From shopping advice to walking devices, startups with UW ties show off their successful ideas

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The entrepreneurial talent coming out of the University of Washington was on full display Tuesday evening at the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science and Engineering. For the fourth installment of the Seattle Tech Meetup, five local startups with UW ties gave five-minute pitches to a crowd of more than 200 on the UW campus. But perhaps… Read More…

UW partners with non-profit edX to offer free online courses

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In another attempt to help expand university-level instruction access on a wide scale, the University of Washington announced a new partnership Tuesday with edX, an online learning platform founded by MIT and Harvard that provides Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. MOOCs are online courses that use streamed lectures, auto-graded exams and peer-led collaboration to bring free courses from elite… Read More…

Bill Gates: Like athletes, teachers need their Vince Lombardi or John Wooden

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To improve upon something, we must learn, and to learn, we often seek guidance from others. For example, Michael Jordan received hoops help from his incredible coaches Dean Smith and Phil Jackson. To sharpen his bridge skills, Bill Gates sought out the advice of professional Sharon Osberg. But, as Gates details in his latest TED talk, teachers… Read More…

Northeastern Univ. CEO: ‘Gaming in Seattle is a submarine industry’

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Tayloe Washburn gets excited when talking about Seattle as a gaming hub. He also knows how many people play video games — 170 million — and what that could mean for the education and healthcare spaces. So it comes as no surprise that Northeastern University’s Seattle branch is introducing a new program that focuses on gaming…. Read More…

College grads would rather work at Microsoft over Amazon, Facebook

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Maybe it’s the wacky and awesome commercials they’ve been putting out. Or it could be company’s reputation as an impressive charitable organization. Whatever the reason, college grads seem to want to work at Microsoft over places like Amazon and Facebook. That’s the finding from Universum USA, a global research and advisory company for employers that… Read More…

This startup builds apps for a million customers that learn in bite-sized snacks

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Technology is certainly changing and improving how people are educated today, and one Seattle startup is well on its way to providing apps that help us learn with our new gadgets. Founded by Microsoft vet Kalpit Jain, WAGmob debuted in December 2010 and has grown into a successful 50-person operation. The company just announced that it… Read More…

PolyDrop turns paint into conductive coatings, wins $10K at UW environmental challenge

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College students are saving the world. Well, maybe not all of them. But the teams that participated in last week’s Environmental Innovation Challenge at the University of Washington are certainly impressive by our standards. Teams from universities and colleges around the Northwest congregated at the UW to pitch their innovations that addressed energy, urban agriculture,… Read More…

A non-creepy Craigslist: CampusWall rolls out a safer marketplace for college students

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We’ve all encountered those questionable Craigslist ads: one person looking for an “R. Kelly Impersonator,” another selling a portable stripper pole — the list goes on. Personally, when I see an ad posted by a man who is “Unemployed. Short and bald. Chubby and pale with small features.(hands feet ears) Dominating, picky and judgemental. Sometimes… Read More…

The future of education: What entrepreneurs need to know about entering the e-learning space

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The education space is a promising field that has garnered tons of investor attention. The numbers don’t lie: education technology raised $1.1 billion in 2012. But can anyone predict what the world of education will look like by the year 2020? What should entrepreneurs be cautious of if they choose to enter this $600 billion business?… Read More…

Advice from a dropout: Bill Gates says colleges need to fix the graduation problem

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So you probably would not take advice about college education from a person who dropped out of school — unless, of course, that certain someone was Bill Gates. The Microsoft co-founder who dropped out of Harvard to start his own company spoke about his concerns with the American higher education system Wednesday night at the… Read More…