Some cool infographics about ICT on Visual.ly

Urbio Vertical Garden

PICCOLO Led

SpinFX: Inspired Visual Entertainment

ICT Adoption RoadMap in Education Industry

Above is an infographic I made in easyl.ly page to summarize my key points for applying new education technologies into education institutions.

In Vietnam, schooling, or education, may be one industry where almost its institutions can long live forever. It's hard to find any exceptional case of school which was bankrupt or closed.  But on the other hand, there are many and many schools out there are left behind the information and telecommunication technologies adoption wave, and became somehow out-of-dated, which badly impacts on students, mainly. Institution leaders, especially from private sector, rarely find the importance and benefit of this trend, but just over-estimate its down sides. It's no doubt that ICT adoption will reduce the profit margin of school owners at first, and it's also require a lot of time and efforts to implement. But let's think in a long-term vision, ICT will add great value to school's competitive advantages, as well as improve effectiveness and productivity thereby increasing the profit margin later. Last but not least, ICT has a positive influence on social and humanity aspects, say, inspires and connects people. 

Just a quick insight on why ICT is worthy to invest and implement in schools, now it's time for me to explain my suggested roadmap to apply EdTechs in Vietnam schools, including 6 basic steps:

- Step 1: Status analysis to collect facts and figures about school key performance indicators as well as other statistical information, by conducting surveys, and revising historical data. The output of this step will give us an overview on how the subjected school performs, how ICT are applied there, and how all stakeholders think and feel about the school. 

* Stakeholders mention all group of people make or get the influences such as school owners, principles, teachers, students, other employees, etc.

- Step 2: Define problems and goals by pointing out which aspect we wish to improve, or which target we desire to achieve. It's not just a simple statement, but has to be place in a complex context including budget, feasibility, availability to consider thoroughfully. 

* Availability here should be some essential skills or knowledge to adapt new process or technology. For example, teacher should have intermediate English level to get familiar with new educational application. 

- Step 3: Define prerequisites and KPIs to well adopt and measure the result. Any action requires some preparation. For example, a prerequisite to apply Google for Education should be English level. On the other hand, we should standardize criteria to measure result of our actions.

* KPIs: key performance indicators, popular terms regarding to performance measurement.

- Step 4-5: Planning and Action. Based on all artifacts we got thru previous steps, we draw our action plan to define periods, action details, goal, stakeholder, etc, then we conduct the plan.

- Step 6: Feedback and Retrospective. At this step, feedbacks from all stakeholders are collected to analysize our pros and cons of what implemented, then we make improvements in next periods. 

Note that the road map actually is not a straight line from one end to another, but a circle that is done time to time. Due to the limitation of an article length, I can't provide more tedious info for every step, so please contact me if you would like to know more details.

Lithe Clock: Dance Through Time

The World's Thinnest Watch

Nano Light

Voxy

Weekly Review

A week just flied by without any big bang. Let me list a brief of this week happenings to me:
- explored Indiegogo's projects and found some potentials like GravityLight or Robot DragonFly
- inspired by an infographic animation about Vietnam history and wondered how they made it
- discovered EdTechs, short form of Educational Technology, in learning language (I will write a summary on this topic later on)
- started using Evernote in new memory structure to tag and link english slangs. Let's see if it really works out for me.
- finally, I joined a free course of AmEng pronunciation in my company.
Here are some topics I intend to write this week:
- EdTech: Is it right time for a tipping point?
- An overview on Language Learning Startups?
Look forward to a new groovy week.

50 Best Books for Teachers

AlwaysPrepped

Verbling: learning language tool

Mindsnacks

Studyblue: mobile flashcard apps

Testive: Online Testing Platform

Misfit Shine: an elegant, wireless activity tracker

Company website: http://www.misfitwearables.com/

GravityLight

GravityLight: lighting for developing countries.

MUSE: The Brain-Sensing Headband

The Project page at Indiegogo: http://www.indiegogo.com/interaxonmuse

The Robot Dragonfly

The introduction page at Indiegogo

Theories of learning

The Girl Effect

Vietnam History Infographic Animation

How is it difficult for Viet start-ups to survive?

Perhaps start-ups is one of the most popular term that we hear too much from media recently. The word "start-ups" easily strikes in our mind of Facebook, Google, Instagram, Evernote, representing for young, big and rich names in ICT world. Start-ups also inspire youngters dreams of building up an enormous empire, showing our own values, and spreading our belief ...

Those beautiful descriptions are always true, obviously, if we succeed. But, on the other hand of reality, there are many existing obstacles that we need to realise, before we come too deeply to a mess of troubles by our own that there's no way out...

Ok, I've been talking quite a lot so far. Then, I will go straight to some exceptional difficulties which are currently hindering Viet start-ups dreams.

1) Lack of capital. It's so clear that money in term of investment, or revenue, is too important for start- ups to survive. Unfortunately, chance to approach clean capital is scare here, for many reasons, such as Vietnam is poor country, lack of capital ventures and mutual funds, or weak support from government. Let's look at a different picture in U.S, funding is much easier in various forms and sources willing to invest in promising products and businesses. Anyway, I can see the funding activity has some improvements recently in Vietnam.

2) Lack of supporting industries. It's very hard to create a real prototype from an original model, and it is even  tougher to make our product economic-of-scale, in Vietnam. If you think of a physical products, a decorated or re-innovated stylus for instance, you can see how hard to make it real. But how about in software industry, I believe my opinion is still true. From a draft idea, we can create a promising raw product for demonstration, but when its come to scale for a big amount of users, I don't think we have enough resources to implement  it.

3) Lack of market. Vietnam is still a too small, poor and immature market to encourage and consume new products. Note that start-ups usually make products containing high level of uniqueness and personal customization capiability to avoid directly competing with big brands, thereby they need a remarkable amount of audience dare to pay plenty of money for these products.

I believe these 3 above points are essential for Vietnam to survive and grow. In the next entries, I would like to discuss some successfull start-ups in Vietnam to see how they overcome those issues.

Oru Kayak: the origami folding boat

Clip Tree

The Porthole

Hidden Radio and Bluetooth Speaker

Skallops: Build Big!

A new idea on organizing our knowledge-base

As we can observe on many internet applications like Blogger, Evernote, Wordpress or other CMSs,  entries (posted) are grouped into tags. A basic connection is that an idea (entry) should belong to (a) context(s) (tag). This grouping method is really useful for readers to retrieve all entries belonging to a specific topic. Note that an idea varies its meanings along its different belonging contexts.

But, I need more than that. There are 2 main concerns about the limitation of current way. 

Firstly, I need to link relevant ideas to each other. For example, "love" or "hate" can be in a same context of "relationship", but "fall in love", "have a date" just link to "love", not to "hate". So I want to see suggestions of "fall in love", "have a date" with "love" but without "hate", which is impossible if I place them all in the same "relationship". The better way as you can argue is to create a new context of "love", but indeed it is non-sense cause how about suggesting "love" when you find "fall in love" first. The relationship between "love" and "have a date" is not idea-context (child-parent) but an equal connection (like brothers) where we can access one via others. A link here is more simple than a context, we need 1 link per pair of connected ideas, or 1 context per ideas. (So weird that every idea turns to be a context)

Secondly, I need a hierarchical (tree-like) structure of contexts, as a context can belong to an outer context, as it exists so popular in our real world. (Evernote indeed implemented this idea)
SO, I conclude my idea in a sentence "An idea should be linked to relevant others and grouped into a context(s) which can belong to other contexts".

Imagine our Evernote can implement my above ideas, so how can I improve my life. I believe it is very useful to study  foreign vocabulary. I can save my foreign vocabulary to single entry, then link and group them. Now, whenever I think of an idea, it is really easier for me to develop my sentences, paragraphs and essays via linked entries as well as same-tag entries.

What I learned from my first 4 working years after graduation?

The scenario was so simple: I left university with a big ambition and hunger to achieve success and wealth. That's why I refused working for a big foreign ICT firm in order to join a new securities company in Ho Chi Minh. The thought of creating values in a new business and gain more rewards instead of a normal boring job in a mature big firm always stroke in my mind, drove my decisions and actions during those years. Unluckily, the economic in both Vietnam and world became worse and worse, then I had to change my jobs 3 times, to different small and newly open companies. I did not make much money, just enough to manage living in my city. It is even worse that I am currently in my mother's debt for my master course's tuition. So, after 4 years, I have a big debt, unstable job with low salary. To sump up, my strategy is failed.   

So, I have some lessons from my failures:

- Find yourself first. To some people, it is very clear to know themselves. To others, it's still a vague picture. With me, I didn't know myself well enough when I graduated. As the results, I made some decisions, and did some actions that are not adequate to me inside, then made me more confused, worried and unhappy. 

- Draw out as many options as you can. For every matter, such as your career path development strategy, your desire or your living goal, etc, you need to know how many ways out there to reach. This step will help you have a good overview on your issue. To my case, I missed this step and chose way to join small start-ups to reach my goal which turns to be a wrong way finally.

- Vietnam is a different country from the major rest of the world. So it means that what you learned how some people got rich or successful in other countries just simply doesn't work out in Vietnam.  

- Must be patient and product-oriented rather than skill-oriented: I used to think I am available to make money and show up my abilities after university, but it turned out that I am just a newbie to real world. I really regret that I did not spending enough time on a particular product such as an e-commercial website or an educational system instead of learning new skills and technologies. All required skills and technologies will appear along with your product development. 

Above are essential lessons from my failure. They do not cover all failures of new grads, of course. But at least, you will add some check points into your to-do and not to-do list for a new period in your life.

My favourite apps (updated 23Mar2013)

Brainscape is a learning tool based on serious researches and studies on how human brain absorbs new knowledge (neuronscience), which is concluded as a technique called Confidence-Based Repetition (You can read more details about this theory because I find it really interesting and meaningful for self-study)
I prefer Brainscape to Anki because this tool offers more various media content, not only text, but also image and sound. It means that you can increase the impression of new knowledge to your brain.
Brainscape is total free and multi-platform which available on web and iOS, promising to be a convenient learning tool for your self-study habbit.
P.S: I recommend an article discuss in details how human memory works to understand scientific theory behind Brainscape. (Sorry for the inconvenience that this article is in Vietnamese)

Evernote, as its slogan, "note everything", may best describe this free multi-platform tool functionality. Let's imagine, you wanna capture an information on the Internet, or note an idea accidently coming to your mind, or a special view on the street, then save them into a center storage where you can access later everywhere. Your desire will come true with Evernote. Now, Evernote will be your smart external memory.


Dropbox is a pioneer in Cloud storage industry. It offers multi-platform such as Windows, Mac OS, Web-based, iOS and Android. It good alternatives are Google Drive, SugarSync... Anyway, Dropbox is successful to change human habit from using USB to storing light documents on Clound foundation. With DropBox, you just upload your documents to the Internet, and use it later everywhere with an Internet connection. My preference on DropBox is that it allows importing ebooks (pdf and epub) into iBooks app of iOS.  

UTorrent is an application downloading file(s) from the Internet with a seed file in a sharing network called torrent. Behind UTorrent there are 2 tales. First tale talks about torrent - the biggest peer to peer file sharing network over the Internet. This network has such a special strong structure that an interesting book in 2006 writing about this topic called "Starfish and Spider" became the best seller in the US that year. The second tale is the relationship between reading books and uTorrent. If reading books is an events chain including finding a book, buying (or downloading) it, and reading it; uTorrent should play a survival role in this chain for those cant afford to buy their favorite books. For example, a guy find a best seller on Amazon, but he cant afford to buy it, so he should 'google' a torrent of this book, and then use this torrent file to download the book with uTorrent. This way may make pulishers angry uselessly, because they cant forbidde people to share their files to each other, and our guy is happy with his desire book.

Viber is a popular voice over IP (VOIP) application for smart-phones (iOS and Android). Its advantage over other opponents in the same category is that Viber binds user to his/her real mobile number. So, with an Internet connection and a smart-phone, you can call any one you want with Viber for free. Indeed, additonally, you may use other common apps such as Skype or Yahoo Messenger, Lines,  etc which are available for all platforms.

Flipboard is a news collector, a social magazine where you can read news feed and articles from any source. This app has both iOS and Android versions. Therefore, instead of visiting multiple websites via our browsers, we can see all them in one app. It is even cooler that you can save interesting posts to Pocket for later uses or share them to your social network like Facebook or Twitter. I use Flipboard and Pocket almost everyday. Trust it, it's worth trying.

My favourite websites (updated 05Jan2013)

There are many criteria and aspects to define or select a favourite list. To me, I care websites help me self-study and DIY (do it yourself), not news websites. 

Coursera is an online training program which offers free. high quality courses from famous universities all over the world. Not only watching the lecture video, learners have to answer quick quizz questions in the lecture, do assignments and discuss with other 'courserians' through each course. The interaction level during a course is remarkable.
Try it out, and open your university door by yourself.
P.S:  More Thought About Coursera
I believe this era will change the way people study where self-study is the key motivation and momentum for human-being to reach their desire educational level. We usually say that youngsters in poor developing countries have limited access to higher education such as colleges or universities, but this fact is being improved now from organizations in developed countries and Coursera is an clear evidence... 

Elllo.org is a truly interesting and useful website for everyone wanna learn daily English communcation. This website contains hundreds of audios and transcripts of daily conversation. Each tape/post will have 2 speakers who will dicuss around a specific topic in a really funny and natural way where you can learn many slangs, idioms and expressions. I really loved this site when I started studying English. 

YouTube, to me, is more and more useful and favorite, because it contains millions things I can learn or entertain. Just go to YouTube, key in any topic you interest, such as a badminton technique, a TED talk, or a TVB dramma, and surprisingly, a recommendation list appears right on your screen, suggests most relevant results to you. And the last work you do is a click ... and seeeeee :)
I have observed my habbit of using YouTube for a long time, and surprisingly, YouTube gradually replaces the TV function in my routine, because it gives me flexibility, content on demand and fast access.  

Mindtools, is an useful and rich contented educational website about Soft Skills. The phrase "Soft Skills" maybe too general and vague that you hardly understand its true meaning. In particular, Soft skills mention best practices and pratterns to solve daily recurring issues in our life, such as Time Management, Team Work, Problem Solving and Decision Making, Confliction Resolve, Stress Management, etc. Those techniques are called soft skills because they are not any specfic profession, but a set of skills that all people need to effectively solve their own technical problems. Those skills doesn't require much time to know or understand, but more time for practice and turning them into your healthy habits. A happy news for iOS user is that this site also has another version on AppStore.

Meetup, is a social network site. It's not just simple, it has its own, seperated audiences which are events happening in your area. Think about it, sometime, you will wonder yourself, if there is any event around here interesting you? If so, meetup should be your answer. Meetup hasn't been popular in Vietnam, or more particular, HoChiMinh, but believe me, sooner or later, more and more Saigon youngsters will know and love it, like me :) 

Kayak, is a must for travelers, especially for backpackers who want to save their pocket in flights, accomodation and transportation. Just have a look at this website, (or its mobile versions) you will find it really useful to make an affordable vacation plan without many efforts. I used Kayak for my Japanese trip already.

A my blog retired

Beside this blog, I have some others on various topics. It seems to be too many for me and my readers :), so it had better to close the least favored, according to the blog view statistics. And it happens to my Hacking Routine Dictionary blog as the coming retired. All the posts of obsolete blog will be moved to this blog in a tag of "Recommendations".
Goodbye my "Hacking Routine Dictionary" !

Video blog

I consider this blog as a video blog, as I will post many my favorite video clips here, created by me or someone else. I found that short video clips have extremely strong impact on inspiring and motivating me, therefore they should be some valuable entries for us. Interestingly, my video blogging is really a popular tendency around the world which is called as video blog or vblog. So, I am not alone :) All my video clips will be tagged as vblog for easier tracing. Cheers,

The machined precision dice

For more details: Kickstarter Page

The gravity clock

For more details: Kickstarter Page

The Claytheist

For more details: Kickstarter Page

A weird wedding

The groom is at the age of twenty five. The bride is at the age of nineteen. They've never known to each other, until the groom's father made some efforts to contact the bride's family and a happy wedding ended up quickly after a short meeting between two families. Although it is quite strange nowadays, when people encourage mariage based on volunteer love, there seems to be nothing sad or complaint here. It's simply because they seems to match to each other, and to both families as well, to some extend.
Happy young couple :)

I start blogging

The title is what I am to inform you: I finally start an English blog after many fail trials.
Hello blog world ! Hello 2013 ! Hello my twenty eight ! in Western calendar of course :)
Today should be a right time to start something new, not only to record what will come to my bullshit life, but share what happened to me as well, including shames and regrets, successes and failures. My goal for this blog will be quite modest: keep it alive as long as I can. Here is my intended topics to cover in next few entries:
- What did I learn from my 4 first working years after university?
- How is it difficult for Viet start-ups to survive?
- Our parents are not wrong at all (and absolutely not out-of-dated or stubborn)
- What do I expect from Internet to benefit our next generation?

At present, I intend to categorize my posts into some following topics:
- Chores: My daily stories
- Debates: My points of view on some popular issues, especially on start-ups, new grads, etc.
- Inspirations: Mostly in the form of short video clips which really inspire me.
- Tagging: explains why I invent a new tag