All you ever learned, yours, forever.

“Tell me and I forget. Teach and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” According to Piotr Wozniak, this saying should end with “Use repetition and spacing so that I become a genius”.

Just came across this fantastic article from Wired called Want to Remember Everything You’ll Ever Learn? Surrender to this Algorithm. It relates the story of Piotr Wozniak who created SuperMemo, a software that allows people to be remembered to remember what they want to remember (please set your UI expectations pretty low). Indeed, Wozniak thorough research on his own retention mechanisms led him to one simple conclusion (well, a part for dozens of articles on how to become a genius):

[There] is an ideal moment to practice what you’ve learned. Practice too soon and you waste your time. Practice too late and you’ve forgotten the material and have to relearn it. The right time to practice is just at the moment you’re about to forget.

Other research was conducted a century prior to Wozniak’s discovery by German scientist Hermann Ebbinghaus. He also concluded that an optimal spacing of the reactivation of knowledge was key to retention.

The most fascinating part of the article (not including Wozniak’s personality) is actually the lack of impact cognitive psychology’s discoveries have on the way we teach and perceive the learning process.

However, this technique never caught on. The spacing effect is “one of the most remarkable phenomena to emerge from laboratory research on learning,” the psychologist Frank Dempster wrote in 1988, at the beginning of a typically sad encomium published in American Psychologist under the title “The Spacing Effect: A Case Study in the Failure to Apply the Results of Psychological Research.” The sorrrowful tone is not hard to understand. How would computer scientists feel if people continued to use slide rules for engineering calculations? What if, centuries after the invention of spectacles, people still dealt with nearsightedness by holding things closer to their eyes? Psychologists who studied the spacing effect thought they possessed a solution to a problem that had frustrated humankind since before written language: how to remember what’s been learned. But instead, the spacing effect became a reminder of the impotence of laboratory psychology.

The “flashcard” aspect of the theory is not what’s the most groundbreaking, obviously. Wozniak spent the first moments of his experiment writing and trying to memorize flashcards, until he didn’t have time to actually learn anything new… Not the good approach, he concluded. What’s impressive about it is the algorithm created by Wozniak to calculate when is the optimal moment for recall: when are you juuust about to forget something? That’s where you need a little boost. And not the one suggested in this other Wired article…

A gift from @socialedge: The Top 100 Tweeps to Follow for Social Entrepreneurship

Thanks to @startingbloc, I just came across this FANTASTIC resource created by Social Edge.

Organized by categories, you’ll find the Top 100 Tweeps to follow on Twitter for Social Entrepreneurship, as well as the main hashtags linked to social entrepreneurship. I heart Tops.

This is going to be HOT!

New blog on education

I always refer to the work of Learning Matters, this New York-based organisation that covers the challenges and successes of United States education through documentaries and podcasts.

They just added a new tool to their arsenal: Ed Beat, a daily education news blog that features summaries and links of some of today’s education news stories.

Check it out!

Pop!Tech looking for Social Innovation Fellows

So many outstanding initiatives in the marvelous world of social entrepreneurship. Pop!Tech is now looking for its 2009 of Social Innovation Fellows:

Each year, PopTech selects 10-20 high potential change agents from around the world who are working on highly disruptive innovations in areas like healthcare, energy, development, climate, education, and civic engagement, among many others. Fellows work in both the for-profit and not-for-profit worlds, have a minimum of 3-5 years experience, and are working in organizations that are well positioned for sustainable growth.

Fellows participate in an all-expenses-paid, multi-day intensive program focused on insights and tools for accelerating and scaling “big bet” innovations, such as branding, media relations, social/Web2.0 media, finance, leadership, digital storytelling, design for impact and organizational development. Interactive training sessions are led by eminent innovators and acknowledged leaders in these fields. To learn more

Watch their video:

GoodCompany: Incubator for social entrepreneurs

I am amazed every day by the amount of information I gather from Twitter. This one comes from @mangojess, whose tweet led me to discover GoodCompany Ventures, this great incubator for social entrepreneurs now open for applications:

GoodCompany Ventures catalyzes start-ups with innovative solutions to big, unmet social needs. GoodCompany entrepreneurs are offered a great place to work in Philadelphia, a community of like-minded entrepreneurs, and access to a network of capital sources and expert advisors. We champion models that offer investors financial return and social impact. To learn more

The amount of the investment is not clearly indicated on the website. They mention that “GoodCompany will facilitate a first investment round by assembling representatives from leading VC firms and angel investors” without specifying when. They are also looking for mentors, investors and interns.

Stay tuned for more incubators for social entrepreneurs: the Global Social Entrepreneurship Institute will be launching the selection process for its first class in October.

CreaCamp et le printemps!

C’est avec un plaisir immense que j’ai assisté au CreaCamp ce samedi. L’événement, organisé par M-C Turgeon, blogueuse émérite et artiste oh! combien talentueuse (on est jalouse de ses photos de statut Facebook) continue de m’habiter. Simple, bien “rodé”, inspirant (même les enveloppes de promo étaient parfaites!) ce camp de créativité, réseautage et d’inspiration a vraiment ensoleillé mon samedi de printemps. Le thème du support, autour duquel s’articulait les discussion, était aussi très pertinent. Il est essentiel, parfois, de se recentrer sur les points d’appui et les leviers qui sont derrière nos projets… Bravo aux présentatrices, vraiment!  Bientôt, E-180 sera aux premières loges pour vous faire un pitch sur l’éducation consentante… Le prochain camp devait se tenir en septembre, mais devant le succès de celui de mars, M-C mène un sondage pour voir si un camp à une date plus rapprochée (mai) ne serait pas nécessaire… Allez voter ici…

Avec cette chance habituelle qui ma talonne, j’ai gagné un des prix ce présence, un certificat cadeau pour un Spa Feng-Shui de chez Equimonde (merci Annick Desmarais!)… peut-être irai-je m’y prélasser avec Mel Miette (autre chanceuse) ma grande alliée des nouveaux médias…

E-180 is invited to TechStars for a Day!

We are planning on launching our Beta by August and in order to do so, we are looking for the best developer, the best mentorship and some seed funding.

It happens to be exactly what TechStars is offering: the tools necessary to work faster, better and harder to get where you need to be at the end of the Summer. We applied, we got invited to go to TechStars for a Day in Boston next week, we’re ecstatic!! TS4AD is “an invitational one-day mini-camp for TechStars applicants.” It’s not a guaranty you’ll get in the program, but rather a day of networking and tips on how to succeed as an emerging tech entrepreneur.

We’ll keep you posted on the event, the great people we meet, and share some tips on how to take your incubator application to the next level.

Meanwhile:

- Apply to an incubator yourself!

- Know what they’re looking for!

- Learn about how to get into an incubator by being the underdog!

- Reflect on the trade off of “equity vs value added” of an incubator!

Open source Social Entrepreneurship curriculum

We just created, through Topicki, an open source Social Entrepreneurship curriculum.

Social entrepreneurship has been around for a little while now, but it seems to have exploded lately. The interest it stirs makes it the next big social trend, according to many.

This is a good thing, since social entrepreneurship aims to address large scale social challenges through the creation of for-change ventures (for or non-for-profit).

What are the tools needed by emerging social entrepreneurs to succeed in their endeavor? Which topics should be covered, which mentors should be invited?

This is an open source social entrepreneurship curriculum: edit it and use it!

Radical educators wanted!

We haven’t talked too much about our education beliefs: I mentioned a couple of times that we firmly believe in the “doing” approach to learning. Breaking news: we also believe that learning can only happen under meaningful circumstances, and that it has to be consensual.

One of the most interesting and controversial movement in education is Free Schooling. Present in many countries, it is born out of the Spanish Anarchist movement of the late 19th century and promotes a non-hierarchical schooling structure, a curriculum defined by the students and the teachers together and a democratic decisional process. One of the most famous free school is Summerhill School, founded by A.S. Neill and still ran today by his daughter. Neil wrote a cult-book, A Radical Approach to Child Rearing, which illustrates his radical perception of education and of children’s sovereignty.

The high school program of the Albany Free School, the longest running inner-city democratic free school in United States, is currently looking for a full-time teacher, and so is the elementary program. They are offering a unique opportunity to learn more about this movement, its values, challenges and hopes. They even made a movie about the school, which allows us to penetrate the very seldom daily routine of this learning community, with its ups and downs.

They also have internship positions available.

Good luck!

This Summer, fund your startup

At E-180, we believe that mentorship is the most powerful tool to further your education. We also believe that there’s no need to pay thousands of dollars to learn something. Actually, we even believe that you can be PAID to learn.

So, you have a startup idea/project/fantasy you’ve been thinking about for months. But you don’t have the money, the contacts, the skills to go from passion to action. Here are 4 programs that will not only provide a wide array of tools to get your idea off the ground, but that will also pay you to do so, wherever you are based in the world.

04/06/09 Update: We just came across GoodCompany Ventures. Check out our post about it.

Description

Their goal is to get you through the first phase. This usually means: get you to the point where you’ve built something impressive enough to raise money on a larger scale. Then they introduce you to later stage investors—or occasionally even acquirers.

How much

Rarely more than $20,000

When

From January through March and from June through August

Where

The Bay Area, United States

What else

• Once a week dinner with startup founders, venture capitalists, lawyers, accountants, journalists, investment bankers, and executives from big technology companies
• Mediation between founders
• Pitch coaching
• Lawyers on deferred payment plan

What you need to give

2 to 10% of your companies’ stakes.

Description

Get your startup funded and off the ground while learning from the best.

How much

Up to $18,000

When

From May through August

Where

Boulder, United States

What else

• Mentorship
• Office space
• Investors Demo Day

What you need to give

6% of your companies’ stakes.

Description

Help great people with great ideas build great companies.

How much

Between US$10,000 and $25,000.

When

From May through late August

Where

Philadelphia, United States

What else

• 3 different ways to get involved: as a hacker, a strategist or an innovator
• Does not need to be an IT, software or Web project
• Collaborative work space
• Mentors and Advisors who have “been there and done it” before
• Donated legal, accounting and administrative help to form your company properly
• Introductions to funding sources (including Angel Investors, Venture Capitalists, private investors and public sources of funding)
• Hackers or strategists

What you need to give

4 to 8% of your companies’ stakes.

Description

Challenge Your World is an an investment agency with a conscience. They invest in people with ideas, and help bring those ideas to life. Their mission? Redefine value and generate a new concept of profit. They embrace triple bottom line accounting and social entrepreneurship.

Where

Montreal, Canada

What else

• It is based on a contest. It is a competition for funding for great new business ideas. It is open to anyone with a great business idea that meets the following criteria: it provides a positive impact on people, a positive net impact on the environment, and has strong financial potential.
• Coaching and mentorship

We’ll see you at one of these this Summer!

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