Elance skilled up and smarter launches Elance University


The shift towards career and skills-focused content and models in digital education has begun to achieve momentum currently, and last week, it got another boost as Elance, one among the biggest on-line staffing platforms (for freelancers), declared that it might be launching a replacement “skill assessment platform” which will embody access to over twenty,000 courses and tests. essentially, the new platform aims to attach on-line education, ability assessments and job search, transferral these key items and markets along in one portal.

To make this doable, Elance has partnered with 2 education startups: One being SkilledUp, a hub for on-line courses that's on a mission to arrange the world’s on-line instructional content, parson it and create it simply searchable. especially, the startup focuses on skill-based learning content — the type that truly helps irndividuals gain marketable, in-demand skills.

Everyone is aware of that the academic system within the U.S. hasn’t modified a lot of in, oh, the last a hundred years. which there’s plenty of inertia inside the system, chew the gears and deceleration its transformation. however instead of modification for change’s own sake — or as a result of everything technology will is great! — this system simply isn’t operating any longer. Drop-out rates square measure “too damn” high, as is that the value of education and student debt, particularly considering the actual fact that U.S. students square measure underperforming across the board.

But, really, the matter isn't simply that too several students square measure failing scientific discipline (though that's a problem), it’s that this system is doing a terrible job of fulfilling one among its core goals: obtaining you employment. Google, AT&T and a number of on-line education organizations have extremely began to get the ball rolling with a replacement (still unfolding) alliance which will specialize in developing standards for career readiness, a way to higher prepare and judge graduates and “help on-line education suppliers produce courses, tests and certificates meant to supplement the utilization of a school degree within the hiring method,” as Greg explained last month.

Google followed that up period agone by formation a partnership with non-profit, MOOC supplier edX to make MOOC.org — a web site wherever any organization, non-profit, business or individual are going to be ready to post and consider courses. the first goal is to open the doors a lot of broadly speaking to video-based education, however conjointly to supply a lot of career homework and coaching content.

SkilledUp are going to be providing the content and, by partnering with Elance, can provide freelancers access to a syllabus that covers over five hundred ability areas and 20K courses, 6K of which can be out there for free of charge, together with “many brazenly authorized  college-level courses.” The skills-testing, on the opposite hand, are going to be provided by Smarterer.

The Boston-based, venture-backed startup offers a crowdsourced assessments platform and technology that enables job searchers to quickly brag their “skillz” and employers to guage those “skillz,” are going to be providing — you guessed it — the assessments. Through its partnership with Elance, Smarterer can provide freelancers access to many assessments, through that they’ll be ready to quickly live and quantify their skilled skills.

The startup’s technoloy incorporates adjustive rating and crowdsourced take a look at style in an endeavor to optimize potency and accuracy in assessment and, in turn, to enhance the historically tedious, slow and ego-shrinking hiring method.



It’s a comparatively advantageous three-party deal, as each Smarterer and SkilledUp currently have access to Elance’s a lot of expansive reach, that these days includes 800K businesses and a couple of.8 million freelancers. Enterprises and startups use Elance as a talent pool, wherever they will quickly assemble groups of developers, graphic designers or writers to figure part-time, on a specific project and then on. Meanwhile, it offers those job searchers some way — in theory — to search out steady (mostly quality) work, earn a living and find exposed to totally different corporations and employers.

In turn Elance, gets access to Smarterer’s assessments and SkilledUp’s content.

Great, however why will this matter? For starters, it’s important that one among the world’s largest contract marketplaces is starting to supply digital education resources to assist its manpower brush informed new skills. “Everyone keeps asking the worth of on-line education and the way it’s really reaching to become a true business,” Smarterer co-founder and business executive Dave Balter tells ME. “I assume this is often however it starts — once the animal tissue is in situ with employment, we’ll see a higher instructional system, and business, begin to emerge.

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BlackBerry Signs Letter Of Intent To Go Private For $9 Per Share In Deal Valued At $4.7 Billion

2013-09-23_10h52_26Today BlackBerry declared a $9 per share supply for its outstanding stock, a deal value around $4.7 billion. The $9 per share worth could be a slight premium over its current stock worth, that listed at $8.23 before it absolutely was halted unfinished the news.

BlackBerry had declined quite five p.c on the day. Fairfax monetary, that offered the $9 per share deal, already owns regarding ten p.c of the company’s stock. BlackBerry’s board has approved the dealing, and a letter of intent has been signed. This looks like a fairly a lot of done deal.

However, the board is receptive rival offers as long as they're “alternatives superior to the current proposal from the Fairfax pool.” Fairfax can pursue funding for the deal from, in line with the discharge, Bank of America Merrill kill, and BMO Capital.

There is a kill fee of $0.30 per share if BlackBerry backs out and accepts a distinct bid.

BlackBerry had regarding $2.8 billion in money and equivalents at the top of its most up-to-date quarter. That, paired with no matter price its holding may retain, implies that the worth of its business operations is vanishingly little. The $9 per-share worth for BlackBerry is a smaller amount than a ten p.c premium on its terms, calculated on a awfully, terribly dangerous day for the company’s stock. Expect some investors to be but enthused to examine the corporate exit for therefore very little.

It’s onerous to not read this because the finish of BlackBerry as we've famed it. Fairfax, to its credit, is golf stroke a brave face on the matter, stating that the deal can “open associate exciting new non-public chapter for BlackBerry, its customers, carriers and workers.” So, it claims to not have plans to interrupt the corporate into little items and pitch it off in chunks. Even more, Fairfax intends to “continue the execution of a semipermanent strategy during a non-public company with a spotlight on delivering superior and secure enterprise solutions to BlackBerry customers.”

If that's true, and Fairfax features a real commit to flip the corporate around, and maybe transmorgify it into a firm that pushes technology forward rather than reacting to its modification during a butterfingered fashion, a lot of power to that. BlackBerry seems set to hitch holler within the hopefully healing purgatory of life as a erstwhile public and currently non-public firm.

Gmail’s Ongoing Email Slowdown

gmailGood news! nowadays you'll be able to blame your non-responsiveness to any or all those vital emails you’ve been ignoring on Google itself. The company’s on-line email service Gmail has been experiencing problems resulting in delayed emails and attachments failing to transfer, the corporate confirmed. Earlier this morning, Google same AN calculable zero.24 p.c of its Gmail user base was littered with these issues, however in AN update discharged later this afternoon, the delays were same to being touching “less than fifty p.c of Gmail users.”

Given the expression of that announcement, it appeared like, at first, things were obtaining worse rather than higher. Gmail has some 425 million users, in step with a public announcement particularization the dimensions of its user base, that was disclosed last summer at its Google I/O developer conference.

Google has been providing regular updates relating to true throughout the day, the primary showing at 10:25 a.m. ET and noting that it absolutely was then beginning to investigate reports of a difficulty with Gmail. This was followed by AN update over AN hour later that conversant customers that delays were concerned and a few attachments were failing to load.

Updates discharged at 12:43 p.m., 1:45 p.m., 2:05 p.m., and 2:45 p.m. ET thus far solely same that the team is constant to analyze the matter and can update once there’s additional data obtainable.


At 3:00 p.m. ET, the corporate additional that the service has been repaired for a few users, ANd it expects full resolution inside an hour, however this point frame could modification. Google failed to say that share of the “less than fifty percent” of users has had service repaired.

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