NBC iCue – A New Generation Of Education And Widgetizing Content

NBC recently launched iCue, an educational reference center and study website designed completely around widgets called CueCards.  The results, so far, are pretty amazing, and if the site catches on it could become a very exciting asset to classrooms everywhere.

The functionality of the site is built around video widgets which can be “snagged” so that they show up in your stack of CueCards.  You can search for CueCards by topic, or go through full course outlines in U.S. History, English & Composition, and Government & Politics.

Each of these CueCards is surprisingly interactive in itself.  As I said, they can be snagged, so that you can collect whatever cards you want.  They can be shared and traded with other users.  Click the tab on the right, and you get a full transcript of the video.  Click the bottom and add your own notes, tags, and comments to the card.  You can even add links to more information right on the card.  Click the upper right where it says “flip,” and the card turns over revealing information about the video, a description, and other information depending on the particular card.

When you snag a CueCard it goes into “My Stack.”  In your stack you can still customize things in a variety of ways.  You can color code your cards to create categories so that your cards will autosort themselves.  Then, for future Cards, color code it first, then snag it.  You can also view your snagged Cards by keywords you’ve added, or by those you’ve snagged from friends, or by Cards you have favorited.

Now that you have some cards, you can go to your profile page.  Your profile page shows your network of friends, and from there you can discuss and share cards, add notes to cards your friends have, or snag their cards.  Imagine a class let loose here, as their own network of friends, collaboratively exploring topics.

A Forum Tab takes you to a discussion forum, where all sorts of topics are discussed using the help of CueCards.  There’s even a daily thought starter which showcases something in the news, or an otherwise relevant topic to spark conversation.

At this point, the real brilliance of the site are the course pages.  Go to the page for any of the courses, and you are at the gates of several great learning tools.  There is a thought starter and a question of the day to get things rolling, and a course outline to take you to a dizzying amount of great information.  The course outlines are taken from, apparently, the College Boards Curriculum, and cover every subject (and sub-subject) a student will be looking for.  A couple of clicks and you’re watching videos, exploring documents, and a myriad of other things that cover just about anything.

For example – Click American Revolution and you get a few subheadings.  From there choose Imperial Crisis, Resistance to Britain, and you get four more subheadings, or you can just go to all the videos covered at once.

Now you can choose Cards.  A mini-documentary on the Battle of Lexington.  Read Rev. Ezra Stiles letter criticizing British governance, which has been made into its own CueCard.  Check out another mini-documentary on The Quebec Act.  And, make your way through 49 other cards which include videos, documents, and more.  That’s just in this one small category.

In the bottom left corner of the course page, you find a link to games iCue has created to test your knowledge of the subject using CueCards, and an area to practice for essays exams on the subject.  Practice timed essays, and open your essay to comment from your friends.  Any exams or activities you do in iCue will automatically have the same sharing and storing functionality you find in the CueCards themselves, and will go into a tab “My Work.”

The games available so far are pretty interesting, and work well with the general spirit of collaborative learning.  I’m sure there will be more to come, assuming iCue takes off.

iCue is a fun, collaborative, immersive learning experience, and I hope it really takes off in such a way that NBC will continue to expand on the concept.  I would love to see further subjects.  Science would fit particularly well, but a wide range of subjects could be given great treatment here.

But, iCue isn’t the whole story.  NBC is also trying to push the envelope on Widgets more generally, with their Widget-based distribution and promotion through NBCUWidgets

For fans of shows or news/gossip hounds, NBC is putting out Widgets to throw content every which way.  Here are just a few examples.  Check out their page and see what you can find.

Are You Screening?

For what it may be worth, though I play an entertainment critic on the internet, I have a degree in Secondary Education, and the learning style put forward here and its execution in particular have my full endorsement.  NBC is going to say MIT at you anyway, and that’s probably good enough, but collaborative, exploration-based, organizational “bite” learning has a lot of research supporting it.