Although it would be unfortunate if this was the case, this paragraph from the about page (https://woz-u.com/about/) leads me to think that this is just using Steve Wozniak's name for branding:
Inspired by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer, we specialize in technology and career-based programs designed to get people into the workforce quickly and affordably...Led by higher education experts, Exeter Education, students will learn the skills necessary to take flight within the technology industry.
Southern Careers Institute (http://www.scitexas.edu/) seems to be a vocational school of sorts. Neither of these are bad things, but they temper the initial excitement I had around "Steve Wozniak is launching an online education platform."
I can't imagine a guy like The Woz allowing his name to be associated with something sub-par which he has no control over. He understands the importance and weight of his personal brand.
After reading his autobiography, iWoz, Wozniak has a real passion for education. He especially has a passion for K-12. I believe he is genuine in his desire to improve tech and STEM education.
From http://www.scitexas.edu/programs/full-stack-javascript/: "SCI-tech Academy’s 3-week Coding From Scratch course provides free prerequisite training in coding basics, including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript basics for those who have little to no coding experience."
Honestly this seems very "meh." Like others have said, I am getting the vibe that Steve (or some other company) is using the name to attract attention to a very unremarkable product.
> Woz U will offer an app to help people understand which field of tech they’re best suited for, so they can set up their curriculum accordingly.
If you follow that link, you can see a very (very) poorly-designed application that is built by a company called Coder for Rent, LLC. This doesn't really invoke a sense of confidence for me - sounds like someone with an idea just reached out to the first app development team they could find. However, looking into this company, they have a website: https://www.coderforrent.com.
Following that link will redirect you to the organization I am guessing is teaming up with Woz for this: Coder Camps, with offices in Redmond and Scottsdale. Steve Wozniak is not listed anywhere on the "Team" page on Coder Camps' website, so this has to be some kind of business partnership. I believe that even more after seeing the page for the Woz U application in the App Store: the first 'screenshot' is his image covering the screen. Below his face is one of his quotes: "Wherever smart people work, doors are unlocked."
I get the vibe that I am supposed to think all of the smart people will be using Woz U because "Steve co-founded Apple!"
It does look more like a vocational boot camp. There are two tracks mentioned on the website: "Software Developer", basically a full stack web developer, and "Computer Support Specialist". Not exactly computer science.
While I'm sure Woz would make a fantastic teacher, I don't think experience teaching kids elementary math would really give anyone insight into teaching CS/data science topics.
there's a huge difference between developing and teaching curriculum for elementary school math, and developing and presenting curriculum for an online education system that extends beyond elementary school age and elementary school math.
Given the nature of the Internet (mostly everything is public and you can focus to whatever part of someone's online activity you want), everybody can seem like a rampant self-promoter these days.
If getting "complete" software engineering training today amounts to learning a popular JS framework, HTML, and CSS...we're in big trouble. Any company exploiting this dogma and convincing folks who don't know any better to pay tens of thousands of dollars and leave their job for 3-5 months should be ashamed of themselves. I'm not, for the record, against people learning any of these things. But for those who bought into the idea that it's enough to make them competitive in the job market today will get a rude awakening in the next couple years.
It's a shame that his 1981 plane crash robbed both Steve and the world of the full use of one of the greatest engineering minds that has ever lived.
A lot of people who know him personally - and I know of them personally, so it's second-hand corroboration to be clear - say he was never anywhere close to the same after the accident.
''I remember, at Comdex in 1987, walking around and having some of the competitors from two of the original typing products come up to me and say: ''What a coup! How did you get Mavis Beacon to endorse your product? We've been after her endorsement for years.' '' Mr. Abrams chuckled. ''And when they did that, I knew we had a hit.''
I checked Woz's twitter feed to see if he mentioned this at all (which he didn't) and noticed that he gives accurate location updates constantly. Even which hotel room he's in.
Okay, there are a lot of comments here about various things but what struck out to me was that on the website it says Woz U will help students "get into the workforce quicker" but their curriculum doesn't really cover any CS. It covers things that help you build stuff using "hip" tools and languages, but not things like algorithms, data structures, etc.
My question is, is this really all it takes to get a job in a startup/tech company? Would YOU hire somebody who just knew these things?
Skipping theory (and liberal arts) is certainly going to get you prepared for an entry level programming job. It's not going to get you prepared for most interviews, though.
I like to think I'm a decent engineer; I have a BS in Computer Engineering, but I use very little from most of the classes I took to get that. Actually, my most in demand skills seem to be systems level debugging, which wasn't discussed in any courses; it's something I've learned on the job, because it was never in any of my courses. Some of the courses don't get used often, but it is nice to have seen topics, so if they come up, I know it's something that's been studied, and I just have to find it again. A straight-up occupational training in programming is going to leave you without a lot of that, unfortunately.
Would be more appreciated if fortunate people like WOZ could do something good for non-code fields as well.
There are already a lot of platforms which teach all of these. I respect WOZ for everything but I think there are more opportunities/problems in other fields of education as well. Am I missing something?
Nah, MOOCs hold a lot of promise for other areas of study, but they definitely are not totally there yet. They seem to be pretty good in 'soft' fields that don't have much hands-on applications, but still pretty terrible for things like electrical/mechanical engineering or embedded development.
Like, I'm interested in making things so that my code can interact with the real world, so I tried Coursera's embedded development class.
Holy hell. It was awful. Way worse than a lot of free youtube tutorials I've watched, and they were charging money. The course files flat-out did not work. The course VM with the cross-compilation toolchain and everything was incapable of booting; good thing those things are easy to install. The assignments told you to do different things from the grading criteria; I wound up erring on the super generous side with grading, especially since the lectures were often largely unrelated to the tasks. And there was no embedded platform involved at all, full stop. In a months-long course.
I learned much more in a week with Google and a $10 ST Nucleo board. That's where online education could still use a lot of work, IMO. The sort of thing that requires lab segments.
And to be fair to Coursera, that's a tough thing to get right. It would be nice if they actually verified that they were selling courses that functioned at all, and that soured me personally to their platform, but at least you can get a refund. They also have a power electronics class I was interested in, but there's no chance in hell I'd risk it now. I don't mind throwing a few hundred dollars and hours after education, but that stuff is potentially really dangerous and I don't want to risk getting it wrong because a lecture on transformer winding wasn't vetted...
Scott Galloway was saying Apple should take it's war chest and disrupt the educational system. Start an Apple University where the skills required for tomorrows jobs can be acquired.
Would be great if you could get Amazon, MS, Apple, facebook, etc on board to start the revolution in education.
Frankly, I have to say I'm skeptical. I don't see what makes them suitable or incentivized to create a real school, rather than a pipeline into their businesses.
I'm really excited to see where this goes given I'm in the industry too! That said, I am skeptical of the background of this company and the quality of instruction/curriculum.
For anyone interested in K-12 coding education, I have been working on a project called BlockSchool. We connect students ages 6-13 with teachers from top colleges and companies via video chat. We have developed a fun 3D block-based world where everything is programmable.
We already have students in 4 countries! If you're interested in a free trial, email me at tony@block.school with Hacker News in the subject line :)
This is so much pressure on Woz to maintain his name that I am afraid he may never do anything again (if he reads HN).
He is just a (from the looks of it -- I don't know him) nice, thoughtful, successful person. But he is just a human being. He can't magically make an educational system that makes you study front-end frameworks anymore than the 1000s of other nice, thoughtful people can do that.
The learner still has to sit down and apply themselves and there is no magic around that.
I'd like to see something like this for Physics cirricula.
As a software engineer, I've always felt my physics background is lacking. Can anyone recommend a decent physics learning platform that starts from QM first principles and then goes to more complex topics?
It isn't exactly a platform, but it sounds like you would be well served by The Theoretical Minimum [0]. The courses [1] start at classical mechanics, but the second one is QM and builds from there. They are all taught by Leonard Susskind, who is a fairly big name in the field.
There are two books available specifically tied to The Theoretical Minimum [2], but I'm not sure how they related or tie into the video lectures as I have not read them myself.
Glad to see Woz working on this problem. He has such a legendary reputation in the tech world for his engineering skills but few know of his passion for education. I hope this ends up being a large part of his legacy.
Unfortunately, this education is no different(or better) than the education you can receive at any of dozens of colleges around the country that teach the exact same thing without the branding hype. Looking through the computer support curriculum, nothing is original or new. It's just the same old thing every other college teaches for the same course. No new spin or intuitive way to teach it.
vikp|8 years ago
Inspired by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer, we specialize in technology and career-based programs designed to get people into the workforce quickly and affordably...Led by higher education experts, Exeter Education, students will learn the skills necessary to take flight within the technology industry.
It looks like Woz U is affiliated with Exeter Education and Southern Careers Institute. Exeter Education appears to be a new company in Arizona (more info at http://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/tech/2017/10/1... and https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2017/04/14/former-g...).
Southern Careers Institute (http://www.scitexas.edu/) seems to be a vocational school of sorts. Neither of these are bad things, but they temper the initial excitement I had around "Steve Wozniak is launching an online education platform."
agumonkey|8 years ago
robotfactory|8 years ago
larrydag|8 years ago
trzmiel4|8 years ago
jczhang|8 years ago
anonymous5133|8 years ago
shawndrost|8 years ago
From the footer at https://woz-u.com/: "Part of SCI"
From http://www.scitexas.edu/programs/full-stack-javascript/: "SCI-tech Academy’s 3-week Coding From Scratch course provides free prerequisite training in coding basics, including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript basics for those who have little to no coding experience."
From https://www.codercamps.com/coding-from-scratch/: "New to software? Start with Coding From Scratch Courses"
From https://woz-u.com/curriculum-software-development/: "SWD100 | Coding From Scratch"
(Full disclosure: my company is a competitor to Coder Camps.)
samstave|8 years ago
So, fuck you, you beautiful tech community and I love you, you horrific tech community..
This is literally what democratization of actual information looks like.
mgiannopoulos|8 years ago
sjroot|8 years ago
> Woz U will offer an app to help people understand which field of tech they’re best suited for, so they can set up their curriculum accordingly.
If you follow that link, you can see a very (very) poorly-designed application that is built by a company called Coder for Rent, LLC. This doesn't really invoke a sense of confidence for me - sounds like someone with an idea just reached out to the first app development team they could find. However, looking into this company, they have a website: https://www.coderforrent.com.
Following that link will redirect you to the organization I am guessing is teaming up with Woz for this: Coder Camps, with offices in Redmond and Scottsdale. Steve Wozniak is not listed anywhere on the "Team" page on Coder Camps' website, so this has to be some kind of business partnership. I believe that even more after seeing the page for the Woz U application in the App Store: the first 'screenshot' is his image covering the screen. Below his face is one of his quotes: "Wherever smart people work, doors are unlocked."
I get the vibe that I am supposed to think all of the smart people will be using Woz U because "Steve co-founded Apple!"
Anyway...back to work.
IBM|8 years ago
[1] https://www.techinasia.com/talk/steve-wozniak-walking-billbo...
[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-best-recruiter-app...
vyrotek|8 years ago
neurotech1|8 years ago
Its also possible that Woz isn't going to be part of the regular faculty, as great as that would be.
IMHO the course structure and content, is more important than the platform code details.
FabHK|8 years ago
peter303|8 years ago
sjroot|8 years ago
craftyguy|8 years ago
KekDemaga|8 years ago
IBM|8 years ago
https://www.techinasia.com/talk/steve-wozniak-walking-billbo...
mgiannopoulos|8 years ago
kal444|8 years ago
BlackEspresso|8 years ago
mikerg87|8 years ago
https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Steve_Wozniak_Un...
icebraining|8 years ago
convexja|8 years ago
exogeny|8 years ago
A lot of people who know him personally - and I know of them personally, so it's second-hand corroboration to be clear - say he was never anywhere close to the same after the accident.
ZenoArrow|8 years ago
Also, changes in personality do not automatically mean changes in intellect.
adam12|8 years ago
DonHopkins|8 years ago
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/31/technology/next-they-ll-sa...
''I remember, at Comdex in 1987, walking around and having some of the competitors from two of the original typing products come up to me and say: ''What a coup! How did you get Mavis Beacon to endorse your product? We've been after her endorsement for years.' '' Mr. Abrams chuckled. ''And when they did that, I knew we had a hit.''
jonny_eh|8 years ago
neurotech1|8 years ago
jtokoph|8 years ago
https://twitter.com/stevewoz
adambyrtek|8 years ago
arsalanb|8 years ago
My question is, is this really all it takes to get a job in a startup/tech company? Would YOU hire somebody who just knew these things?
toast0|8 years ago
I like to think I'm a decent engineer; I have a BS in Computer Engineering, but I use very little from most of the classes I took to get that. Actually, my most in demand skills seem to be systems level debugging, which wasn't discussed in any courses; it's something I've learned on the job, because it was never in any of my courses. Some of the courses don't get used often, but it is nice to have seen topics, so if they come up, I know it's something that's been studied, and I just have to find it again. A straight-up occupational training in programming is going to leave you without a lot of that, unfortunately.
jsjohnst|8 years ago
For an intern / very junior position, yes. For anything else, no.
tedmiston|8 years ago
thoughtexprmnt|8 years ago
vthallam|8 years ago
I think they are like completely banking up on the Woz name to get students and companies use their services.
jdmoreira|8 years ago
ankyth27|8 years ago
leggomylibro|8 years ago
Like, I'm interested in making things so that my code can interact with the real world, so I tried Coursera's embedded development class.
Holy hell. It was awful. Way worse than a lot of free youtube tutorials I've watched, and they were charging money. The course files flat-out did not work. The course VM with the cross-compilation toolchain and everything was incapable of booting; good thing those things are easy to install. The assignments told you to do different things from the grading criteria; I wound up erring on the super generous side with grading, especially since the lectures were often largely unrelated to the tasks. And there was no embedded platform involved at all, full stop. In a months-long course.
I learned much more in a week with Google and a $10 ST Nucleo board. That's where online education could still use a lot of work, IMO. The sort of thing that requires lab segments.
And to be fair to Coursera, that's a tough thing to get right. It would be nice if they actually verified that they were selling courses that functioned at all, and that soured me personally to their platform, but at least you can get a refund. They also have a power electronics class I was interested in, but there's no chance in hell I'd risk it now. I don't mind throwing a few hundred dollars and hours after education, but that stuff is potentially really dangerous and I don't want to risk getting it wrong because a lecture on transformer winding wasn't vetted...
erikj|8 years ago
hourislate|8 years ago
Would be great if you could get Amazon, MS, Apple, facebook, etc on board to start the revolution in education.
icebraining|8 years ago
Frankly, I have to say I'm skeptical. I don't see what makes them suitable or incentivized to create a real school, rather than a pipeline into their businesses.
unknown|8 years ago
[deleted]
duxup|8 years ago
alphaalpha101|8 years ago
[deleted]
tonydiv|8 years ago
For anyone interested in K-12 coding education, I have been working on a project called BlockSchool. We connect students ages 6-13 with teachers from top colleges and companies via video chat. We have developed a fun 3D block-based world where everything is programmable.
We already have students in 4 countries! If you're interested in a free trial, email me at tony@block.school with Hacker News in the subject line :)
startupdiscuss|8 years ago
He is just a (from the looks of it -- I don't know him) nice, thoughtful, successful person. But he is just a human being. He can't magically make an educational system that makes you study front-end frameworks anymore than the 1000s of other nice, thoughtful people can do that.
The learner still has to sit down and apply themselves and there is no magic around that.
leadingthenet|8 years ago
tryingagainbro|8 years ago
bitmapbrother|8 years ago
ShabbosGoy|8 years ago
As a software engineer, I've always felt my physics background is lacking. Can anyone recommend a decent physics learning platform that starts from QM first principles and then goes to more complex topics?
JosephLark|8 years ago
There are two books available specifically tied to The Theoretical Minimum [2], but I'm not sure how they related or tie into the video lectures as I have not read them myself.
[0] http://theoreticalminimum.com
[1] http://theoreticalminimum.com/courses
[2] http://theoreticalminimum.com/references
godzillabrennus|8 years ago
unknown|8 years ago
[deleted]
Rotdhizon|8 years ago
throwaway7645|8 years ago
vyrotek|8 years ago
rconti|8 years ago
godelski|8 years ago
hbosch|8 years ago
https://www.google.com/search?q=wazzu
unknown|8 years ago
[deleted]
ireallydonot|8 years ago
salqadri|8 years ago
muthdra|8 years ago
cgijoe|8 years ago
kbutler|8 years ago
Though initial criticism of the name "iPad" died pretty quickly.
yvsong|8 years ago
unknown|8 years ago
[deleted]
calimac|8 years ago
[deleted]