Graham Glass, etc.

Mini-TED in Carmel

I just got back from a mini-TED event down in Carmel. I've never been to TED but I've watched many of the videos. This mini-TED event was a scaled down informal version of TED held at a spectacular private residence in Carmel. There were 8 speakers and 50 guests, and the presentations were preceded and followed by snacks and drinks. The whole event lasted from about 6pm to 1am, and everyone had a good time.

It was great to chat with some brilliant and well-known people like Garrett Lisi (physicist/surfer with a promising 'theory of everything'), Stephen Mayfield (microbiologist working on Algae for biofuel and other uses), Drew Endy (working on bioblocks, which are building blocks for 'compiling and executing' DNA sequences), and Peter Bell (whose company has created a 'factory in a box' that African villages can use to create and sell their own fuel).

I was honored to present some of my ideas about the future of education, and managed to squeeze in a reference to Borat (a.k.a. Sasha Baron Cohen, the most famous alumnus from my UK high school).

All in all, a lovely trip and a welcome break from my usual edu20 routine.

Mission Impossible: Squirrel Edition

Making Minds, Episode 9

Here's episode 9 of my series, where I hypothesize that lifeforms more powerful than humans have already evolved on Earth.

Awesome Video about Neural Networks

Here is a great video about the latest in Neural Networks. I used to spend a lot of time studying and implementing such networks, so this was particularly interesting to me. Make sure you watch the demo; it's amazing to see these networks in action!

The video doesn't allow embedding, so I've just included a link.

New Desktop Picture

My latest Desktop picture is this Japanese garden; I find it incredibly refreshing! Click on the image for the full-size version.

Reminiscing: The EDU 2.0 Launch

Here's a video I made a little less than 2 years ago when I was about to launch edu2.0:

See this video on Vator.tv »

Code stats update: EDU 2.0, Moodle, Sakai

About 8 months ago I compared the lines of code in the edu 2.0, Moodle and Sakai code bases. Since then, we've added a huge number of new features to edu 2.0, the most important being custom URLs, home pages and banners for schools. We even provide a gallery of pre-built banners and home page layouts/pictures to get beginners started quickly.

Because of this, there's been a noticeable increase in adoption and we just passed the 47,000 member mark. About 1,500 new members join every week and we anticipate that this will accelerate.

For fun, I gathered the latest statistics for edu 2.0 and compared them against the old ones:

22,000 -> 31,000 lines of code (+40%)

466 -> 594 classes (+27%) 

2934 -> 4317 methods (+47%)

6 -> 7 methods per class on average (+16%)

5 -> 5 lines of code per method on average (+0%)

Overall, the code base has gone up by around 40%. We still do a code review at least once a day in order to continually improve the architecture.

One of the things I continue to be proud of is how small the edu 2.0 code base is relative to Moodle and Sakai. Here's the updated comparison:

Moodle: 1,500,000 lines of PHP, 300 man years

Sakai: 2,000,000 lines Java, 250 man years

EDU 2.0: 31,000 lines of Ruby, 4 man years

The Moodle and Sakai LOC statistics are out of date now, and I suspect that they've both grown larger over the last 12 months.

Schools: powered by EDU 2.0

One major feature we added recently to edu2.0 was custom URLS, banners and home pages for schools. This feature allows anyone to start their own online school for free using edu2.0. There are now over 800 schools around the world using this feature!

Here are a couple of schools that are using edu 2.0:

• British International School: http://bis.edu20.org
  
• Sofia Technical University: http://tu-kee.edu20.org

I've included a screenshot of one of the schools below. We have a ton of new features scheduled to roll out over the next couple of months, as well as the launch of "edu2.0 for business".

Making Minds, Episode 8

This series describes my theory of how minds work. Episode 8 focuses on the main principles that have guided my thinking - a desire to create something better than a human mind, and a desire to simplify and unify the way we think about minds.

Making Minds, Episode 7

Here's episode 7 of my series, which focuses on the Singularity and what happens after that.