Archive for January, 2013

Hackathon . . .

Wednesday, January 30th, 2013

There is an upcoming weekend hackathon that is extremely interesting to me – it’s the Hacking Health hackathon in Vancouver.

According to their website, this event is a national organisation dedicated to fostering collaboration between health and IT experts. It’s basically an event where healthcare professionals meet technology experts to discuss and collaborate over IT solutions to solve meaningful problems and make a difference in the health of patients and communities.

Why this strikes a chord within me is because I almost went to medical school and in fact, my major in university is actually Medical Technology. I have always thought of merging my technology skills with my knowledge of the health/medical sector and this is the perfect event to do just that.

Online Learning

Wednesday, January 9th, 2013

There have been several recent developments in the e-learning space and the experience is becoming less daunting and friendlier. The courses are also becoming more immersive and increasingly interactive – social features also give the user the impression that they are part of a classroom instead of being isolated and independent. I have taken paid and free courses online and a few of the free online courses are surprisingly better.

I love Codecademy. You learn at your own pace and they have been adding tracks at a dizzying pace the past couple of weeks. The hands-on coding exercises are great and the discussion forum serves as a way to interact with users taking the same tracks.

I have also tried Coursera and must say that the courses there are very intensive and quite a few give you credit via a certificate or letter of attendance. Main difference here is that courses run on a set schedule and you must be able to complete a week’s worth of coursework to keep up. It does take more discipline to finish assignments before deadline and you are required to grade your peer’s assignments as well.

I’m also delighted with ixl.com with regards to supplementing my daughter’s learning at school. It provides several math exercises based on the school curriculum. It is very well designed and my daughter loves the immediate feedback. So instead of generating your own practice questions, IXL provides the questions and based on how well your son/daughter is doing – it adjusts the difficulty level automatically.

The future of e-learning is looking very promising indeed and perhaps there will come a day when this would be how the majority of people get their education.