Image via CrunchBase

With the help of a NY-based educational technology startup, a tablet computer may be the future content in a student’s backpack. The Amplify tablet is an Android-powered touchscreen that has been designed for students to be given to use both at school and at home and comes pre-loaded with all of their textbooks, lessons, tests and e-books that the school has assigned them.

Teachers will be able to monitor and control student usage of the device viewing what websites and what lessons the students are viewing. They will also have a dashboard to take polls, encourage students to “raise their hands” and to ask the students to refocus when they’re off task.

This is the first mobile computing effort of Amplify Education Inc., and will be sold for $299 for a W-Fi only model or $349 for a 4G model. There is also a required service and materials fee.

USA Today

School. (Photo credit: zoovroo)

At the SXSWedu education technology conference in Texas, one of the products garnering attention is a $100 million database that will track and chart the academic paths of students in public schools from kindergarten through the end of high school. Already the database has millions of files with the children identified by name, address, and even social security number. It also documents learning disabilities, test scores, and attendance, and in some cases hobbies, career goals, and homework completion.

The database was created as a joint project between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York and has since been turned over to the nonprofit inBloom, Inc.  States and school districts will be able to choose whether they want to include their students’ records in the program. The ultimate goal being to have this information help the schools target specialized educational products and lesson plans for the students.

Reuters

English: View of NYC from Empire state building (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The NY-based online education startup Thinkful announced $1 million in investments from entrepreneur Peter Thiel among other investors. This is the second time that Thiel has backed the startup.

Thinkful’s mission is to provide students with skills that are needed in the current job market. Founded in 2012, the startup works to aid students in job interviews, placement, and career coaching. Students are offered online tutoring and mentors who adjust the curriculum to the career needs of the individual student for their career goals.

Xconomy

English: Andrew Cuomo, 11th United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and 64th New York State Attorney General as a candidate for Governor of New York, outside of City Hall, little American flags on his tie. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As part of NY Governor Andrew Cuomo‘s 2013-2014 budget, IBM has announced a public-private partnership to educate NY students for high-skills jobs. These programs will include education in the paths of technology, manufacturing, healthcare, and finance.

Ten schools, one in each of the ten economic development regions of NY, will participate in the education model proposed, which will include a six year program of high school, college, and career training for students. They will also have the opportunity to graduate high school with an Associate’s Degree.

Cuomo said that the partnership will help better enable the state of NY to ensure that schools have the resources to prepare students for the high-tech jobs of the future. This partnership comes after the success of the IBM Pathways in Technology Early College High School in NYC.

Empire State News

Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) is part of the large City University of New York (CUNY) system (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A new website from the New York City Department of Education Chancellor Denis Walcott and CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein will be the first of its kind to act as a web resource for helping city students throughout the college process. As part of Graduate NYC!, NYCCollegeLine.org will be a free, online community that will help NYers find information on college matters including preparedness, admissions, applications, and on how to complete college successfully.

The goal for NYC College Line is to guarantee students, educators, and families have accessible information about higher educational learning. The site will allow users to join or visit forums with their concerns and will constantly be updated with new information and video tutorials on admissions to summer internships.

Brooklyn News

NYC Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn (Photo credit: William Alatriste, Wikipedia)

NY City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced a plan this week that would replace textbooks with tablets. Quinn, who is widely expected to run for mayor, said the Department of Education spends $100 million annually on textbooks—which is enough to buy a tablet for every single student. Tablets could also be equipped with source texts and free interactive programs. “Technology has changed what we need to teach, and it’s also changed how we need to teach,” Quinn said.

DNAinfo

(Photo credit: evilgenius)

The Verizon Foundation announced the Innovative App Challenge last week. The prize, sponsored by Technology Students Association and the Verizon Foundation, will award ten teams nationwide $10,000 in cash grants and training from MIT professors. Verizon made the announcement at Bronx Academy of Promise Charter School, which recently incorporated smartphones and NOOKs in classrooms. According to the New York Daily News, the once-failing charter school received an “A” on its most recent report card. Students are also designing a mobile app.

Students said using technology such as tablets and smartphones is easier because they don’t have to go to the library and cheaper than buying books. Principal Catherine Jackvony said that before the addition of tech, students were struggling. She told the News, “Last year, we purchased laptops and hired a technology teacher. Between extra help for students and the technology, that’s built up scores, and we got an ‘A!’”

New York Daily News

(image: General Assembly)

Hurricane Sandy devastated the New Red Hook store owned by Eric Finkelstein and Matt Ross, Court Street Grocers. They told WNYC they are raising money through the crowdfunding site Smallknot instead of FEMA or the Small Business Association. According to WNYC ‘s New Tech City, they lost everything they had invested in the new space.

General Assembly’s Flatiron office is so popular they’re no longer  taking names for a waiting list. They are morphing from a casual co-working space into an online education platform with a network of campuses that teach tech skills. They raised $10 million to expand to nine more cities. Classes are developed by asking businesses what skills employees need. Students say classes differ in quality and scope.

WNYC

CUNY Graduate Center (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In an op-ed for the New York Daily News, CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein wrote that the lack of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, education is a national security problem. The need for a STEM-related workforce is growing, but few interested young students go on to earn degrees in these areas.

Goldstein outlined a five point plant to reinvigorate STEM research and education. Schools need to make sure students are prepared for college-level STEM studies by adding summer and after-school programs. Colleges and universities should encourage study at all levels by providing STEM literacy to all students–not just those majoring in these areas. Ensure that students are taught by creative and effective teachers by launching President Obama’s national STEM Master Teacher Corps. Immigration reform would allow foreign students with technical degrees to receive green cards and permanent visas. Create stronger ties between business and education to foster growth, innovation and development.

New York Daily News

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

NY public media flagship WNET and Teacher’s College at Columbia University received a two-year grant from the National Science Foundation to develop mobile games that teach children fractions. The apps will use stories and characters from Cyberchase, WNET’s Emmy-winning TV series and multimedia project. It will also incorporate Teacher College’s research on embodied cognition theory and gesture-based simulation games.

The M3 project—for mobile, movement and math—will be tested by third, fourth and fifth graders at Teacher College’s Harlem Ivy afterschool program. The apps will be used to study how children learn from new technology. Eventually they may be publicly available for downloading.

The Ed Tech Times

Cornell NYC Tech Campus

Cornell President David Skorton told The New York Observer that construction of the Cornell NYC Tech campus should not disrupt Roosevelt Island residents. One still unresolved issue is how to provide efficient transportation for students. Architect Thom Mayne and Morphosis are attempting to make the campus a net-zero energy development. Energy for the buildings will be generated via a rooftop solar canopy. Daniel Huttenlocher, Dean of Cornell NYC Tech, said that they are also exploring other options, including tidal power.

Huttenlocher said their culture and curriculum would focus on tools for the information age and accelerate the development of new technology. Building ties with academia and the surrounding NY tech community will further their efforts. He expects students will be engaged with the industry during their studies and many of the graduates will stay in the city.

The Educated Observer

Big startups such as Etsy, Kickstarter and Kaltura are based here and corporate tech companies including eBay, Facebook and Google opened NY offices. He also refers to local incentives in the article,  including Mayor Bloomberg’s push to establish technology as a major government priority and Roosevelt Island’s forthcoming Cornell NYC Tech science and engineering campus.

The Huffington Post

English: Front view of the American Museum of Natural History (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

More and more NY museums have been incorporating technology into their exhibits for children. According to The New York Times, the American Museum of Natural History has a two week seminar that engages kids by letting them use technology to recreate realistic 3-d models and sea environments to resurrect various prehistoric marine animals. Other museums like the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Philadelphia Museum of Art have followed suit in their incorporation of technology.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has created their own “Murder at the Met” game, a smartphone app that children can play and search for the murder of Madame X, from John Singer Sargent‘s painting. In order to solve the mystery, kids must find specific statues and objects throughout the American Wing of the museum. Not all museums agree with the idea to use technology because some parents and families view museum visits as a way to connect with one another.

The New York Times

Official photographic portrait of US President Barack Obama (born 4 August 1961; assumed office 20 January 2009) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Barack Obama has again been elected President by the American people. During his second term, he is under a lot of pressure in terms of the technology sector. According to ReadWrite, President Obama stressed the importance of technology during his speech early this morning, saying that the U.S. should be, “A country that lives up to its legacy as the global leader in technology and discovery and innovation. With all the new jobs and new businesses that follow.”

ReadWrite compiled a list of what to expect from President Obama on top technology issues moving forward and here are some of the highlights:

• Broadband: During his first term, President Obama promised to “get true broadband to every community in America through a combination of reform of the Universal Service Fund, better use of the nation’s wireless spectrum, promotion of next-generation facilities, technologies and applications, and new tax and loan incentives” under the National Broadband Plan. Currently, anywhere from 90-95% of U.S. communities now have access to broadband-speed Internet access. About 87% of the National Broadband Plan own has been completed to date. It’s expected that President Obama will continue moving forward with this plan.

• SOPA: The Obama administration is also known for opposing SOPA, a bi-partisan bill that, if passed, would give a lot of power to copyright holders and media companies in blocking the distribution of copy written materials, without due process. The Obama administration, responding to an online petition against the bill, noted that it wouldn’t sign any legislation into law that would support censorship or potentially harm business. But the administration still stand by the view that intellectual property theft is a serious danger to the U.S. economy and should be stopped. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to guess that there might be a compromise “SOPA-like legislation” signed into law.

• Net Neutrality: Obama is a verified supporter of net neutrality, a big issue for telecommunications companies that would rather not have the FCC regulate how they handle traffic and charge for it. Obama has been a net neutrality backer since the beginning, and will most likely continue supporting this policy, even though Verizon has sued the government to overturn the FCC’s net neutrality laws.

• Cyber Security: The Obama Administration has been somewhat active in boosting the nation’s response to cyber attacks. Recent signals from Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta have hinted that the Pentagon is about to unveil new rules about cyber security, which may include a more offensive view. It is very probable that similar cyber security efforts will continue during Obama’s second term.

ReadWrite

New York University (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to CB Insights, startups founded by New York University alumni raised $1.2 billion during the past five years. The University Entrepreneurship Reports revealed that the most of the funding went to Internet companies. Of these, 95 percent are still in business and 70 percent conduct business in NYC.

According to New York CityBizList, most of the NYU deals were lead by Union Square Ventures.

New York CityBizlist

Columbia University (Photo credit: InSapphoWeTrust)

Andrew Hitti, a Columbia College student majoring in Computer Science, wrote an article in the Columbia Spectator calling for more support of innovation at his school. At the end of November the Brownstone Review Committee at Columbia will be determining who will move into the vacated fraternity houses. Hitti’s club, the Application Development Initiative (ADI), applied to be considered for the opening along with 13 other campus clubs. He wrote, “While I can only speak for my group, I do believe entrepreneurship and technology at Columbia need a home, a brownstone, where they can take root and flourish.”

ADI began with about 20 members and has since grown to over 600 members in just a few years. The organization has created programming events to involve students in technical and entrepreneurial skill seminars. Additionally, the group created DevFest, a week-long campus event for lectures on tech and entrepreneurship, featuring speakers of companies and experts in the fields. Hitti wrote, “Through tech talks, where we invited industry professionals to discuss cutting-edge technology, and hosting student-run workshops, hackathons, job fairs, and alumni dinners, connecting students with alumni working in NYC, we are developing a community of builders.”

Columbia Spectator 

Code for Good Hackathon at Girls Who Code in NYC (Photo credit: Josh Bancroft)

Recently, Girls Who Code hosted a gala at the NYSE to show off demos from its inaugural class and to announce a new goal to train one million girls in computer science by 2020. Girls Who Code is a nonprofit co-founded by Reshma Saujani and Kristen Titus. According to BetaBeat, the program offers an eight week, full time education in robotics, web design, and mobile development for teenage girls. The program features mentors from engineers and executives from Twitter, Facebook, ZocDoc, Gilt Groupe, and more.

On stage, Saujani noted that only .3% of female high school students choose to major or minor in computer science. Attendees included WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, and General Assembly co-founder Adam Brimer and others. Julia Gist, student at Girls Who Code, gave a speech about her transformation throughout the program. She said, “I quickly learned everything from how to build mobile apps to becoming a master of user experience to building video games in Javascript.” she is currently working on three different freelance web development projects and teaching her dad how to code.

BetaBeat

Cover of Time Out New York

Time Out New York‘s parent company Time Out Group has partnered with Internet startup CourseHorse. This will allow TONY to post local educational listings and discounts. Tim Boswell, director of transactions for Time Out North America told FolioMag that, “Everything starts with your audience—you try to continually please, embrace and engage them. In print and online, we’ve always done an annual feature on continuing education and we always see great traffic numbers and engagement with the feature package. This was the next step to that.”

With this new partnership readers will have the opportunity to browse and enroll in over 20,000 local class listings on CourseHorse. Classes can range anywhere from being free to over $500. CourseHorse recently announced that it raised over $500,000. The site gathers and maintains up-to-date information on classes from over 500 educational institutions. Children’s classes will also be offered through the Time Out New York Children’s site.

FolioMag

Pathways in Technology Early College High School

NY plans to open two more schools like P-Tech in the next two years with a focus on other growing industries. P-Tech is actually located in Paul Robeson High School, which is being closed down because of bad performance. The days are split into ten periods that span topics from English to technology to business. Ideally, students will leave prepared for entry-level jobs in the technology field. In fact, certain I.B.M. employees were analyzed to determine exactly what skills students would need. Students are also paired with a mentor at the company and make trips to I.B.M. locations to learn about computers. Additionally, P-Tech’s 18 teachers were all trained by I.B.M.

The New York Times

English: Wall Street sign on Wall Street (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Wall Street is in search of younger, skilled  traders, which has driven up the compensation for these positions. According to the NY Post, the annual salaries for “black-box quantitative analysts starts at $1 million,” while most quantitative analysts start at a base of $200,000. However, there is an extreme shortage of supply for these positions. Recently, the financial sector in NY has cut thousands of jobs, and are looking to slim down with making replacements with math/IT students from ivy league schools.

Kyle Ramkissoon, a top head headhunter and principal at IJC Partners in New York, said, “We have seen many banks cut where they need to cut, and there is more bloodletting to go. At the same time, banks that are cutting staff are also hiring new groups.” Ramkissooon’s office has openings in a multiple of positions that he can’t even fill 20% of.

NY Post

Grade 6′s reflecting on digital citizenship week at #yis (Photo credit: superkimbo)

Children are typically more Internet savvy than their parents. But that doesn’t mean they always know whom to “friend” online. Students at the West Side Collaborative Middle School on Manhattan’s Upper West Side are getting lessons in digital diplomacy. Common Sense Media, a national nonprofit organization, offers students programs on proper Internet behavior, awareness and critical thinking.

Common Sense provides the free curriculum for more than 35,000 schools in the U.S. They partner with the NYC Dept. of Ed through the Connected Learning program, a federally funded program overseeing broadband use, BTOP (Broadband Technology Opportunities Program.)

Metrofocus

According to AOL, “Portelos, who is the elected chapter leader of his school, alleges that his ‘timeout’ in one of New York’s infamous ‘rubber rooms’ is retribution for having blown the whistle on administrators ‘engaging in financial misconduct.’” Principal Linda Hill declined to comment. The Department of Education did not list the allegations against Portelos, but said that they were severe enough to warrant his removal from the classroom.The DoE also denied the existence of rubber rooms, which used to be a contention in NY until Bloomberg and the union decided to get rid of the reassignment centers. Sometimes teachers waited years for disciplinary actions to be decided and would be reassigned to do administrative work.

However, DoE spokeswoman Connie Pankratz said that, “All teachers who have been reassigned are working under supervision in an administrative capacity. Francesco Portelos has been extremely difficult to work with, was transferred twice, and there are multiple investigations pending against him.” Portelos told the Post that the allegations against him were minor, like hacking into his school’s website. He said, “I’m very tech-savvy, and for the short five years of my career used that knowledge to educate and improve the school. Now, I have to use my tech savviness to survive.”

 AOL Jobs

Image via CrunchBase

The Flatiron School in Manhattan is trying to close the learning gap between a beginner and a skilled app developer. Designer Pages founder Avi Flombaum joined with Adam Enbar from Charles River Ventures to rev up the school. It will offer three months of full-time classes in app development  for about $5,500. Flombaum told BetaBeat in an email that, “By the end of the semester, students will have built and contributed to Ruby-based web and iPhone applications. We’re excited about creating a talent pipeline not just of coders, but rather, professionals in general.” The school has a priority of finding students a job.

Flombaum compared the workshop to a class in creative writing. Flombaum said, “Programming is really about managing complexity, about breaking things down into small parts and then recombining those individual pieces to make new things. That abstract talent can be flexed in a variety of skills, whether it’s seeing the individual phrases and beats of a track and how they can be overlaid and mixed into others when DJ’ing or about understanding the various tension points and loops in a knot.”

Betabeat

English: Established in Spring 2003. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Journalism schools and media departments across the country are experimenting with entrepreneurship.  According to MediaShift, CUNY is the first in the country to feature an entrepreneur-specific discipline for journalism students called the Entrepreneurial Journalism Program.

CUNY’s efforts began two years ago when the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism was created to help quality journalists with a sustainable future. The graduate school now offers two programs for their entrepreneurial students, a certificate or a Master’s degree in Entrepreneurial Journalism. Jeremy Caplan is the educational director of the program and explains that the Master’s degree is for “mid-career journalists” who are interested in a traditional graduate education with a chosen concentration. In the final semester, students take an array of entrepreneur and business related classes. For the certificate program, participants are expected to be passionate about starting something new.

Caplan said, “We like for them to come in with an idea. We expect that they’ll improve it and pivot as the program goes on but with just one semester it’s important to hit the ground running. This way they’re spending the time building and refining rather than just dreaming up something raw. Really, the execution is what matters most in the end.”

The Newhouse Center for digital Media Entrepreneurship at Syracuse was started last March and is run by Sean Branagan, serial entrepreneur. There is no strict degree program in place yet, but mentorships, courses, and connections to entrepreneurs are offered. In classes students try to understand the trends of media and information. There is also a study about different startups that can be developed. Newhouse has also made an effort to bring current entrepreneurs in to teach in the program.

 MediaShift

NYU (Photo credit: jpellgen)

NYU is collaborating with the programming tutorial website Codeacademy to offer a free, non-credit programming class for NYU students. The program will run from today through December 7. According to Wired,  the interactive lessons will also include monthly guest speakers. In the past, NYU has offered creative ways for students to learn programming, like a “Reading and Writing Electronic Text” class. The course is taught by Adam Parrish in the school’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. The course uses Python programming to teach students creative writing in a non-traditional way.

Codeacademy began last year with the intent of making it possible for anyone to learn to program. It differs from other programs offering the same lessons, because all of the classes can be finished online. There is no requirement to download any software or programming languages. The curriculum is currently being used to teach non-technical staff to code, and the amount of programming offered is expanding as well.

Wired

English: Looking south from Top of the Rock, New York City {| cellspacing=”0″ style=”min-width:40em; color:#000; background:#ddd; border:1px solid #bbb; margin:.1em;” class=”layouttemplate” | style=”width:1.2em;height:1.2em;padding:.2em” | 20px |link=|center | style=”font-size:.85em; padding:.2em; vertical-align:middle” |This image was created with hugin. |} NYC wideangle south from Top of the Rock.jpg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Tech@NYC is touring a group of the nation’s colleges and providing students with information about the thriving tech scene in NY. The NYC Economic Development Corporation is using the NYC Tech Talent Draft to introduce students nationwide about the tech and entrepreneurial opportunities that NY has to offer. More than 30 technology startups will be represented at the events, including: Behance, Birchbox, Meetup, Songza, and more.

NYC EDC

NJ – Hoboken: Stevens Institute of Technology – Edwin A Stevens Hall (Photo credit: wallyg)

The Stevens Institute of Technology located in Hoboken, NJ is commencing a 10-year expansion plan that it expected to narrow the focus of the engineering school and increase its undergraduate student body by almost 60%. The proposal will be released this Friday and will include a focus on technology, according to Wall Street Journal. 100 professors will be hired and the undergraduate enrollment will be expanded from 2,500 to 4,000. The plan is expected to cost $400 million by its completion in 2022.

Nariman Farvardin, Stevens President, is expected to announce a $10 million gift from Greg Gianforte, software executive and Stevens alumnus, for a new academic building at the university. President Farvardin hopes to make Stevens better known for its technology and to make up for the 16 counts brought against the school by the state attorney general in 2009 for  improper borrowing. Both sides settled in 2010.

Farvardin noted that the school has been lacking a clear focus, and said, ”It was somewhat surprising. I would have thought the university would have a much more definitive plan for its future.” A big portion of the new plan is dedicated to focusing on technology in sectors such as health care, defense and finance. Farvardin also sees CornellNYC Tech as an opportunity, not a threat. The plan is expected to add 50 undergraduates a year and build several new buildings on the school’s campus.

The Wall Street Journal

Cathy Dove

Dove, the former associate dean for engineering for Cornell’s College of Engineering, was one of the first four people to work on the proposal for the tech campus proposal, and expects the Roosevelt Island campus to be completed by 2037. The first building will be located near the F train stop. The school will start enrolling students for fall 2013, and was recently approved to offer five degrees in science, technology and engineering. Plans for construction approval is set for October, and only after that can construction begin. Dove also mentioned that the school may re-brand itself, seeing as the name CornellNYC Tech has not been as well received as originally hoped.

Crain’s New York Business

IgniteNYC attendees, with the speakers in the first row, sat with rapt attention. Photo Credit: Robert Gregson

By Lauren Keyson

Failure was the theme of the IgniteNYC event last night at the Tishman Auditorium at the Parsons The New School, and 14 speakers each told a story about how they failed but then rose out of the flames. Surprisingly, this topic turned out to be poignant, inspirational, sad — and extremely funny. It was a platform for speakers who had experienced failure and were not afraid to share it with anyone – and that they did.

David Carroll, associate professor of media design and director of design and technology at The New School talked about how the school is trying to incorporate the idea that ‘failure isn’t awful’ into the  pedagogy. “We are undoing that failure is bad, but that it’s important to learn from. We acknowledge that education is responsible for stigmatizing failure. The business and startup community really valorizes failure, but in academia it’s taking some time, and we’re in the process of reconciling success and failure. If you can learn from failure, then that’s a success.”

Ryan MacCarrigan, one of the organizers of the event, works at leanstartupmachine, whose tagline is Fail Fast, Succeed Faster. “You come into it high hopes, gun ho expectations, and you realize ‘this is not for me, what do I do?’ It’s okay to be in those situations in life. We need to have moments of failure so that we can really learn and internalize what happened and move forward.”

All the panelists had equally poignant stories, but they laughed about their failures and obviously learned from the experience and moved on.  Kyle Studstill, partner at Three Kings, said that he wanted to make things interesting, and that telling stories was a good way of doing that.  “We have this culture of ‘failure is cool’ now.  Over the past couple of decades, we have this compulsion to say ‘we fail faster’ and the like. One of the reasons this exists is because we live in this age of transparency, where we can talk about things we’re doing, not as failures as such, but we can tell a story about them. We can say ‘hey this made my life or product more interesting.’ We want to build something that expresses our ideas. Use the failure as a fact that you actually did something as a way to get value out of that thing you did, even if it didn’t succeed.

Kim Boekbinder has reinvented how tours are booked by selling the shows before booking the venues.  She did this through crowdfunding.  She came up with the idea when she had a bad tour. The venue had a capacity of 200 to 300 people, and there were only 18 people in the room. “I lost a lot of money, and it’s pretty sad to play to an empty room. I went and bought myself a couple of shots of whisky and thought about how I could change my life.”  Therefore, she set up a show in NY using Kickstarter.  She had a date – but no venue.  She told people online that she needed $1,000 to make it happen, and the show was funded immediately.

Kyra Gaunt-Palmer, professor at Baruch College and a TED fellow, does collaborative curating online and collects money through Twitter and Facebook. Her students collaborate with people around the world. They wrote an e-book on racism called Could You Be The Bigger Nigger, with middle and last word crossed out, and 4,000 people downloaded it.  However, her failure story was about how last year she got married to someone she met on Facebook, and it didn’t work out.   The lesson she learned from that year was about radical openness online, “If you’re going to take a big risk, you really need to plan – you can’t just follow your heart.”

MacCarrigan added, “One of the recurring themes is that if you fail, you can pivot your way towards success. You can learn from failure and achieve a successful outcome. If you’re having success after success, you probably aren’t learning anything valuable.”

According to WNYC’s New Tech City, this is part of a national trend, and only about 20,000 high school students in the United States take the Advanced Placement Computer Science test every year, versus the 150,000 who take the Advanced Placement Calculus exam. However, software development jobs are expected to increase by 30% in the next 10 years, and host of New Tech City, Manoush Zomodori, looked into the AFSE to see how it is combating this ever-expanding gap in high-tech skills.

WNYC