Kirsten Winkler

We often forget that standards of what is needed to provide education are very different on our planet. Whereas the developed countries are arguing about whether every child needs an […]

Some weeks ago, I wrote a piece on what education can learn from game design. Back then I focused on artificial intelligence. Two days ago, I read another interesting piece […]

One of the most frustrating experiences one can have is when we are not able to understand each other. The most common but also less frustrating situation is of course […]

Smart phones even more than tablets are the perfect all-in-one purpose devices. And as we are using them a bit more every day in a multitude of situations that just […]

I already wrote once or twice about the mind change in our society that we are used to getting information or answers to our questions right now, anywhere we are. […]

In early 2009, I came across a new trend on the social web that immediately resonated with me. Local communities used a new platform called Meetup (www.meetup.com) to organize offline events . . .

Fellow Big Think blogger Scott McLeod invited me to write a dual post with him on our thoughts about the 2011 K12 Horizon Report today. Although my background is more […]

Are you still wondering what all those check-ins via FourSquare, Gowalla or all the others in the space are all about? Just to receive a discount on a lemonade it […]

Something rather weird happened last Thursday. In one the the regular “Spring Cleaning” briefings on its developer blog, Google announced that they would limit the number of requests you may […]

Although Motuto is just a part of a bigger vision of Castle Rock Research’s President and CEO Gautam Rao, I find the service so fascinating in itself that I would […]

One or two decades ago we still lived in a world in which contacts with other cultures were rather peripheral. Sure, there used to be immigrants from other countries and […]

That is the premise of Zinch. Zinch connects students to schools and scholarships which in itself is of course not that revolutionary. But other than just delivering the obligatory test […]

What is the best strategy to learn / memorize? Taking a look at Amazon you will find a wide variety of books on that topic and I am pretty sure […]

Two months ago I had some serious problems with my web host which led to daily calls with the helpdesk. I soon found out that it was far better to […]

I briefly wrote about digital dementia in my post about demand driven education. The term deals with the fact that people tend to outsource information to digital devices we had […]

During the past weeks I saw more and more interviews, blog posts and discussions on what the return of investment (ROI) of a college degree is these days. It is […]

As you might have noticed from my posts here on Big Think already but certainly when you have read some of my other publications, I am an advocate for the […]

A good computer game, like a good lesson plan, challenges a player’s skills but also makes it not too frustrating or impossible to win.

With some training, good will and modern technology I think it is pretty safe to state that anyone of us can become really good at learning facts and therefore basically […]

Yesterday I had a very pleasant talk with Tim Ridgway of Califone which once more showed how broad the transition period we are currently go through actually is. Califone develops […]

Innovative startups are using virtual worlds like Second Life and Twinity as virtual classrooms for people to learn new skills and languages. Could this one day replace brick-and-mortar classrooms?

Economic constraints play an increasingly bigger role in choosing which programs to offer on campus. Two new startups are offering novel solutions to this economic reality.

Two of my last posts were about video calls and augmented reality and a possible usage scenario of those technologies in education. Now, what would happen if we combined those […]

The first time I came across this new phenomenon was in my interview with Jeff Evans, one of the co-founders of MindSnacks back in August 2010. When I asked him […]

VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and thus making video calls via services like Skype or Google Talk are already a well established standard in the tech community. According to a […]

Currently, we are unable to prove our “hidden” knowledge, things that are learned “along the way” rather than in a certified course or degree program. That needs to—and will—change, perhaps thanks to these innovative start ups.

What could the future of search and information distribution look like? Here are two very exciting possibilities.

Newly unveiled personal robots or drones could allow students from across the globe to actively take part in campus life on any college or university they chose, like remote-controlled avatars. 

The education revolution is already underway, but will it utilize the pre-existing network created by Facebook, or will a new, education-specific network spring up? 

Smart phones will empower the tourists of the future, acting as their expert personal interpreters and translation shades that can instantly decipher text in foreign languages.