Ethnic e-learning

Internet evolution has already seen outsourcing of home work. I mean it only half jokingly as kids can now get tutored online with teachers located around the world.
However, living in Canada as an immigrant, I see a lot of parents trying to connect their children to their roots. The main vehicle for facilitating this is language. People would like their children to learn read, write and speak (emphasis) their native tongue(s). However it is not very easy to find good teachers. Further, schedules may not always allow for such learning.
There is another aspect. Language is only one part if connecting with culture. There are local festivals / events, specific phrases and social activities that are also important. These are really hard to provide.
I believe this is a field ripe for innovation. Using the advances in technology and business process outsourcing it is possible to create an offering to capture this market segment. In some ways, motivated parents are relatively price insensitive as long as higher level of service and individualized attention is being provided.
Teachers from native countries could be used to provide tutoring in this specific area. Class sizes should be small. Video technology has to be utilized. I won't recommend one in one classes as it has been observed (from personal experience and industry research ) that children learn faster in company of other children.
Sound interesting? Fala Portuguese ?



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Large space Interactive advertising

The Olympic spirit is in the air, not withstanding Canada's loss to the USA, but the coming up contest with Russia.
I have been very interested in large format/space advertising especially when it is interactive. I saw a demo of an app based on Flash that projected using four projectors. It was projecting grass.
When someone ran along, the grass waved like some one was running through it.
Think about it.
How about an interactive display in the path that runs along Roy Thompson hall in Toronto which let's you race 50 m with a world class athlete and see how far you could reach?
It could be a valuable training tool as well. You could race with any athlete you like!

On a different but related note, try out Reactrix (http://www.google.ca/#/m/search?uipref=6&q=Reactrix&channel=gp1&og=gp&source=gp)

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Blogging from the iPhone

Life is busy. It has been harder and harder to write entries in the blog. It has been always on the back of my mind though.
I recently saw the blogpress lite iPhone app. So, I decided to try it out. I spend couple of hours every work day on the train commuting. So I thought let's give this a spin.
There may be spelling mistakes as thus touch typing (literally) is not the easy when u have thick fingers.
This whole technology thing is pretty cool eh?


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