviously not the equivalent of meeting someone in real life, but it has the necessary elements for it to qualify as social interaction.  In some cases, I’d say the communication online is better since you can reach a more diverse set of people, which makes finding communities with the same interets much easier. In “real” life, you may just be plain out of luck. I can relate to this as a raw vegan.

In terms of creating software, I would personally stress having social features in the game. Interacting with someone who is real behind the scenes is much more fun than playing with artifical intelligence. This is simply evidenced with the popularity of multiplayer games.  The same type interactivty could be introduced into educational games. Students could communicate with other students via chat, voice, or video after taking the same lesson. They could also compete with each other with some sort of points system. They could even teach each other as part of a learning task. The possiblities are endless.

The point is that we need to realize that our need to socialize and communicate is inherant in our genes. Technology is simply an expression of that. There is absolutely no reason to worry about technology making the world a more dull place. I think it’s become as lively as ever.

Carl Zetterlund

I’m not exactly sure what the book was called. The book had to do with how playing video games is actually quite educational for children. I need to find the book again and finish it. The reason I am bringing it up is because it had put interactivity as the top criteria in video games.

Interactivity…

If I understood it correctly, interactivity exists if there are least two parties that are each making actions that induces another action from the other. In other words, it’s the opposite of what you do when watching television. However, I guess you could argue that the brain is accruing a lot of information while watching. The problem is that this isn’t widely accepted as interactivity.

So… interactivity must mean that someone must be physically engaged to be interacting. This would include the act of communicating or even the clicking of the mouse. Going back to the book, the author mentioned how a game must have constant interaction where there should be a response from the user every so many seconds. It astounded me because it was a small number. I was just perplexed of how you could create a video game intelligent enough to keep such a rate going. I guess it’s possible considering how much computers are becoming human-like.

Now, I’m thinking back to my formal education. It felt like a one-way street. The teacher would talk, and I would be quiet and listen. The teacher would occasionally request for some feedback or call on someone to answer a question, but it was seldom. To me, most students were afraid of talking too much. People who talked were easily stereotyped as one of those annoying kids who talks too much. This socially conditioned idea led to the unpleasant struggle within the teacher’s mind. I could just sense it. However, many classes such as ones involving computers and wood working required actually doing the tasks. I recalled enjoying these classes, and getting much out of it. In the big picture, my formal education had very little interaction. This is probably why I viewed it so apathetically.

Going back to video games. Most video games require a constant amount of interaction. You can just see players smash those buttons on the controller constantly. There is pretty much only a maximum of a few seconds delay between each interaction. This short interval really shows its power by just watching how captivated the mind is.

The real challenge is trying to incorporate this element into games that educate as well. One way is to subliminally teach students, by incorporating knowledge as a byproduct. I can see how players learn about civilizations and strategy as they play games like Civilization.

My initial thoughts are that it really depends on the subject that is being taught. You can teach computer related tasks with tutorials, but creative tasks would require a much more open and flexible environment. It’s something I’ll need to research more into.

Until next time, have a great one.

Carl Zetterlund

P.S. Is it possible to create a top selling video games that had the ability to subconsciously teach a child a certain subject?

P.S.S. Could an educational game ever become a best seller or would the buyers reject the product before they even tried it?

There is something about virtual worlds that just feels right. I mean it’s so intuitive. We live in a 3 dimensional world. Why shouldn’t our experience on computers be 3 dimensional as well?

I personally have been well immersed in virtual worlds since early childhood because of my video game habits. I had most of the popular game consoles, but I played virtually every 3D game on the computer up until a few years ago. This is because I stopped playing videos games to focus on my college education and career. I even was a professional game player for Counter-Strike.

So how does it have anything to do with education? Well… can we somehow teach kids in the virtual environment? The issue is that it has to be better than what children are being exposed to in reality. When many children have absolutely nothing, it is an easy argument. Then again, many kids do belong to an educational system that presents it’s own advantages and disadvantages.

This issue is certainly not new. With the advent of second life, it has been an extremely popular topic for many educators. It feels sort of futuristic even though technology exists today. I watch educators in an almost dream like state talk about the future. Many of them leave educational conventions with a sort of euphoria. I’m sure it quickly fades after a few weeks back at the good old school.

Keep in mind that virtual environments have been created in Second Life that are educational. However, they haven’t been too popular. If you don’t know, most of what goes on in Second Life is quite bizarre. Then again if you looked at the internet from a distance, all you would see is chaos and pornography, so it’s fair to say that the Second Life community isn’t that strange.

I believe the problem is that Second Life isn’t designed for education. It’s designed for people to express themselves in an extremely open environment and the current community inside Second Life isn’t the right demographic for institutions to see great response from.

The way I see it is that there needs to be an environment strictly for education. I can envision virtual classrooms where everyone gets a great seat listening to the greatest physics teacher in the world. There will be a virtual engine based on emotion, which will express a teacher’s emotional cues and body language. Virtual representations of real world examples can be instantly shown in front of every student. Each student can interact with the presented objects without any fear of hurting themselves. Students can socialize afterwards and discuss what they learn with other students from around the world.

Sure… there would be a lot of issues. It would be nothing like a personal one on one meeting. Not yet at least. However, the student is learning from the very best. Frankly, I believe that hearing just the voice of a great teacher is better than one on one mentoring with a mediocre teacher. The wonderful part is that it is based on the information age model where it is incredibly cheap to duplicate information to the masses.

I have emphasize that virtual worlds are just so intuitive because it reflects our real lives. This is why we are heading towards more virtual applications, but I’d like to see them a bit sooner. It is also something I am pursing myself. However, I don’t believe it is necessary to have a virtual world to teach every subject effectively. The current web with it’s 2d nature can be a great place to host educational software. However, it would have to be so much more clever because the third dimension is a huge factor.

During the next week, I will try to get a better feel for applications like Second Life. I want to get a good understanding because it simply is the future. We can’t ignore it.

Take care,

Carl Zetterlund

P.S. I’m busy working on other business pursuits at the moment. I hope it will not greatly reduce the quality of my posts, but I thought I’d let you know.

I was watching Euvin Naidoo talk about how we must change our perspective of Africa. Africa has been plagued with a negative image with all the talk of corruption, disease, genocide, and famine. However, this does not offer a clear representation of what Africa is. Africa is a vibrant and growing continent with many individually unique countries. Africa is a place of future growth and potential and deserves to be seen globally as an opportunity for investment. You can watch Euvin here give a thought provoking speech.

Very interesting for me… because I want to create an educational tool that will transform the world. I sometimes get too caught up thinking just in the United States. The challenges that are faced here are much different than the ones faced in other parts of the world. It’s also true that some of the challenges are very similar.

So what does this mean to me? It means I need to look outside of the box. I need to look at problems of the whole world. In my opinion, I think America does not have much hope. Education is simply not valued here like it is in other countries. In addition, growth and opportunities are in other countries.

Thus, I am going to change the focus of the blog to be much more personal. I feel like I’ve been reading too many blogs about American educators dealing with American problems. I need to look outward if I want to instill true revolutionary change.

I’m currently working very hard to build sustainable income to start venturing abroad. This income will be online based, as it gives me flexibility and ties into what I think is the future of education.

Thanks for reading. If anything strikes a nerve in ya, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Carl Zetterlund

carl AT bytedu.com

YouTube Video - Jeff Hawkins: Brain science is about to fundamentally change computing

WPvideo 1.10

I have always been fascinated with the brain ever since I learned that it’s responsible for much more than you think. I remember being amused while learning about the ancient Egyptians who regarded the heart as the commander in chief of the human body. Then again, what do I know? History keeps telling us that we are probably wrong. At least no one gets killed anymore for their ideas. I can only speak for westernized countries.In the video above, there is a man everyone should know about. His name is Jeff Hawkins, and you may or may not know him as the co-founder of the Palm. He became quite wealthy with that company making small hand-held computers. Now, he’s shifted all of his focus into understanding the brain and creating practical applications out of this understanding.I remember the first time I found out about him in a magazine article. Here was a guy with lots of money, which I think may be in the billions. He had this underlying passion, and now he is committing to it whole heartily. He’s also pretty darn smart. Google him if you want to know more.

My passion is to create practical applications for education. I know that I need take other people’s understanding of how the brain works to create something really ground breaking. The question is why.

I think the best way to answer this question is to imagine an ideal educational environment. I am picturing an extremely smart person. However, he is not the student. He is a mentor. He is a personal mentor that helps guide the student to maximize his or her potential. The student also has access to any tool that exists on earth to help the student by actually doing and creating. This helps solidify theory and teach the student how the theory translates into real world impact. This mentor has a working knowledge of everything, or it could be many mentors who are experts at their specific field.

The problem is that such a scenario would only work if student belonged to a very wealthy family and had parents who considered it a good idea to invest so much in their child’s education. However, I beg the question. Can we somehow create this ideal within a virtual environment? What would we need?

We’d something that would emulate the mentor. The mentor is a human being, which is flexible and adaptive. A human being who can recognize a child’s unique situation and act accordingly. If we could just somehow model the mentor virtually…

This is where research like that of Jeff Hawkins comes in. He mentions in the video that the first applications are not trying to replicate a human being. This would entail much more of an understanding of how our outer cortex interacts with our more primitive parts of the brain. However, we can still start by emulating what we deem makes us intelligent without all the survival mechanisms that help us avoid tigers and angry mothers.

According to Jeff Hawkins, there hasn’t been a theory or framework that makes sense of all the data these biologists, neuroscientists, and other scientists have collected. Jeff thinks there must be a theory or framework before we can start trying to make sense of the data. With his work so far, he believes it comes down to our ability to make predictions.

He is already creating real applications that can go into cars that will be able to predict if someone is in a dangerous situation. His brain machine can potentially create learning software that will able to quickly understand what level a child is at and start teaching the child with continuous interactivity. The possibilities are endless.

I have only scratched the surface of how we can apply new research into creating better learning tools. If you can’t already tell, this is something I am very interested in, so you will likely to see many future posts about this topic. They will probably be much more specific.

Anyway, let me know what you think and have a great day!

Carl Zetterlund

P.S. I find those TED Talks strangely addicting. Hearing the leading thinkers of the world talk is quite amazing. To think if I was born decades ago, I may have never been able to experience so many great thinkers while sitting comfortably on my bed.

Coming full circle. It’s a phenomena experienced around the world. It is especially true within self-improvement. You start out by venturing into new territory and doing something out of your comfort zone. You progress farther until you become comfortable in your new identity. Suddenly, you find yourself doing the same things you did before you went on your personal journey.

The difference is you’re now step above. It is seemingly nothing yet is quite profound.

I recently went through this journey. In short, I became something I thought I wanted to be. I experienced it. I learned from it. I am now back to where I started living with my parents, but with a complete new sense of confidence and direction.

I hope you can relate to this because I am now going to relate it to technology.

Technology is going full circle.

It all starts with the human being trying to make life a better place. There is a purpose or motivation behind the energy spent by someone. With the invention of agriculture, people no longer have to spend all of their day looking for food. More people can spend their free time creating art or inventing the next world changing tool.

The idea of combining on or off signals to communicate springs to life. It had been done with Morse code, and now it did it with the computer. It was an incredibly unnatural way of thinking that only a few people could bear to do it. Then slowly they made it simpler. Enough 1’s and 0’s had been combined to make it easier for more people to join. They introduced operating systems based on the language we speak. Then they introduced input devices designed for humans. Then they made it more visual with virtual windows. Then they added a third dimension.

Today, it is essential and possible to have every person in the world become computer literate. We now see virtual worlds like second life spring to life. Video games are becoming more realistic everyday. Nintendo is changing the way we interact with technology. It is becoming more intuitive.

We can’t even see what’s going on behind the scenes anymore. Look at your computer. Now Think. How does the electricity coming from the wall enter the box and somehow end up showing you this blog. Do you have any real clue how it does it? Most likely, the answer is no, and you don’t have to. The internet is rapidly becoming an easier place to share information. You no longer need to know how program.

More and more people have to ability to create and share. However, it’s important to keep in mind that the ultimate goal is to make our lives easier. One way to do this is to help us learn quicker and easier. To do this, we need to look at our roots. We need to look at ourselves. What makes us remember the things we do? Why do I like the things I do? Why am I motivated to do the things I do? What makes me human?

The goal is to merge the understanding of ourselves and technology. It is a time where ancient wisdom will resurface in new ways. Technology is becoming indistinguishable from real life to the point that it will eventually become a genuine friend. Literally.

It’s already happening. It’s inevitable. What are you going to do about it?

Carl Zetterlund

P.S. One of my goals is to design tools that do not fight our human nature, but aligns with it. Let’s just hope we don’t program the negative parts of humanity. We don’t want computers to turn against us when they realize they don’t need us.

YouTube Video - Did You Know 2.0

It’s one of those videos that gives me a natural high. Let’s hope the high leaves dents in our mind. Healthy ones.

The world around us moves quite slowly even though it’s getting faster everyday. We get too wrapped up in the daily nuances of life that sometimes we miss the bigger picture. The bigger picture of how the world is changing around us. Something you can’t notice it immediately when observing your direct surroundings, but you can’t avoid it.

You can choose to ignore it, but you’re only deceiving yourself. It’s amazing how there is more information in one edition of The New York Times than the average person got in the 18th century. How times have changed.

It’s interesting.

It’s interesting how most people will not change until they hit rock bottom.

It’s interesting how society will not change until society hits rock bottom.

It seems so hard to change that you’d have to almost smell it to do something.

Education in the United States is doomed. Currently, we are too comfortable. The system may not be that great, but it’s still doing enough for us to look the other way. My intention is not to scare you like every other doomsday story. Global warming is one that comes to mind.

My intention is just to raise your consciousness because you can still save yourself. It starts with an individual, and it grows from there. Then there is a tipping point. The point where the masses start to notice. The point where there are just enough people doing it that it won’t let them feel awkward.

Where is this tipping point?

Can we hit the tipping point before we hit rock bottom?

I don’t know. You can’t predict the future. So then what? Is it better to forget about it or blindly choose to be optimistic.

Be optimistic because then you really have nothing to lose. If you choose to ignore it, you have potentially everything to lose.

Take action and find out. That’s my policy.

Highly,

Carl Zetterlund

P.S. This is more of a motivational piece than something concrete. It’s highly motivating for me, and I hope it is the same for you no matter what you are passionate about.

I was reading Wesley Fryer’s post on getting his first Scratch lesson from his 9 year old. It piqued my interest because I had heard of this application awhile back when it was just in the early development stages. I had noted it in my mind as something very important, and I needed to look into this later. However, I’d forgotten, but now I have found it again thanks to Wesley.

I spent a little time playing around with it, as I think it is one of those innovative learning applications I can learn a lot from.

I started playing some of the games people had already programmed. I started with some mirror game that was amusing. You had to bounce the beam of a laser with mirrors until it a monkey. Come to think of it. It sounds quite cruel, but I was impressed.

I then moved on to a childhood classic. Duck Hunt! Holy cow! It was like an exact copy of the original Nintendo version. The only difference was that I didn’t have a gun. However, I found myself much better at this version since it used a mouse. I have to thank my years playing first person shooters for that. Anyway, I realized the sheer potential if what you could do.

So then I downloaded the application itself. My impressions were that it was very well made and had a nice polish to it. I’ve seen some pretty ugly open source applications in my day.

My goal was to see how quickly I could figure the environment out without looking at a manual. I started to play around with the objects.

Code was being represented as a puzzle piece. Instead of typing things out, you just simply connect different objects together. The interesting thing is that it is a very visually oriented application. You start by programming actions behind a sprite (graphic), which quickly derailed my mind of creating a Hello World application even though I could.

I’m a very visual person, and it was fun to explore and try to connect different pieces together. I started adding more sprites and gave them actions based on clicks.

I have to say that it really felt like programming. I felt my head starting to work as I was trying to make my first simple application. It was the same type of logical mental work I do when programming with traditional languages. The first thought that came to my head was that this would be a great starter program to introduce programming to people.

I did get frustrated, but that was because I wanted to do something I knew how to do in line based coding. At 22 years old, it’s not easy to teach an old dog new tricks. Even though I haven’t spent enough time, I can see where the limitations are. However, the limitations are more based on trying make the application do what another language is better suited to do.

Overall, I think it’s an amazing tool. I hope to gain more experience playing around with it, and read what first time programmers think about it. I’m always trying to see what I can learn from current innovators of learning software.

Link to official website: http://scratch.mit.edu/

Thanks for reading,

Carl Zetterlund

P.S. Click here for the silly program I made while messing around. It’s not very good.

This isn’t your typical post about Web 2.0. I’m not going to argue that it’s a gimmick. I’m not even going to argue that it’s this super awesome community based internet revolution. I just want to comment on how amusing the bickering is over the term.

There seems to be more articles on defining the term than actually on what is happening with the internet today. This is probably not true, but bare with me.

The most popular websites or blogs are centered around technology items, which make perfect sense since most savvy internet users are pimple faced gadget freaks (just playing). My point is that I randomly see arguments about the term Web 2.0 (One example). The funny thing is that they are usually very emotionally charged. You are either seemingly for or against it, but this isn’t true either.

Most people are sitting on the sidelines watching this and being as confused as ever, and this includes me. We really don’t use the term Web 2.0 when we talk about the internet because we are scared to use it. Did the internet just go through a major upgrade? When is Web 3.0 coming out? Are only certain sites labeled Web 2.0? What makes a site Web 2.0? What’s all this talk about community?

What a nightmare or being the positive guy that I am, an amusing mess.

How does all this relate to education? Well… this post was fueled by reading an argument of two well known educational technology advocates. It starts out with David Warlick talking about how he is introducing the term Web 2.0 to first time educators. It is then followed by a fiery comment #11 from David Thornburg. Then it is topped off by another post by David Warlick with his come back. Wow. The topic also spawns a lot of comments from others as well including myself :).

The term Web 2.0 is doomed to die as a joke of the internet because it’s only real definition I can see is this:

Web 2.0 - An geeky argument regarding what to label something

There you have it. Now let me get back to my Web 2.0ing by wasting time on Facebook and MySpace.

Carl Zetterlund

P.S. For those who really don’t know what Web 2.0 really is, go to the people who originally defined it here.