Steve Wozniak announces tech education platform Woz U

https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/13/steve-wozniak-announces-tech-education-platform-woz-u/

by _nh_ • 9 years ago

578 114 9 years ago

peter303• 9 years ago

Some people dont know Woz spent some years as an elementary school math teacher after leaving his full time Apple job. So he as insight as a teacher.

KekDemaga• 9 years ago

Man I wish he was my math teacher, I probably would of been much more engaged back then.

matt4077• 9 years ago

I probably would of

Your english teacher wasn't very engaging either, I guess?

sjroot3• 9 years ago

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.

mosselman2• 9 years ago

Why not? How is teaching kids math different from teaching older kids CS and data science? I am curious, not trolling.

alexasmyths• 9 years ago

", I don't think experience teaching kids elementary math would really give anyone insight into teaching CS/data science topics."

I couldn't imagine any better or more relevant experience than that.

Teaching in the real-world probably gives you quite a lot of insight into the nature of learning. Math is pretty close to CS, of course, CS is a 'branch' of Math!

craftyguy• 9 years ago

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.

erikj• 9 years ago

Sounds a lot like the name of the Nintendo's gaming console.

godzillabrennus• 9 years ago

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.

vikp• 9 years ago

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.

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."

robotfactory• 9 years ago

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.

jpttsn• 9 years ago

So Woz’ strengths are marketing etc.? Always seemed that was precisely the part he didn’t play too well.

usrusr• 9 years ago

Can't announce it without taking a bit of a leap of faith, because there can't be a track record before announcement. Intentions are easy, execution is hard. Few bad schools started off with "bad" as a founding principle.

kpwagner• 9 years ago

He has a big heart. A few years ago Steve gave an interview with Patrick Bet-David, which was simply a marketing piece for Patrick's company, PHP Agency. PHP Agency is a financial firm founded on the power of "network marketing". The idea behind network marketing is to turn your social network into pyramid, positioning yourself at the top of the pyramid. I don't like network marketing companies, and I believe they are all sub-par. In this interview, which you can find on YouTube, Steve Wozniak described PHP Agency as a hit.

hkmurakami• 9 years ago

He's an idealist and "too good" of a person and believes in people too readily to be a cutthroat business guy. I can see a situation where he'd be talked into a situation you describe, because he doesn't have a personality that first questions others' motives and agendas.

jacquesm3• 9 years ago

There is a pretty long history of The Woz being taken advantage of, starting prior to Apple when his best friend ripped him off.

trzmiel4• 9 years ago

Other news are more clear about his actual involvement, e.g. http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171013005008/en/Appl..., http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-cofounder-steve-wozniak....

jonwachob912• 9 years ago

Neither of those links provide any insight on his actual involvement. They say roughly the same thing; 1) Wozniak announced today, and 2) Woz U is named after Wozniak. No mention of any substantial involvement.

jczhang• 9 years ago

If you read the article in your azcentral link, you'll see that Woz did announce Woz U himself.

komali2• 9 years ago

As johnwacho said, that doesn't indicate actual involvement.

philliphaydon2• 9 years ago

If his name is being used he obviously wants it to do well because he has some insentive in it. he wouldn’t use his name and want it to fail.

larrydag• 9 years ago

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.

agumonkey2• 9 years ago

Woz likes teaching I'd be surprised he sold his name for nothing else but money.

salqadri2• 9 years ago

Uhh; read this from the article: "And if that weren’t enough, Woz U will eventually introduce an accelerator program" - there is clearly a very heavy money dimension to this!

Arjuna• 9 years ago

"Woz likes teaching I'd be surprised he sold his name for nothing else but money."

I feel the same way. This is part of what he had to say in a comment [1] he wrote in 2013, discussing the then-released Jobs film. It absolutely speaks volumes about his character:

"And when Jobs (in the movie, but really a board does this) denied stock to the early garage team (some not even shown) I'm surprised that they chose not to show me giving about $10M of my own stock to them because it was the right thing. And $10M was a lot in that time."

I was unable to link to his comment directly. Also, I had to click the "View previous comments" link in order to view his comment.

[1] https://plus.google.com/+CarmsPerez/posts/GnVTvQNgvpf

DrJaws• 9 years ago

He sold his image to vodafone in spain, so, he could be having economic problems or just making an u-turn and selling himself to whoever is able to pay for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FL4cwcFmgY

jondubois• 9 years ago

Maybe Woz gave up on humanity and decided to cash in instead.

anonymous5133• 9 years ago

Agree, don't give this clown any of your information. This "startup" will do absolutely nothing and appears to simply be a marketing gimmick.

thoughtexprmnt• 9 years ago

No real mention here of what will differentiate this from existing "tech education platforms".

vthallam• 9 years ago

I mean at this point, it's hard to differentiate when you are launching a training school.

I think they are like completely banking up on the Woz name to get students and companies use their services.

jonwachob912• 9 years ago

We are only saying that b/c everyone is now doing the codecadmy/treehouse/codeschool style of training, with a slight twist.

I'd expect if a guy like Woz is jumping behind it, it should be INNOVATIVE. A new method of training that is better than what we have today. Similar to how code school/treehouse/codecademy were innovative 5 years ago.

adam12• 9 years ago

It seems out of character for Steve to use his name like this.

jonny_eh• 9 years ago

I hope it means he really believes in it.

neurotech12• 9 years ago

As mentioned by peter303 above, Steve Wozniak is an experienced elementary school teacher.

duxup2• 9 years ago

I'm not sure that means he is or isn't selling his name.

DonHopkins2• 9 years ago

The product endorsement thing worked out pretty well for Mavis Beacon. ;)

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.''

ankyth27• 9 years ago

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?

leggomylibro• 9 years ago

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...

GlennS• 9 years ago

I did the MITx Circuits and Electronics unit online and it was pretty good. The platform was a lot more advanced than Coursera's, including a little circuit designer tool with various probes and things.

hourislate• 9 years ago

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.

icebraining2• 9 years ago

You mean, like Facebook University? https://www.facebook.com/careers/university/fbu

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.

orb_yt2• 9 years ago

That looks to be just an internship.

duxup2• 9 years ago

What would that even look like?

vyrotek2• 9 years ago

I was surprised to read that Woz U will be based out of Arizona. That's pretty cool.

rconti• 9 years ago

How so?

sjroot3• 9 years ago

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!"

Anyway...back to work.

neurotech12• 9 years ago

Fair criticism. It's quite possible that Woz considers this a MVP and not the pinnacle of MOOC platforms.

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.

sjroot3• 9 years ago

I agree with the last point 100%. It seems that this Coder Camps company has experience running different programs in full stack development and data science, so I imagine they know what they're doing.

IBM2• 9 years ago

That's exactly what's happening here [1]. John Sculley stays in the press in the same way. In fact he got another hit just today [2].

[1] https://www.techinasia.com/talk/steve-wozniak-walking-billbo...

[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-best-recruiter-app...

vyrotek2• 9 years ago

I had a quick chat with someone involved to ask about the relationship. They said WozU and CoderCamps are both owned by the same parent company.

FabHK• 9 years ago

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.

Rotdhizon• 9 years ago

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.

tryingagainbro• 9 years ago

Will My Trump University credits transfer to this one?

bitmapbrother• 9 years ago

Most will. My credits on securing large credit reporting companies did not.

mikerg87• 9 years ago

Hard to see this without thinking about Steve Wozniak University.

https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Steve_Wozniak_Un...

icebraining2• 9 years ago

Folklore.org is such a great site, almost every story is a gem. Just clicking on the next left me with a smile on my face.

muthdra• 9 years ago

It should be called "Woz up?"

cgijoe• 9 years ago

U WOZ M8?

kbutler• 9 years ago

How will this not get pronounced "Wazoo"?

Though initial criticism of the name "iPad" died pretty quickly.

IBM2• 9 years ago

Wozniak has been a rampant self-promoter for years so this isn't a surprise to me at all. He'll put his name on anything.

https://www.techinasia.com/talk/steve-wozniak-walking-billbo...

kal444• 9 years ago

The article seems harsh. Maybe he just likes toys.

mgiannopoulos3• 9 years ago

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.

exogeny2• 9 years ago

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.

ZenoArrow• 9 years ago

You shouldn't imply such things without being willing to share the source.

Also, changes in personality do not automatically mean changes in intellect.

exogeny2• 9 years ago

You're weirdly inferring two things that I didn't come close to saying.

Again, while I don't know him personally, I hold in great regard people that do and am simply relaying what they've told me, which is that whatever the nature of the change happened, be it personality or intellect or interests or whatever, it set him on a different path and likely robbed all of us of whatever the fruits of his previous path would have borne.

arsalanb• 9 years ago

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?

jsjohnst2• 9 years ago

Would YOU hire somebody who just knew these things?

For an intern / very junior position, yes. For anything else, no.

tedmiston• 9 years ago

Most bootcamp grads go to big cos, especially outside of tech, and mostly not to startups.

toast0• 9 years ago

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.

shawndrost• 9 years ago

Woz U seems to be (at least in part) a rebranding of SCI/Coder Camps.

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• 9 years ago

I just love how the HN community says "huh, yeah let me verify that" and basically pulls the wool off the eyes...

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.

mgiannopoulos3• 9 years ago

What would be the problem of this? Are there any issues with Coder Camps?

salqadri2• 9 years ago

I thought this was a great initiative by Woz, until I read the tech accelerator part; I'm worried about the focus on making money off of this.

ShabbosGoy2• 9 years ago

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?

JosephLark• 9 years ago

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.

[0] http://theoreticalminimum.com

[1] http://theoreticalminimum.com/courses

[2] http://theoreticalminimum.com/references

jdmoreira• 9 years ago

I checked the curriculum and was so disappointed that it didn't start with 6502 assembly :/

jtokoph• 9 years ago

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.

https://twitter.com/stevewoz

adambyrtek• 9 years ago

It's probably because he uses Swarm (which is basically rebranded Foursquare checkins) connected to his Twitter account.

tonydiv• 9 years ago

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 :)

yvsong• 9 years ago

Should be named WoZu.

startupdiscuss• 9 years ago

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.

leadingthenet• 9 years ago

He's a sellout. Slapping his name on random things does not a good product make.

godelski• 9 years ago

The real question is, do we call it "Wazoo" or "Waz you"?

hbosch• 9 years ago

Not to be confused with "Wazzu", or, Washington State University.

https://www.google.com/search?q=wazzu

convexja• 9 years ago

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.

BlackEspresso• 9 years ago

Finally it's true: http://37prime.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Futurama-...

ireallydonot• 9 years ago

Is he very selfish person or just a hero ?

throwaway7645• 9 years ago

If I didn't trust Woz, I'd say it reminds me too much of when Trump U happened.

Steve Wozniak announces tech education platform Woz U

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