Come the Revolution Andrew Ng is an associate professor of computer science at Stanford, and he has a rather charming way of explaining how the new interactive online education company that he cofounded, Coursera, hopes to revolutionize higher education by allowing students from all over the world to not only hear his lectures, but to do homework assignments, be graded, receive a certificate for completing the course and use that to get a better job or gain admission to a better school. “I normally teach 400 students,” Ng explained, but last semester he taught 100,000 in an online course on machine learning. “To reach that many students before,” he said, “I would have had to teach my normal Stanford class for 250 years.” Welcome to the college education revolution. Big breakthroughs happen when what is suddenly possible meets what is desperately necessary. Private companies, like Phoenix, have been offering online degrees for a fee for years.
6 Virtual Tours Of The Human Body For Free Interactive Anatomy Lessons When it comes to interactive virtual views, we have gone to space and around the globe. So, it’s not surprising that we are also going within ourselves on a virtual journey of the human body. One of the finest tools available online is Visible Body. Unfortunately, it’s not free anymore. But you can see the beauty of it thanks to the free demo that allows you to explore the head and neck. If you are disappointed that there aren’t any free interactive anatomy tools, worry not. Google Body You can trust Google to take you everywhere. The Google Body browser is a Google Labs project that renders on Google Chrome and any other browser that supports WebGL (like Firefox 4 Beta). MEDtropolis The interactive website aims to educate entertain both kids and adult on bodily health; understanding the human anatomical structure is just part of the process. For instance, check out the narrated tours on Virtual Body. eSkeletons eSkeletons isn’t only about understanding human anatomy. DirectAnatomy
Guide to Open Learning ABSTRACT: This document is an introduction to Open Learning. It examines briefly what "Open" means and the different facets of the open movement and what "Learning" means and how it is different for every person. Attention is brought to the issue of the digital divide and ways to reduce or eliminate barriers to education. We look at how to get started with Open Learning if you are fortunate enough to have access to the technologies, and possible ways of obtaining access if you don't. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. ^ Issac Newton said "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." To define Open Learning is a challenge in itself. Open Learning is a system that aims to eliminate or greatly lower barriers to use, extraction, and reuse of knowledge. Open Learning is largely available because of the internet, although it is possible for it to take the form of offline content as well. Start Working in the Open!
Chomsky: How the Young Are Indoctrinated to Obey | Education April 4, 2012 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Public education is under attack around the world, and in response, student protests have recently been held in Britain, Canada, Chile, Taiwan and elsewhere. California is also a battleground. Similar defunding is under way nationwide. Community colleges increasingly face similar prospects – and the shortfalls extend to grades K-12. "There has been a shift from the belief that we as a nation benefit from higher education, to a belief that it's the people receiving the education who primarily benefit and so they should foot the bill," concludes Ronald G. A more accurate description, I think, is "Failure by Design," the title of a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, which has long been a major source of reliable information and analysis on the state of the economy. The EPI study observes that the "Failure of Design" is class-based.
Why Are Finland's Schools Successful? | People & Places It was the end of term at Kirkkojarvi Comprehensive School in Espoo, a sprawling suburb west of Helsinki, when Kari Louhivuori, a veteran teacher and the school’s principal, decided to try something extreme—by Finnish standards. One of his sixth-grade students, a Kosovo-Albanian boy, had drifted far off the learning grid, resisting his teacher’s best efforts. The school’s team of special educators—including a social worker, a nurse and a psychologist—convinced Louhivuori that laziness was not to blame. So he decided to hold the boy back a year, a measure so rare in Finland it’s practically obsolete. Finland has vastly improved in reading, math and science literacy over the past decade in large part because its teachers are trusted to do whatever it takes to turn young lives around. This 13-year-old, Besart Kabashi, received something akin to royal tutoring. Years later, a 20-year-old Besart showed up at Kirkkojarvi’s Christmas party with a bottle of Cognac and a big grin.
The Wrath Against Khan: Why Some Educators Are Questioning Khan Academy An Explainer Post There's an article in this month's Wired Magazine about Khan Academy. The headline speaks volumes -- "How Khan Academy Is Changing the Rules of Education" -- as do the responses I've seen to the article. As usual, there's plenty of praise for Sal Khan and his one-man-educational-video-making machine. But there's also push-back from some quarters, particularly from educators who are highly skeptical of what Khan Academy delivers and what it stands for. That dichotomy says it all, right? Technology Replacing Teachers If one person can create 2400 educational videos and these videos can in turn be viewed by anyone with an Internet connection then why do we need teachers? While "technology will replace teachers" seems like a silly argument to make, one need only look at the state of most school budgets and know that something's got to give. The Bill Gates Connection "Retain qualified people." What does all of this have to do with Sal Khan? Old Wine, New Bottles, Bad Pedagogy
Report: School turnaround mostly failing in Wash. The federal school turnaround program is mostly failing in Washington state, even though teachers and administrators are trying their best to make a difference for kids, according to a report issued Thursday by education researchers at the University of Washington. The federal government is spending more than $3 billion nationwide to help districts turn around their worst-performing schools. Washington school districts are failing to make aggressive reforms with their more than $50 million share of the money, researchers from UW's Center on Reinventing Public Education say. Teachers are working very hard but their efforts are mostly wasted because the districts don't have a good plan, said Sarah Yatsko, a UW research analyst and lead author of the study. She said part of the problem is that districts were rushed into reform by the federal government. "We've got the money. She expects a similar critique could be made of turnaround efforts in other states. Online:
Udacity and Online Pedagogy: Players, Learners, Objects | Online Learning | HYBRID PEDAGOGY This sentence is a learning object. Wayne Hodgins, the “father of learning objects,” first came up with the idea for them while watching his son play with LEGOs. The basic notion is that we can create units of learning so fundamentally simple and reusable that they can be applied in different ways to different objectives and lessons, no matter the context. Hodgins’s dream was of “a world where all ‘content’ exists at just the right and lowest possible size.” Like a single sentence. Like a single question on an exam. The problem is that learning cannot be reduced to “testable reusable units of cognition.” A proactive (not reactionary) approach to digital pedagogy sees learning as irreducible to 1s and 0s and engages learners as more than mere columns in a spreadsheet. Shortly after “Broadcast Education: A Response to Coursera” appeared on Hybrid Pedagogy, Sean received a message from Sebastian Thrun, the founder of Udacity. But Udacity isn’t silly. [Photo by Walter Benson]