Archive for the 'Education' Category

Interview with Jon Fjeld

Published
by
jeremyrwelch
on October 23, 2008
in Business, Duke, Education and Entrepreneurship
. 0 Comments

The Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CEI) at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business is now publishing a newsletter called Entrepreneurship360. The newsletter’s aim is to keep students, alumni, others updated on Duke’s entrepreneurship efforts. The first issue features interviews with several faculty and Duke alumni.

For this first issue, I contributed an interview with CEI Co-Director Jon Fjeld:

I was first introduced to the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and its co-director, Jon Fjeld, slightly over a year ago by recommendation of my advisor. “Jon used to teach philosophy,” my advisor explained, “but he’s also built technology companies – he’s certainly has a very unique background. Now he co-directs an entrepreneurship program at Fuqua.” A philosopher and academic who runs technology companies? I was used to stories of entrepreneurs who dropped out of college, not finished and began teaching!

I quickly learned that this unconventional background is important because the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and its mission are also unconventional. Jon discusses his unique background in the interview below, and he explains that it is this unconventional background, along with the mixed and unconventional backgrounds of the others involved with the Center, that bridges the gaps between academics, students, and practicing entrepreneurs. Enabling collaboration between each of these groups of people also means enabling interactions between what each group spends most of its time doing: research, education, and business building.

The Center is valuable because its not just research, not just education, and not just business building. It combines interactions of each type to support a single overall mission, which Jon outlines in the first question of the interview that follows…

To read the rest of the interview, visit the Entrepreneurship360 newsletter website.

Taking Time off from School - Part 1 - How to Make the Decision

Published
by
jeremyrwelch
on July 24, 2008
in Education, Entrepreneurship and Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

Taking time off from school can be very worthwhile. Since making the decision to take time off from Duke almost 8 months ago, I’ve become more focused on and more passionate about my work, learned an immense amount through independent study about topics ranging from web programming and design to investing, and developed an appreciation for my everyday circumstances and environment.

This is part 1 of a series of posts on the topic of taking time off from school.

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Despite the fact that taking time off can be worthwhile, few students ever make the jump. Leaving school can be a very scary process because the university is structured to provide support, enabling students to focus on schoolwork. Food is available in the cafeteria at all hours, textbooks are neatly organized by class and ready to purchase at the university library, and all students are automatically assigned an adviser. This is not the case in the real world. The process of transitioning from the complete lifestyle system that most universities provide to the open-ended “real world” is complex.

When I first began thinking about taking time off, I asked a number of close friends and mentors for advice. Very few of them were able to make suggestions. Only one of them had actually taken time off from school during undergrad, and he made the point that each experience is so unique, it’s hard to make specific suggestions. The key questions I posed to each mentor: How does one make the decision to leave, and what do I need to make sure I know before I take time off?

I’ve thought about these questions a lot. Below I’ve listed a combination of suggestions from my mentors and my own recommendations from my experiences over the last eight months.

1. Know exactly why you need to take off

Why do you need to take time off from school? Though there are more, most people leave school for reasons related to either health, finances, or attention, or a combination of the three. One of my best friends from college, Josh, left school to run the Chordoma Foundation and find a cure for a rare type of cancer he was diagnosed with during his freshman year. Another friend of mine left school to run a technology company called iContact. In both of these cases, the individuals did not leave school to “find out who they were.” They already knew exactly who they were and what they wanted, and left school with a very specific purpose.

2. Know how time-off fits in with your long-term goals

Even if you know exactly why you are leaving school, anyone making the decision to leave should consider how time-off will affect one’s long-term goals. Leaving school should contribute, rather than detract, from those goals. Josh’s long term goal is to find  a cure for his cancer. Until this goal is overcome, there are no other educational, career, or financial concerns.

Each experience will be unique, but each person should consider how a leave-of-absence will affect his/her education, career, family and close friends, and finances.

3. Build a support system

Taking time off can be very lonely. Dorm life in college guarantees that students have the chance to interact with other people often. Leaving this system, unless a person can manage to stay close by during their time-off, without first building a support system can lead to a very lonely existence. Most students will not be able to relate to your experiences while taking time off, so your best bet is to find a mix of students and older mentors to regularly meet with.

Also, consider living with a few roommates, even if they are older and are working full-time, instead of finding a one-room apartment somewhere. If you do get roommates, just make sure that they are individuals at least somewhat similar to yourself — it will be hard to focus on your work when you come home everyday to a roommate that is always sitting on the couch playing video games or watching TV.

4. Develop a plan for the next six months

Even if you know exactly why you will be taking a leave-of-absence, and you know that the leave fits in with your long-term goals, you should still develop a detailed plan for the next six months. There’s a good chance that things will change drastically once you actually take the plunge, and that you’ll have to chuck the plan out the window along the way. But, no matter what happens, there’s an extreme amount of value in laying out a plan because it makes you aware of where you need to focus your time and resources.

What are your living costs or expense per month? Do you have enough cash flow from a job or savings from your bank account to cover these expenses for several months? Will you still be covered under your current insurance plan if you take time off? Where will you be living, and how much cash will you need to cover moving expenses? Do you know how to cook? What will you be doing each day with your time?

Also, when will you know that its the proper time for you to return to school? Set a date on your calendar three months from the day you leave school on which you will review your progress and make the decision whether to return to school in the upcoming semester. Remember, most schools sign up 2-4 months before classes begin, and many have registration deadlines for each semester.

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You know why you’re taking time off, how the time fits into long-term goals, you’ve built a support system, and you have a plan for the next six months. Now comes the hardest part. Muster up your courage, walk over to your dean’s office to tell him about your decision. Fill out any necessary paperwork, then let your parents and friends know about your decision.

Welcome to the real world.

Next up in this series: Part 2, “Surviving the First Two Weeks in the Real World.”

Young & Restless Chinese on Frontline

Published
by
jeremyrwelch
on July 13, 2008
in Education and Video
. 1 Comment

I stumbled upon a recent Frontline documentary a couple days ago about young people coming of age in 21st century China. The film shows that the mix of capitalist economic ideas, communist government policies, and global cultural influences is creating identity conflicts for many young Chinese.

Individuals profiled in the piece include an aspiring rapper who gets conned on the Internet, a former McKinsey consultant now running two businesses, a first time hotel owner balancing family relationships, and a migrant worker who rejects an arranged marraige in favor of true love.

The documentary is well worth the hour long viewing time. The video is not embeddable, so to watch you’ll have to follow the link below to the Frontline homepage.

Young & Restless in China

Practices Conducive to States of Flow

Published
by
jeremyrwelch
on June 27, 2008
in Education and Philosophy
. 0 Comments

I’m currently reading Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In the book, Mihaly relates lessons he learned from studying states of “optimal experience” for over two decades.  In the third or fourth chapter, Mihaly provides examples of various cultures that have developed practices and beliefs that are conducive or destructive to states of flow:

Another good example of how a culture can build flow into its life-style is given by the Canadian ethnographer Richard Kool, describing one of the Indian tribes of British Columbia:

The Shushap region was and is considered by the Inadian people to be a rich place: rich in salmon and game, rich in below-ground food resources such as tuers and roots–a pletiful land. In this region, the people would live in permanent village sites and exploit the envrons for needed resources. They had elaborate technologies for very effectively using the resources of hte environment, and percieved their lives as being good and rich. Yet, the elders said, at times the world bcame too predictable and the challenge began to go out of life. Without challegne, life had no meaning.

So the elders, in their wisdom, would decide that the entire village should move, those moves occurring every 25 to 30 years. The entire population would move to a different part of the Shushwap land and there, they found challenge. There wer enew streams to figure out, new game trails to learn, new areas where the balsamroot would be plentiful. Now life would regain its meaning and be worth living. Everyone would feel rejuvenated and healthy. Incidentally, it also allowed exploited resources in one area to recover after years of harvesting…

Is your lifestyle conducive to states of flow?

5 Social Media Tools for Learning Language

Published
by
jeremyrwelch
on June 20, 2008
in Education and Productivity
. 5 Comments

Check out this post I wrote several days ago for the Ignite Social Media blog:

June 17, 2008

In college and high school, I used flash cards, vocabulary lists, and even audio programs on tapes to learn new languages (Spanish in high school, German in college). Each of those tools is helpfflagsul in some capacity, but in the end, the quickest way to learn a language will always be through real conversations. Some new social media websites will allow you to do just that.

Check out these 5 social media tools for learning language:

1. eduFire.com - This web app allows language learners to connect with language teachers for one on one tutoring sessions by webcam. The platform is simple to use, and content on the web page is great. Payment is arranged through PayPal, and each tutor sets an hourly rate based upon their experience. They also have flashcards and videos of lessons in multiple languages.

The video chatting system setup has two spots for streaming video (one for the tutor and one for the student) and a chat room right beside the two video screens. This format is really the best of both worlds. On the one hand it is casual because it is a normal video chat, but the tutor also has the ability to post links and write out full sentences (which helps with grammar) in the chat window.

2. StudiVZ.net and other International Social Networks - After the successful growth of Facebook in the US, entrepreneurs in countries all over the world are creating social networks for college students using Facebook as a model. These entrepreneurs take the best parts of Facebook, then make changes to allow the program to fit in better with local culture. StudiVZ looks and feels very similar to Facebook, but is all in German. The company also has sites in French, Italian, Polish, and Spanish.

Language learners can use social networks like StudiVZ.net, Vostu.com (Spanish), vkontakte.ru (Russian) to meet people in foreign countries (and in their native country) who speak the primary language of the site. Join groups, make friends, and start conversations - even poke (gruschle in German, ha ) in the language you are studying.

3. Lingro - Lingro bills itself as “the coolest dictionary known to hombre!” — I definitely agree. Lingro is an interactive dictionary for use with websites. Enter the URL of a website, enter the language and direction of translation, and click the arrow. Now the page loads, but each word on the page is click-able and attached to a dictionary.

For instance, I entered welt.de (a German news site) and German > English. Then, while reading an article on the German soccer team, I came across a word that I was not familiar with. I clicked on the word, and instantly a small window pops up with the English translations of the word. Also, if the word is in a link, a small window pops up above the word asking if I’d like to follow the link. This interaction is great, but what’s even cooler, is that Lingro will track the words and sentences you look up on other web pages. If you register, you can save this data and create a kind of automatically generated vocabulary list — awesome!

4. Chinesepo - Chinesepo.com bills itself as “not your parents’ language instruction. This is learning on your terms.” Very cool. They center their service around four main activities: Listen, Review, Practice, and Reinforce. A user can listen to ChinesePod lessons on the site, or download them as mp3s to listen on the go. Review activities are centered around a PDF file for each lesson, with vocabulary, conversations, and exercises. Practice activities are live chat sessions with real tutors. Finally, a series of flashcards and vocabulary games are available for reinforcement of learned material.

5. Livemocha - Livemocha offers services similar to eduFire, but with a few more added features. Livemocha offers self-study lessons, professional tutors for one-on-one sessions, and community and chat tools for meeting friends and conversing live. Additionally, the Livemocha system has motivational and goal setting tools, allowing users to compete against each other.