Sweet! A nice review of Curio Core 7.4.3 at Macworld.

If you want to get the best of your next massive project, consider Curio Core a great place to start.

Guest Post: The Lawyer's Briefcase

The following in a guest post from one of our customers:

CURIO - THE LAWYER'S BRIEFCASE FOR THE MODERN AGE

Curio is the only program I have found suitable to my needs as an Advocate (Barrister, "trial lawyer"). 

I work with "briefs" - files of documents relevant to each case in which I am involved. Without Curio, I would have been forced to carry these between my office, home, and the court, in a "briefcase," and most probably, one at a time, given their weight and volume. With Curio, these briefs are, instead, stored on my Macbook Pro. These are not merely "stored," in fact - but they are made more easily accessible, and can be brought to bear more effectively in the practice of law. 

Of course, anyone with a scanner would be able to store electronic copies of documents on a laptop computer. Curio, however, gives one the means to interact with, and APPLY, those documents in an efficient and elegant manner. 

George has invited me to explain how I, as a lawyer, use Curio in my daily practice, and I am only too happy to oblige. I look forward to reading about how other professionals use Curio in their daily lives. 

The practice of law requires that one get to grip with mounds of paper. By "get to grip with," I mean:

(a) physically lug around; 

(b) cross-reference;

(c) search

(d) categorise

(e) and, crucially, bring to bear when it matters most. 

Documentary information, whether it is in the form of a disputed item of correspondence between warring litigants, or a copy of a judgment which one wishes to use as ammunition in advancing one's own case, or a summary of the evidence which (one hopes) a witness will give in court, is the material which a trial lawyer must absorb, and then bring to bear. Storing something is useless unless one is able to find it later, and use it. 

If one has access to a good scanner, one is able to turn these mounds of paper into PDF files. These PDF files can then be converted into searchable resources by means of the use of a program such as ABBYY Finereader. 

These PDF files can then be imported into a Curio project in various ways-  by simply dragging and dropping them into an idea space, or by saving, dragging, or printing them to Curio's scrapbook (from virtually any application), and then dragging them into the idea space in question. 

Curio enables one to organise these documents with reference to sections, folders, sub-folders, and idea spaces. 

The real ace up Curio's sleeve, which, in my view, no other program is able to match, is the ability to "spread" these PDF files across idea spaces. Each page can then be manipulated in various ways, all of which will require creativity on one's own part (and thus - perhaps - engender some degree of enjoyment). For example, each page of each PDF file can be marked up with highlighting, and excerpts of relevant portions of a document can be copied and pasted into other idea spaces (with, for example, the use of the excellent program "ScreenFloat"); 

More importantly, each page (idea space) or asset (eg "figure", such as a shape) can be referenced by means of a hyperlink which can be copied and pasted into other documents and, crucially, task managers such as Things or - my new favourite - Flow, which, when clicked (system-wide), will open that particular page and highlight that particular figure; 

Figures such as square brackets or text boxes can be inserted into each page at a particular location on that page, and can be referenced with a hyperlink, as I have just explained, or may form the destination for a clickable jump anchor which can be inserted into any other idea space in either the project in question, or any other Curio project;

One is thus able to, for example, construct a list of questions to be put to a particular witness, and, with reference to each question, link to a particular WORD or phrase, or page, which may be situated somewhere amongst thousands of other pages. One is in this way able to instantly cross-reference between the pages of one's brief - provided one has done the necessary preparation beforehand!

The process of inserting jump anchors in this manner, in fact, comprises the bulk of one's preparation.

One is left with a totally digitised brief, which is completely searchable, either within Mac OS' preview application, or with Curio's own search function (located in the "Shelf"). 

Crucially, one might - hopefully - arrive at court with some degree of assurance that one, literally, has the relevant documents at one's fingertips, with a tap of one's trackpad. 

There are many other ways in which Curio can assist one to manage documentary information (eg by way of the insertion of tags or other meta-data), but the workflow I have described forms the basis of how I collate, organise, and analyse the documents which literally comprise my daily bread. 

Organising PDF files via the Finder is simply not efficient enough. Carrying around a selection of scanned PDF files on either a Macbook or an iPad will not allow one to bring that stored information to bear. Only Curio, in my view, gives one the tools to APPLY the information which one has put into it. 

I look forward to Curio 8 with eager anticipation (even though I would be happy to use Curio 7 for the foreseeable future). Thank you, George, for developing such a wonderful product. 

Adv. M.M. Swain

Status

I just wanted to give everyone a quick update.

Progress is going very well on Curio 8, however it looks like it won't be out for a few more months. I'm hoping for a late Summer release. Perhaps when Mountain Lion is released. ;-)

Curio 8 has a brand new UI and I've moved all the code to the latest Xcode and Lion's frameworks. Yes, that means Curio 8 will require Lion at a minimum. Getting all of this going has taken a lot longer that I anticipated but it's going to be well worth it in the long run.

I'll post some more updates soon. Thanks to everyone for their patience. :-)

Holiday MAS sale!

Happy holidays everyone! To celebrate, we're having a 50% off sale on Curio Core through the end of the year only at the Mac App Store.

This is a perfect opportunity to enjoy Curio Core at a super-low price. And, don't forget, you can always crossgrade to Curio Standard or Curio Professional at any time if you need more advanced features.

Curio Core has had an amazing time at the Mac App Store since appearing back in June. It now has 82 ratings from around the world with an average rating of 4 1/2 stars! Fantastic!

Here are some of the great comments posted at the Mac App Store:

I am working on a PhD and am writing my preliminary exams. I have struggled through many papers, not knowing how to organize all I read. This app has been wonderful. I never knew how important it was to me to be able to see things! Taking notes that I can look at together has made a huge impact!!! I love it!

Plus:

I'm an organizational freak. I'm also a graphic designer who creates custom organizers. I have been searching for an application for YEARS what would allow me to create a digital organizational system to rival my paper based ones. I've tried EVERYTHING... Nothing I have ever used works as well as this program does, plus the deisgn elements are fabulous... THIS IS A GREAT PIECE OF SOFTWARE AND WORTH MORE THAN TWICE THE PURCHASE PRICE.

And:

If you've used mindmaps, but are annoyed at the restrictive format, or have struggled to keep track and make sense of all the random infomation you collect in research projects, or want a cool way to document meetings and workshops, this IS the app. Quite simply, very cool!

Here's another one:

As a senior in college, I would strongly recommend this program to any students who may have trouble keeping their ideas organized (or who take notes which confuse themselves sometimes). I would also strongly recommend this program to anybody who's job requires presentations and presenting ideas because this program will help your audience to better understand the relationships between ideas and the logic behind your proposed resolution. I own my own sole-proprietorship and this program has helped me to organize alot of my future business ideas, which has opened up the opportunity to succeed in the future.

And finally:

I have to say, after spending one day with this app, I upgraded to the Pro version (go to web). I can't say enough good things about it. I am in organizational heaven! Whatever your project needs are this program can handle them. I love that you can make it as simple or as layered as you want. It's a one stop shop to gather all your bits and pieces, from professional to personal to create a cohesive, logical and beautiful digital notebook environment. Plus, my experience with customer service was excellent! A few steps are needed to upgrade from the app store version and on a Sunday ( anticipating a reply email on Monday, if I was lucky ) I received quick and personal attention with a resolution in a matter of minutes. Thanks G and all the support staff! Curio is a winner. There are too many application details to put down in this review, just get the core version and take the tutorial and start playing, if you have one of those minds that loves to see the Big Picture or you just need to clear the cobwebs of ideas, thoughts and everything else in-between, this is the app for you.

:-)

So, enjoy the festive season and go buy Curio Core today!

Happy holidays!
George

Black Friday / Cyber Monday sale!

Zengobi is having a Black Friday / Cyber Monday sale!

Curio new and upgrade licenses are on sale for 25% off beginning now through Monday (November 28th, 2011).

Simply use the coupon code "CYBER" when you make your purchase from the Zengobi online store or academic store.

Happy Thanksgiving from Zengobi! :-)

Hand-sketched symbols

This morning an interesting post appeared in The Mind Mapping Software Blog:

Want to add some hand-drawn elements to your mind maps? Then check out this new collection of over 700 hand-drawn symbols...

The article references a collection of icons which look like hand-sketched graphics instead of the high-gloss images you normally see. Adding them to a mind map makes it look less formal and more appropriate for a project notebook environment like Curio.

Curio supports extensible tags with associated images so adding these icons to Curio is incredibly quick and easy:

1. Download the icons from http://doodlekit.imagiag.com/. You can choose either the free 32x32 PNG files (the link is at the top-right corner of their page) or purchase the vector versions which would produce nicer high resolution images.
2. In Curio, choose the Curio > Preferences menu item then click the Tags icon.
3. Type in a new tag set name, like Doodle, and click Add to create it. Your new Doodle tag set should be automatically selected.
4. Go back to the Finder and select all the images in the downloaded image folder. Drag all of them to the right-pane of the Tags window in Curio and drop them.
5. All the images will be instantly snarfed into Curio. Each tag name is simply the image's file name, but you can rename the ones you like and optionally give them keyboard shortcuts for easy tagging. You can also remove the ones you don't think you'll use via the Delete key.

You can now use these new tags anywhere in Curio: mind maps, lists, tables, or even your standalone figures. Enjoy!

More Dropbox tips

Every couple of days I get an email from a customer about Curio and Dropbox. The ability to share Curio projects between machines or between other users is a very cool feature. And I recently discussed some tips here on this blog to make the process easier and more robust.

Last night, David Pogue of the NY Times posted a new article describing how he used Dropbox to send Word documents for the chapters of his new book between himself, his copy editor, his technical editor, his graphic designer, and the various proofreaders. He includes this wonderful tip:

After editing, she’d add her initials to the file’s name; its name changed in my First Drafts folder, too, so I knew she was finished with it.

Renaming the document title is a very clever idea that gets around the "is anyone editing this document?" problem. It doesn't allow for simultaneous editing of course but it's an easy solution for one-editor-at-a-time workflows.

I can imagine a similar renaming technique with a shared Curio project.

For example, if I want to work on a shared project I can rename it to "Group Project-gb.curio". I make sure that sync goes up to Dropbox by watching the Dropbox icon in the menu bar. As the sync goes out to the team they all see a Dropbox notification that the project has been renamed. Then I can edit the project, even offline on a plane.

When I finish with my edits I can rename it back to "Group Project.curio". Everyone on the team gets another Dropbox notification letting them know I'm done and they can view the project to see my changes. Then someone else can edit the project if they'd like.

It's not a perfect solution — it'd be cool if Curio could do this automatically — but it is a pretty slick technique that might work for lots of Curio users out there. Feel free to share more tips here in the blog or via email.

Steve

As a kid, I learned to program on Apple II's in elementary school. In 1984, at the age of 16, I used my summer job savings (plus some extra from my Dad) to purchase my first computer: a 128k Mac. In 2002, Mac OS X inspired me to start Zengobi. Later that year my 5GB iPod re-awakened my interest in music. Today, my iPhone manages my incredibly hectic life and our iPads entertain and enlighten our kids.

Thank you Steve for making my life so wonderful.

Wacom Inkling

The Wacom Inkling looks incredibly cool:

If someone gets this before I do then send me a note. I'd love to know what you think about it.

Mind mapping edge

Click for a fantastic info-graphic from the MindMapping Software Blog based on their annual survey of mind mapping professionals.

The nature of work has evolved during the last five years-becoming more complex, fast—paced and creative—and mind mapping software is uniquely positioned to help knowledge workers handle these changes. That's the unmistakable message from this year's Mind Mapping Software Trends survey.

Lion: Curio Core MAS special!

Lion's officially out and it's fantastic. I've been using it since the first dev build and love all the new features. Well, I have to admit that it took me a few days to get used to the reverse mouse scrolling, but now I love it. :-)

Curio 7.4.2 works great on Lion so visit the Mac App Store to download Lion today!

And to celebrate Lion's release, we're offering our Curio Core product at the Mac App Store for 50% off. That's just $19.99USD which is a remarkably low price. But act quickly as this is only for a limited time. Buy it today!

(Don't forget: you can always crossgrade from Core to Standard or Pro if you'd like more power-user features, see our online store for details.)

Copy. Transform. Combine.

If you haven't already, you should stop what you're doing and check out Everything is a Remix Part 3 which is the latest video in Kirby Ferguson's wonderful series about creation and innovation.

I wholeheartedly agree with his three basic elements of creativity: copy, transform, and combine.

The video does an excellent job at describing how those elements work together to produce innovation. One of his detailed examples is the the fabled history of the Apple Macintosh.

Well produced and well worth your time. Enjoy!

Images for your Curio tags

I recently stumbled across another fantastic listing of icon sets that Curio customers may want to check out.

25 Fresh Icon-Sets for Web Designers

Check out the sites listed, download the icon sets (preferable high resolution PNG versions) and then drag-and-drop the individual image files from the Finder into Curio's Preferences > Tags image well to associate an image with a tag you've created.

Enjoy!

Dieter Rams: good design

The 10 Principles of Good Design by Dieter Rams has been making the rounds on the blogosphere lately. Apple's Jonathan Ive gets a lot of his inspiration from Dieter Rams with his minimalist product designs and concepts.

This topic seems appropriate for a number of our Curio customers so I thought I'd include it here as well.

1. Good design is innovative.
2. Good design makes a product useful.
3. Good design is aesthetic.
4. Good design makes a product understandable.
5. Good design is unobtrusive.
6. Good design is honest.
7. Good design is long-lasting.
8. Good design is thorough, down to the last details.
9. Good design is environmentally-friendly.
10. Good design is as little design as possible.

I encourage you to read the original posting to see associated images and additional details regarding each topic.

Crossgrading from the MAS

We've had quite a few customers crossgrade from Curio Core purchased at the Mac App Store to either Curio Standard or Curio Professional.

Here's how you do it:

1. First, please do us a huge favor and rate and comment Curio Core at the Mac App Store. At the time of this writing we only have a single comment even though we've been in the top 20 productivity tools for over a week. So we need your assistance in spreading the word!
2. Next, forward your Mac App Store email receipt to sales@zengobi.com.
3. We will issue you a temporary license key that you will need to make your crossgrade purchase. Check your spam filter for any messages from zengobi.com!
4. After you receive your temporary license key from us, head over to the Zengobi Store.
5. Click the Upgrade License radio button.
6. Choose a crossgrade option like "Crossgrade to Curio 7 Pro from Curio 7 Core". Notice the crossgrade price is discounted from the full price. For example, the $169.99 Curio Pro is only $130 as a crossgrade.
7. Use the temporary license key information to fill out the "Prior Purchase Information For Upgrades" portion of the form.
8. Then continue on with your payment information.

Once completed you should receive your new license key in just a couple of minutes. Be sure to check your spam filter for any messages from zengobi.com!

Just to be clear, future updates to your new Curio application will come from Zengobi, not from the Mac App Store.

Please send us an email if you need any assistance.

Mac App Store, Wow!

What a fantastic success!

Last week Curio Core hit #27 on the Overall Top Grossing chart and #8 on the Top Grossing Productivity chart.

This week we're listed at the top of the New & Noteworthy section on the main Mac App Store page. Woo hoo!

A big thank you for all the comments coming in through email. I'm glad everyone is enjoying Curio Core so much!

Now I have a HUGE request: can you also make a comment and give a rating for Curio Core at the Mac App Store? That will help get others excited as well. Thanks!

Click here to jump directly to Curio Core entry at the MAS.

The first comment at the MAS mentions something I'd like to address. Since I can't reply within the MAS system I'll address it here and hope they see it:

Would give 5 stars if it can save everything as a multiple page document .. instead of putting everything on one page (when exporting as PDF).

Fortunately you can! Normally when we export or print we scale each idea space down so it fits on a single printed page. However, when you choose Export As > PDF just uncheck the "Fit each idea space to a single printed page" checkbox. That way it will spread itself over as many printed pages as necessary with no scaling.

Again, thanks for all the emails and submitted feedback forms (via the Curio > Provide Feedback menu). I'm happy to welcome all the new Curio Core customers to the ultra-cool and friendly Zengobi community.

Curio Core at the Mac App Store!

We just released Curio Core, a very exciting new "app-sized" version of Curio with the essential features that everyone loves. You get the amazingly innovative freeform idea spaces, full-featured mind mapping, lists, tables, etc. All for just $39.99.

And, it's available at Apple's Mac App Store!

You can download a 15-day trial of the product or check out the detailed product matrix to learn all the details.

Here's the press release:

Zengobi Introduces Curio Core at the Mac App Store
Zengobi Releases a Personal, App-sized Edition of Curio at a Wonderfully Low Price

RALEIGH, NC — May 16, 2011 — Zengobi today announced the availability of Curio Core, a personal, app-sized edition of their high-end Curio 7 Professional digital notebook application for just US$39.99 from the Mac App Store. The Core edition delivers one of the most amazingly intuitive integrated environments for freeform information gathering, brainstorming, and creative exploration to an even broader audience.

"We're thrilled to announce Curio Core and its availability on the Mac App Store," said George Browning, Founder of Zengobi. "We've had many requests for a more personal version of Curio so we've distilled the essential, core features of our amazingly popular Curio Professional application into a fantastic app-sized powerhouse. It's a perfect fit for the Mac App Store."

Curio Core's innovative notebook environment includes an incredible collection of integrated features:

• Freeform, place anything anywhere idea spaces with texture, notepaper, and grid styles.
• Rich text figures with flowcharting border shapes, multipoint gradient fills, and advanced shadow effects.
• Support for aliased or embedded files of any type including documents, images, movies, and other mixed media.
• Full-featured, integrated mind mapping with radial map, left map, right map, and org chart layouts.
• Lists, hierarchical outlines, and to-do lists.
• Index cards and note cards.
• Beautifully styleable tables for presenting tabular data.
• Multipoint straight, curved, and orthogonal sticky lines.
• Web links, WebArchives, and live web views including Google Docs views.
• Meta data support including tags, checkmarks, percent complete, priorities, and ratings.
• Advanced searching and a wide array of import and export options.

All for an amazingly low price of just US$39.99.

Details can be found at www.zengobi.com/curio/core.

Pricing and Availability

Curio Core version 7.4 is available immediately at for US$39.99 from the Mac App Store at www.zengobi.com/macappstore/curioCore or the Zengobi Store at www.zengobi.com/store/curioCore. Purchasers from the Mac App Store will get future updates directly from the Mac App Store, while purchasers from the Zengobi Store will receive them from Zengobi. The Mac App Store version requires Mac OS X 10.6.6 or higher, while the Zengobi Store version can run on 10.5 (Leopard) and higher on either PowerPC or Intel machines.

Curio Core can be downloaded as a 15-day trial from www.zengobi.com/curio/core and extended to a full 60-day trial upon request.

Press Resources

Press resources are available at www.zengobi.com/press including company and product logos and several Curio Core screenshots.

About Curio

Curio is the premier note taking, mind mapping, brainstorming, and task management application for Mac OS X designed to promote visual thinking. Using Curio's freeform interface and tools, you can intuitively gather, associate, and recall your ideas, while easily managing all the notes and documents associated with your project. Curio is available in several editions including Professional (US$169.99, US$89.99 academia), Standard (US$119.99), and Core (US$39.99).

For more information about Curio, visit www.zengobi.com/curio.

About Zengobi

Zengobi, Inc. was founded in 2002 to create exciting and innovative productivity software for Apple products.

For more information about Zengobi, visit www.zengobi.com.

(We need to see how the Mac App Store process plays out before bringing Pro and Standard to the MAS as well. In particular, we were hoping that Apple would permit an easy migration system for existing customers to move to the MAS as that's a common and huge support issue with other vendors but apparently that's not here, at least not yet.)

K-12 case study

If any teachers or students would like to chime in on how they use Curio in a K-12 environment then please send an email to george at zengobi. Over the summer a case study is being prepared to show how Curio can be used in the classroom.

Thanks!

George

Curio 7.4.1

We just released a minor update to Curio 7.4. It contains several fixes for bugs which have been reported either via email or our forums.

In addition it adds a handful of tweaks including better Mac OS X 10.7 Lion compatibility.

Be sure to check out the release notes to get all the yummy details.

Curio should notice the update automatically or you can choose Curio > Check For Updates from within Curio.

Enjoy!

Curio and Dropbox

For quite a while now, we have had many, many customers store their Curio project files directly to their Dropbox folder so they can quickly and easily sync their projects between multiple Macs.

Recently, however, we've had a handful of customers who have experienced a very odd issue with their Curio projects. It's almost as if some of the data within the project spontaneously rolled back to an earlier version. Idea spaces are suddenly gone and replaced with older versions of the idea space.

One common element for these customers is that they were storing their projects directly to their Dropbox folder.

While researching this issue I stumbled across a few other threads where other applications were having occasional issues with Dropbox syncing package files, including this thread over at Scrivener regarding their .sriv package files.

Package files? A Curio project file is actually saved as a package file. On the Mac this appears as a single file, however it's a actually a special kind of folder containing files (such as project assets) and other folders. Package files are natively supported by Mac OS X and is a technique used by many other applications as well. (In the Finder, right-click on a Curio project file and choose Show Package Contents to see what's inside.)

It could be that some of the files within the project package file weren't completely synced and that would cause a problem when Curio re-opened the project.

Some very important guidelines to follow when storing your Curio files to Dropbox:

1. Make sure you're running the latest Dropbox Mac client. Currently it doesn't appear to let you know if updates are available. To find our what version you have click on the Dropbox menu icon, choose Preferences, then click on Account. At this time the current version is 1.0.28. You can grab the latest Dropbox client here.
2. Never, ever open the same Curio project on more than one computer at a time.
3. Completely quit Curio on one machine before opening it on another to guarantee that all file changes have been committed to disk.
4. Make sure Dropbox has an opportunity to completely sync the changes up to the cloud. If you made lots of changes, added large assets, or have a huge project then this can take a while. The Dropbox icon in the menu bar will show an incredibly tiny animating graphic when it is syncing changes to the cloud. Wait for it to finish animating before putting your machine to sleep or shutting it down.
5. Do not open the project before your Dropbox folder is fully synced. When you start your machine or wake it from sleep make sure Dropbox is done syncing the changes back down from the cloud. Once again, just watch their little animating menu icon before launching Curio and opening your projects.

While these guidelines should help you work with Dropbox, remember that all products, services, and clouds aren't 100% perfect. So please make sure to follow common sense backup advice with all your important projects and data. Personally I use a combination of Time Machine, MobileMe Backup, cross-machine rsync replication, and Dropbox for all of Zengobi's most important items.

Bell's weird sketchbooks

A fantastic article from The Atlantic showing off "Alexander Graham Bell's Delightfully Weird Sketchbooks."

Bell's drawings are expressive in ways that few technical sketches are. Little flourishes and annotations make paging through his drawings a delight.

I think he would have loved Curio. :-)

Those kinds of brainstorming sketches are precisely why brushes and pens are supported in Curio Professional. Even if you're not an artist, it's frequently easier to sketch out an idea than to try to describe it with words.

Pixar's creative process

I loved this write-up on Pixar's creative process, which is described as "going from suck to non-suck":

But finding ways to fail quickly, to invest less emotion and less time in any particular idea or prototype or piece of work, is a consistent feature of the work methods of successful creators.

In particular it was interesting that they start with storyboards, not with scripts. Only after iterating through tens of thousands of storyboard pages do they begin script writing. Those constantly change as well.

This process of moving from suck to non-suck continues to the very last stage of production. Constantly iterating, perfecting, and listening to feedback. Internally motivated, heathy perfectionism.

Curio 7.4

Curio 7.4 just strolled out the door with lots of good tweaks and fixes which I'm sure you'll all enjoy.

Certainly the first thing you'll notice is a brand new icon courtesy of the amazingly talented cuberto! The fine detail wowed all the designers at dribbble when he posted the preview. We love it too! (Click the icon for a 512x512 closeup.)

All the new enhancements and bug fixes are based on emails and postings in our forums so we wholeheartedly appreciate all your feedback.

Choose Curio > Check For Updates to download it and enjoy!

Engaging your students

Over the weekend I watched a fascinating TED talk from Dan Meyer, shown below. In the video Dan talks about the need for a more interactive and engaging teaching method. He demonstrates this with an engineering/math problem which is presented to the class using a simple movie, with no numbers, charts, or formulas! The students dive into the problem using intuition and reason to come up with the next steps, instead of being guided by a textbook towards a predetermined formula.

Teaching with multimedia is a wonderful idea when it fosters creativity. Combining multimedia with a problem project where student teams actively participate in discovering the solution is wonderfully innovative.

Yesterday, I was forwarded a link to this article in Edutopia by Thom Markham. Here Thom makes a strong case for creative, project-based, group learning activities. This makes a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) program much more dynamic and effective in the classroom. Dan Meyer's math course is certainly putting this methodology to practice!

In email discussions with educators using Curio, I've learned that teachers and students are taking full advantage of Curio's multimedia, project-based features. For example, teachers can create idea space templates containing embedded videos detailing an experiment or project. The template also includes questions that the team should ask themselves to get their minds racing. Plus tables and text areas for observations, notes, and video responses (recorded from within Curio). The whole thing can then be emailed back to the teacher or posted in HTML form.

Creating problems for students to solve is not hard, but presenting them in a way that engages and excites each student into active participation requires innovative thinking and solutions.

Zengobi: Education + Innovation

I had a wonderful lunch yesterday with a couple of good friends: Steve Peha from Teaching That Makes Sense (web, twitter) and Margot Carmichael Lester from The Word Factory (web, twitter).

We talked about innovation and technology in K-12 schools; a topic very near and dear to me for quite a few reasons.

First, I've always had a strong interest in schools and education. I loved being a student. I loved acquiring knowledge. I loved working with smart peers and inspirational instructors.

Second, since forming Zengobi I've always wanted to encourage Curio's use in the K-12 community. Why? Because it's a totally awesome environment to collect ideas, brainstorm, take notes, and organize everything. This dream has culminated in Zengobi's new incredible, low-cost annual site license plan for domestic and international K-12 schools.

Last, not to sound too sappy, but I've got kids. I want them to love going to school as much as I did. I want schools to be an exiting, fun, innovative environment where my kids (all kids!) can thrive.

My talks with Steve and Margot will certainly be an ongoing occurrence as I get hooked into the politics and mechanisms of education. Expect more posts in the future as I acquire and share this new knowledge with all of you. :-)