This is the time of year when we all look toward the future rather than the past and decide how we want to grow and change in the year to come. Whether you have a formal list of resolutions or just a general taking-stock moment, you probably do have a couple of big goals for 2013.

Me, I’ve decided that in 2013, I want to dress more professionally, write more in-depth long-form pieces, crochet blankets for Project Linus instead of playing Pocket Frogs during my winding-down-before-bed-time, and pray the rosary every day. And I’m counting on a couple of different apps, sites, and services to help me make it happen.

For your own goal-fulfillment needs and wants, here’s a great list of apps, websites, and cool services to help you become healthier, wealthier, and wiser in the new year.

Eating better

Farmigo for better food ingredients

Farmigo is a cool new service that will get local, farm-fresh produce and dairy products to you and a group of your friends and neighbors. Your group has to be at least 30 people strong, so think about pooling together with co-workers, PTA members, or any faith-based community members in your life.

Urban Remedy for juice cleanses

Urban Remedy won’t just cure your New Year’s Day hangover. This juice-as-a-service subscription will keep you healthy, energized, and fit throughout the year, no shopping or chopping required.

Fresh Dish and Hello Fresh for home cooking

Fresh Dish and Hello Fresh both meet the same need: our desire to cook at home and eat with our loved ones. These startups will help you by delivering fresh ingredients and recipes to your door. Each meal takes 30 minutes or less to prepare, plus you don’t have to do all the shopping and prep work.

Better relationships

Pair for your current relationship

Pair is your go-to app for building a stronger, sweeter bond with someone you already love (or double-plus-like). It will help you stay connected by sharing intimate moments and just-between-us messages throughout the day.

Seekly to find new romance

Seekly is a video speed dating app perfect for helping you find someone to spend your time — or even your life — with. Created by two professional, busy women, the site focuses on taking the creepy, time-wasting elements out of online dating.

At the Pool to make new friends

At the Pool isn’t about dating; rather, this startup wants to help the terminally shy among us to get out into the world and make new friends who share some of our interests.

Improving health and fitness

Noom for weight loss coaching

Noom is your personal fitness coach. This app will help you set goals, identify tasks, and track your progress.

Lumoback for better posture

Lumoback‘s premise is simple: We’re happier and healthier when we sit up straight. Its teensy, Band-Aid-like hardware and mobile app will keep your spine straight and better aligned. You mom would’ve loved this about 20 years ago.

Yog for jogging with buddies

Yog connects joggers and runners around the world in real time. Schedule the time and place for your jaunt, and get others to join you virtually. Yog provides audio and visual cues to connect you to your workout partners.

Striiv for step-by-step fitness

Striiv is an iPhone app that gives your fitness plans a big dose of metrics. This social pedometer tracks the steps you take and the calories you burn, then it can sync that data with your Facebook friends and other Striiv users to keep you competitive.

Learning new skills

Treehouse and Codecademy for coding

If you want to learn more about the web in 2013, look no further than Codecademy and Treehouse. Each of these services will teach you how to code. Codecademy does it for free from an interactive text entry box in the browser. Treehouse charges you and gives you a full library of video instruction from top-shelf teachers.

MindSnacks for languages

For learning other kinds of languages, there’s MindSnacks, a startup making iPad games for educational purposes. The bite-sized lessons come in cute packages with real educational value; it’s more than just a brush-up or crash course.

Coursera for college-level learning

Coursera isn’t some skeevy online degree mill. This startup offers “massive open online courses” in partnership with some of the top U.S. universities. You can study genetics with a Duke scientist, data computation from a Johns Hopkins data scientist, or world history from a Princeton professor.

Udemy for your downtime

Got a few minutes to kill? Want to do something more productive than Angry Birds? Try Udemy. Its iPad app will help you turn those few idle moments into learning opportunities.

Fixing your style

Fourth & Grand for gentlemen’s fashion & styling

One of my husband’s resolutions is to dress better in the new year. As a SOMA-dwelling tech founder, he’s surrounded by hoodies and jeans. So how to up the professionalism a notch, especially when styling outfits is a foreign language? Try L.A.-based subscription startup Fourth & Grand. They’ll send outfits and accessories and give you detailed advice on how to wear them.

Le Tote for ladies’ clothes

For the ladies, Le Tote helps you mix it up, sartorially speaking, without adding more clutter to your closet. This “Netflix for clothes” will outfit your new, infinite closet with outfits and accessories. It’s like living with a stylish roommate who has no personal budget and is exactly your size.

Birchbox for shine & polish

If personal grooming is high on your to-do list for 2013, try Birchbox, the startup that sends you sample-size beauty and lifestyle products and tips on how to use them. Gents, they’ve got manly boxes for you, too. You can try everything and buy what really works for you.

Dollar Shave Club for ‘f*cking great’ razors

We San Francisco women know why shaving is a New Year’s resolution-level goal: Between the pervasive chill and the pervasive leggings, we’d never do it if we didn’t force ourselves to. And a shiny, new box of razors from Dollar Shave Club just might be the motivation you need to get the job done.

Productive and professional

Asana and 24me to get things done

If you’re looking forward to a 2013 in which you get things done like a mofo, look to these two apps: Asana, a task-management godsend, and 24me, which will automate your entire life. Both of these apps eliminate work-about-work: meetings to plan meetings, hours spent making to-do lists and checklists. Instead, they help you focus on actually completing tasks and getting on with the fun parts of your life.

LinkedIn to stay connected & informed

LinkedIn had itself a big old redesign orgy this year. The result: An iPad app that’s both beautiful and useful, a suite of mobile apps that will help you stay in-the-know, and a new look and feel for its website that focuses on news in your industry. Spend a few minutes a day with LinkedIn, and you’ll probably look smarter, more connected, and more confident in the workplace.

Nutmeg to spice up your finances

Nutmeg is a simple solution for getting your financial life on track. This app will help you build and manage your personal investment portfolio, all while keeping your personal and financial goals in focus.

Pathbrite to kickstart your new career

Is 2013 the year you finally land your dream job? If a change would do you good, check out Pathbrite, which switches out your boring old resume for an interactive portfolio of your accomplishments. Show off a lifetime of education, special projects, promotions, and advances in a gorgeous micro-website you can show your potential employers.

Image credits: All via Flickr, creepyed, Edsel L, Shutter Daddy, kharied, besighyawn, evocateur, kristaguenin

Additional reporting by Christina Farr.

This sponsored post is produced by StackSocial.

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

This is a guest post by Troy Williams, President of Macmillan New Ventures

The past five years have seen a tremendous boom in education technology (“ed-tech”) startups that are pushing the boundaries of online and hybrid content delivery and learning experiences.

Unsurprisingly, investments in education technology have more than quadrupled from the time I founded my first edtech startup in 1998.

The result has been the emergence of a new teaching model, one that shifts content delivery beyond the walls of the classroom. We’re seeing big advances in adaptive learning platforms from established players like Knewton and upstarts like Brainscape and Cerego; YouTube and Sal Kahn are looking for ways to produce more instructional videos; and online course builders like Udacity, Coursera, and Peer2Peer University are democratizing instruction by way of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs).

The development of online, offline and hybrid learning environments, along with the spread of the flipped-classroom model, all fueled by the tremendous growth in ed-tech dedicated capital forces us to reevaluate student and instructor interactions when they are physically in the classroom.

The question now is: Considering all the recent advancements that push learning outside classrooms, what new innovations are being developed to help teachers engage students from within classrooms?

Embedding real-time data into the classroom

While the flipped-classroom has its advantages, it requires knowledge of what students have learned or accomplished in their time outside of class.

A common solution is to give a quick poll or quiz at the beginning of class to focus students’ attention on the material at hand and provide teachers with a sense of what the class understands, instantly, before in-class activity begins.

Devices take this one step further. Student Response Systems encourage engagement and provide instant feedback about learning and understanding. Instructors can ask a question at any time during a presentation or activity and students now have the ability to key in their response. Results can then quickly be displayed immediately to the instructor or the entire class.

Classic examples of these systems are Turning Technologies and Promethean ActiveExpression2, while newer companies like Class Dojo and Clever are doing some innovative work to make it easier to share data and record real-time feedback.

Devices and response systems are just one application of real time data applied in classroom. For example, a statistics class at UCLA used a response system to create an active learning environment by turning student responses into a data set for students to experience statistical concepts of distribution and variability. Real time data created in classroom, in this case, made the lesson more tangible for students while providing detailed engagement data back to the instructor.

New devices in the classroom give both student and instructor data to enrich the activity at hand. As devices permeate the classroom, students are primed to having more meaningful peer-to-peer interactions.

Classroom devices encourage peer learning

Teachers that leverage new classroom devices, such as an iPad or other tablets, can foster greater student-to-student interactions. These devices can be shared and passed around the classroom easily—they don’t require a keyboard or mouse ‘driver’ and keep students focused on the discussion and not the device itself.

We know that active inquiry, authentic debates and peer conversations are some of the best drivers for increasing student understanding. Even though hybrid and online learning environments do their best to build peer interaction and learning, nothing can quite replace the benefits of having students collaborating in a room together.

For example, question and answer services like Piazza allow both students and instructors to ask and answer questions, capturing and preserving the buzz around an in-class activity on smartphones and tablets. Digital textbooks from Inkling now can let students share notes and highlights from within their experience, and polling students [there’s a drafting bust here] during a lesson can serve as a jumping off point for small group debates or prompt discussions.

A summer program in North Carolina aimed at preventing student drop out is a standout example I’ve seen recently. Administrators equipped students with tablets and video production apps and tasked the students with creating a visual story over seven weeks. Devices combined with innovative curriculum help students improve their writing skills and reduces the risk of students leaving the program. Check out students using ShowMe to create lessons to share with their peers, or Storyrobe to create digital stories.

In addition to driving peer interactions and learning, devices can be used to virtualize activities and simulate demonstrations.

Simulations and interactive demonstrations can help

Typically, physical in-classroom demonstrations are too cost- and time-intensive to happen very often. Alternatively, many computer based simulations relegate students to a keyboard, mouse and screen, limiting peer interaction.

However, devices like 3D projectors and motion capture technology are becoming more widely assessable and can bring simulations and demonstrations to life by making them interactive and accessible to the entire class. For example, instructors can use 3D projectors to demonstrate a biology lesson by explaining anatomical structures and demonstrate physiological functions of organs, such as the heart. Students and instructors can revolve the image of the organ and expose cross sections to reveal different blood flows.

Probably the most well known example of these technologies becoming mainstream is the Xbox Kinect. Real Illusion’s iClone is used by teachers and students to simulate scientific principles like planetary motion, physics and machinery dynamics.

In another example, a teacher could set up an intentionally incorrect simulation of a chemical, mechanical, or biological process and ask students to manipulate it with their hands (using motion capture devices) until they corrected the error.

One high school in Cardiff, Wales has students use motion capture to conduct a virtual orchestra by waving a conductor’s baton, and learn foreign languages by moving parts of the body. Not only are the concepts brought to life in front of the entire class, but students can use the devices to put their skills to practice in a way that engages tactile and visual learners.

3D motion and video capture can also change the way distance learning is delivered and experienced. Check out this video of students attending a 3D virtual class where they can control their virtual images with gestures and their natural body motion.

How can we maximise classroom interaction?

Today’s classrooms are becoming truly interactive; in fact, they’re keeping pace right alongside the shift toward the flipped classroom. The list of examples goes on—and I encourage you to include other strategies in the comments.

Of course, none of this works without teachers, nor do these examples replace good teaching. But as it turns out, teachers aren’t as averse to using digital devices like tablets, clickers, and smartphones as you might think.

But this is more than just a “back to the classroom” call.

It’s about addressing the opportunities of the physical classroom and taking advantage of the invaluable time students and teachers have together. Imagine how powerful this can be: Empowering our students when they are in and out of the classroom to accelerate learning. We need is both of these learning models to address the real-world needs of our students and schools.

Troy Williams is President of Macmillan New Ventures, where he is responsible for identifying emerging technologies and trends that will have a major impact on student performance and outcomes. From 1998 to 2007, Troy was President and CEO of Questia Media, Inc., an early online electronic book offering that he founded and sold to Cengage Learning. 

Troy is an adjunct professor at NYU, where he teaches the capstone thesis course on starting new businesses in the Masters of Publishing program. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Rice University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He currently resides in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Top image courtesy of Kiselev Andrey Valerevich, Shutterstock

This sponsored post is produced by StackSocial.

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The round was led by GSV Capital, a firm that also has a stake in huge companies like Twitter, Facebook, and Zynga. Also participating in the round is Tim Crown, Insight.com co-founder.

Training employees in information technology is a long, costly, and deadly dull proposition. StormWind says it cuts both the time and price of such trainings in half. Also, it promises to engage learners with “movie-quality” instruction in two-hour sessions and hands-on labs.

For standard topics like Cisco and VMWare, companies can sign their employees up for existing classes. StormWind also creates custom courses for companies that need more specific types of instruction.

“E-learning 1.0 has been a complete and utter failure. It’s boring and painful to take,” said co-founder Tom Graunke in a statement this morning.

“Our one simple goal is to bring back the one-on-one engagement of great classroom learning with the cost effective pricing of e-learning.”

The startup will use the funding to further develop its technology, expand its course offerings, and hire 150 new employees over the next year and a half.

“StormWind has more potential to dominate the stodgy and boring training industry than I’ve seen in the last 15 years,” said Crown of the startup. “I was drawn to StormWind because I think they have something every enterprise is desperate for in this economy… a faster, more effective training alternative that produces better results for significantly less cost.”

The Phoenix, Ariz.-based startup was founded in 2009 by a corporate training specialist and an IT veteran, both of whom thought most corporate training programs lacked any semblance of real engagement (read: they were really, really boring).

So far, StormWind’s clients include the U.S. Navy, Budweiser, Sony, PF Chang’s, and Cisco. Together, these companies bring more than 40,000 employee-students to the StormWind platform.

Image courtesy of holbox, Shutterstock

The company’s tools allow students, teachers and administrators to communicate securely through established social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, and introduce game mechanics, analytics, and recommendation engines into the online learning experience.

ConnectYard was founded in 2007 and is based out of Wayne, NJ. Don Doane, chief executive of ConnectYard, said, “We are thrilled to have additional capital to implement our expansion strategy while continuing to invest in innovative teaching and learning technologies.”

During a phone interview, Doane explained that his almost 30 customers are primarily in higher education and include Cornell University and Howard University. The company will begin targeting the K-12 market shortly. ConnectYard’s solution is being employed to improve student engagement, campus-wide communications, and expansion of student networks with assisted selection of faculty mentors and study partners.

Many universities employ software called Learning Management Systems (LMS), or software that manages digital course material as well as communication between students and professors. ConnectYard integrates with popular LMS software from providers such as Blackboard, Moodle, and Moodlerooms (a Moodle partner) although such systems usually are not well-integrated with social media such as Facebook.

With some estimates of the online education market approaching a billion dollars, the industry is generating interest from VCs and established companies alike with much activity recently around integrating current systems with social media and collaboration platforms. For instance, market leader, Blackboard recently acquired two companies with a forte in collaboration technologies and Moodlerooms recently raised $7.15 million.

The company’s QuickConnect widget provides students and faculty with access to the communication tool they’re most comfortable with (e.g., email, text messaging, etc.) and allows data about user behavior to be centrally aggregated and managed.  As a result, ConnectYard is able to offer customers detailed analytics about student behavior, a recommendation engine for helping students choose mentors and study partners, and some gaming mecanisms to help faculty promote greater interaction with course material.

Jumpstart, a leading New Jersey-based angel group that invests in early-stage technologies, funded the round. Gina Tedesco, Jumpstart’s lead investor, will join ConnectYard’s board.