MOOCs and Coursera, or getting a free Stanford education

Recently I was sitting on my front porch, smoking a very nice Partagas cigar, and watching TED videos on my iPad. I happened upon this one:




and, as has so often happened with TED, I was inspired. This was the first time I had heard of Coursera. I had often had the thought that gee, it would be great to take a college class. Maybe learn Biology or History. But then the impediments presented themselves: even if I could go as an alumus to my alma mater school, there would be costs, probably pretty staggeringly high costs. And the class would be during working hours. I'd be twice or three times the age of the other students. And so I never went further with the thought.

Coursera and MOOCs have changed all of that. I am currently enrolled in a Duke University Behavioral Economics course (A Beginner's Guide to Irrational Behavior) and I am signed up for a University of Melbourne course on Animal Behavior beginning in August. How perfect - I work at a zoo!

The cost of these - essentially zero. I say essentially because at least in the case of the first course, there is a $20 bundle of 3 books that I bought from Amazon and have loaded onto my Kindle.

My other objections - hours and student demographics - are also solved by Coursera. The course runs 6 weeks and there are reading assignments, lecture videos, quizzes and tests. But I can do them at my own pace, whenever during the week I want. So all I need is the discipline to work an hour a day.

My classmates? Well, there are probably more than 100,000 of them. They come from all over the world and are of all ages. We come together in discussion fora. Other students form study groups, some of which meet IRL and others virtually.

At the end of the class, assuming I do the work and pass the tests, I will be given a certificate. So while it doesn't much matter to me, I could add these to my resume. Others manage to transfer these to their colleges for credit. Still others get work recognition and promotions based on their Coursera achievments.

This is going to revolutionize the world. I was at the Georgia Technology Summit yesterday and Ray Kurzweil talked about MOOCs. I had to look that up - Massive, Open, On-line Courses. In a funny bit of syncrhonicity, Dr. K was talking about the very thing that TED had inspired me towards. He talked about MIT. He estimates that over the course of its entire history, MIT has taught 85,000 students. Their MOOC for Introduction to Programming had 125,000 enrolled and 20,000 complete the course.

Dr. Kurzweil talked about how this model will help us "cure ignorance."

Someone in the audience asked a great question, though. How will we prepare our children so that they have the foundation necessary to take an MIT or Stanford class and have a chance of succeeding. So there is certainly a continuing role for classroom education. One of the key things you are taught (hopefully) is how to learn. But once you have that under your belt, MOOCs can open up an incredible world of lifelong learning opportunities.

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Quick Outlook Macros to Forward email to Evernote or ToodleDo

I use Evernote for all of my documentation needs. I also use ToodleDo to manage my To Do list. Both of these services allow the documentation or task to be emailed into them. This is quite useful when you're going through your email anyway. I am trying to practice "Inbox Zero" as much as possible.

It's not a big deal to click forward and then forward your message manually. Doing so is made easier by having a contact for Evernote and one for ToodleDo.

But I do each frequently enough that I found it worth my wile to write macros and attach them to buttons.

This also helps with the tag, folder, and other options that can be included on the subject line to help Evernote put your note into the right notebook, or ToodleDo into the right folder.

So here are my macros:

Sub ForwardToodleDo()
Dim objMail As Outlook.MailItem
Set objItem = GetCurrentItem()
Set objMail = objItem.Forward
objMail.To = "myaddress@toodledo.com"
objMail.Display
Set objItem = Nothing
Set objMail = Nothing
End Sub

Sub ForwardEvernote()
Dim objMail As Outlook.MailItem
Set objItem = GetCurrentItem()
Set objMail = objItem.Forward
Dim NewSubject As String
' drop the FW: at the beginning and append the destination folder
NewSubject = Mid(objMail.Subject, 5) & " @Zoo_Documentation"
objMail.Subject = NewSubject
objMail.To = "myaddress@m.evernote.com"
objMail.Display
Set objItem = Nothing
Set objMail = Nothing
End Sub

Function GetCurrentItem() As Object
Dim objApp As Outlook.Application
Set objApp = Application
On Error Resume Next
Select Case TypeName(objApp.ActiveWindow)
Case "Explorer"
Set GetCurrentItem = _
objApp.ActiveExplorer.Selection.Item(1)
Case "Inspector"
Set GetCurrentItem = _
objApp.ActiveInspector.CurrentItem
Case Else
End Select
End Function

It's easiest if you create a macro digital certificate (so you can trust yourself) and then assign these to toolbar icons as I've shown in the diagram above.

Without much effort, it would be extendable to prompt with a drop-down for tags, folders, notebooks, etc. But since I am doing this primarily from my work computer, I am comfortable with sticking items in the @Zoo_Documentation notebook.

I could also perform an objMail.Send instead of objMail.Display and this would then send it without further prompting. But I often add an into note.

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My new favorite iPad accessory

I have written in the past that my favorite handwriting app for the iPad is uPad. It remains my favorite, and my use of it has skyrocketed since I bought the Cosmonaut Stylus.

Every other stylus I have used has (a) tried to emulate a pen and (b) has a rubber tip that sticks and skips around if you try to handwrite with it. I tried the trick of coating the tip in superglue, and that helped a lot but the superglue always flaked off. It was just unsatisfying.

Not the Cosmonaut. First, it is roughly the size and shape of a whiteboard marker. It has a wonderful feel - perfectly weighted and with a comfortable black, rubbery grip. It is extremely well designed, and like such things, it is a joy to hold.

But the secret sauce here is it is friction free. Writing with it is fast, simple, easy and even pleasurable. I now use my iPad and uPad and Cosmonaut combo exclusively for taking notes in meetings. And a feature that still blows my mind - for important pages, I send them to my Evernote account. And since I have printed neatly, Evernote goes ahead and OCR's the pages for me!

When I moved houses, I took measurements of my furniture, trying to figure out in advance where everything would go in the new place. I hand wrote that on a piece of paper, and then decided since I was moving and packing everything, I had better take a picture of the page. I sent it to Evernote not thinking much about it. But then when I searched Evernote for "Desk", up popped the picture of my handwitten notes with the word "desk" highlighted.

Like I said, that's mind-blowing. And now I save the whole taking a picture part by simply writing the notes directly into uPad. Once they're in Evernote, they are searchable.

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The Dojo has moved to Atlanta!

I was quiet there for a while as I was busy changing my whole life around. Now that I have, I will get back to blogging about my technology experiences.

In February I began as the Senior Director of IT for Zoo Atlanta.


This is an amazing opportunity for me. I get to work with brilliant people and magnificent animals. I have the opportunity to interact with nearly a million smiling visitors a year. And I am now able to (am compelled to!) get back to more hands-on tinkering and programming.


The Zoo is a non-profit, and what that means is my IT budget is an order of magnitude smaller than what I am used to. And yet the demands may be the greatest of my career. We're open 363 days a year. We have a complex topography, exotic species, and the aforementioned million annual visitors.

I also have a new city within which to build professional and personal networks. I spent my career in Washington, D.C., and so this is a big change for me. The Atlanta technology community has been welcoming, and zoos are very collaborative, so I'm off to a good start.

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