Rick Hernandez - Lead Software Developer At Sparkki - Democratizing Access To Opportunity
Finding Genius Podcast
Richard Jacobs
4.4 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 18 July 2018
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sparkki is a Salt Lake City-based lightweight and fast Online Learning Management System created specifically to teach to a variety of learning styles, combining traditional education research with emerging technology to empower schools and businesses to effectively deliver results without a physical campus and to make sure that students and employees have the necessary skills to be globally competitive in the workforce.
Sparkki is built by educators, for educators. Whether the goal is to teach college students or factory employees, Sparkki utilizes proven educational theories, techniques, and practices, differentiating material for a variety of learning styles. Safe, secure, and supported by Amazon web services and blockchain technology, Sparkki is raising the standard of online education platforms.
Sparkki is also the only LMS system that is designed not just for use in the United States and Canada, but also for companies in emerging markets as well- specifically those in central and South America.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Almost Here, Around the Corner of Future Technology Podcasts with Richard Jacobs. |
| 0:07.0 | Future Technologies is to transform our lives for better or worse or the focus of this podcast. |
| 0:13.0 | Almost here means these technologies are now here and starting to be used. |
| 0:17.0 | Or just around the corner, for Bitcoin to artificial intelligence, |
| 0:21.0 | 3D printing, blockchain, virtual reality, and more. |
| 0:25.0 | Hello everyone and welcome to Future Tech Podcast. I'm your host Julia Lamar and joining us today is Rick Hernandez. He is the lead |
| 0:35.4 | software developer at Sparky. Welcome Rick. Hey, nice to have me. Why don't you go |
| 0:40.8 | ahead and give us a little bit of information about what Sparky is and what you guys are trying to accomplish over there? |
| 0:46.0 | Yeah, so Sparky is an online learning platform that is based around the blockchain. |
| 0:52.0 | And exactly why are we learning? |
| 0:53.9 | Yeah, so the whole premise, the whole idea of Sparky came about |
| 0:59.8 | was because I personally ran a online training program that helped new individuals transition into the area of software development. |
| 1:10.0 | So back in the day, 2015, we started this training program we graduated at approximately 500 students that would go from knowing little to know nothing about technology to lending a position |
| 1:23.5 | as a junior developer. |
| 1:25.3 | And we ran this program for about two and a half years. |
| 1:28.3 | And the big takeaways were from running |
| 1:31.4 | this entire training program was that online education is practically broken. |
| 1:36.0 | I don't know if you ever take any online courses, but the average completion rate for online courses is right around 10%. So typically people don't finish online courses. |
| 1:46.7 | Why do you think that is? |
| 1:48.1 | Yeah, well there's a couple of reasons why people don't finish them, but the big takeaway that we got from doing like over 90 interviews |
| 1:57.4 | with someone past students was that people are not really being held accountable for the information that's being |
| 2:04.6 | taught from both the instructor side and the student side. So it's really |
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