The Floating University may be the beginning of yet another way to reach out to bigger number of students. Famous profs from Harvard, Yale and other Ivy League universities give visually appealing lectures that can be seen on your laptops or tablets anywhere, anytime…
http://www.innovationnewsdaily.com/573-floating-university-ivy-league-education.html
We have had Open Universities and various e-learning platforms around for a long time. But now there is something new. A year ago we saw the birth of an exciting new model of online learning: It is the entirely free web-based ‘Peer-to-Peer University’ that draws its morale from the Education-for-All (EFA) movement. Its learning model is based on a mix of online dissemination of knowledge and its diffusion in a virtual network of learners. Networked learning has established itself as an expansion of the linear ‘transmission model’ of one-to-few (classroom) to a multi-scalar, non-linear ‘network model’ of many-to-multitudes (Davidson and Goldberg 2009).
In countries of transition economies like Brazil, India and others, but also increasingly in developed countries, we see the demand of education by far exceeding the supply. Millions of learners either cannot afford a high-class education or they just don’t get a place to study. The model of a great teacher standing in front of students in a classroom, teaching them and then grading their papers, and finally issuing them certificates will simply not work in the traditional way in many (in fact in most) places of the world.
In this video, one representative of P2PU gives an excellent introduction to this exciting new type of school, and indeed, a new space of learning. He also addresses tricky questions like accreditation, business models, sustainability etc.
Here is the website. Look into the totally open communication between tutors and peers, and peers and peers… http://new.p2pu.org/en/
Davidson, C.N. and Goldberg D.T. (2009). The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age. Cambridge, USA: MIT Press/MacArther Foundation http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/Future_of_Learning.pdf
Posted in Innovative Organizations, LearningSpaces
Tagged InnovativeProjects, LearningSpaces
Last month, Salman Khan presented the THE KHAN ACADEMY at TED Talks – probably the most exciting techno-pedagogic educational service created in the last decades. Every minute of this lecture is exciting for those interested in education. Bill Gates, who has been pouring in money into this project, personally came on stage to ask questions at the end. Mr Gates, in fact, did KA with his kids and thinks it’s „unbelieveable“.
I think the Khan Academy, a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a free world-class education to anyone, anywhere – will become a major force in revolutionizing the classroom in terms of learning, teaching, students interaction, assessment and also space.
Back in 2004, Sal, as he is called, still a hedge fund analyst – was asked by his cousins to give them lessons in maths. First he used Yahoo’s Doodle notepad then started to put videos on youtube. They were so appealing, that his cousins preferred the virtual cousin to the physical one. The response from other viewers was so overwhelming, that Salman started devoting himself entirely to this ‚social cause’, which was „strange“ for him as a hedge fund analyst. 2009 he quit his job and started creating hundreds of online tutorials. All free. Today 1 million students watch KA every month.
The 2200 pre-college mathematics and physics videos on the website offer basic arithmetic to calculus. I would say, the real power of the service is not the technology, it is the awesome ability of Salman to inspire kids and adults around the world watching them. One said: „first time i got a smile while while doing a derivative“, or the parents of a child with autism wrote their child who had „failed to learn maths through any other means started to get the decimals…and the dreaded fractions….” or another viewer said he „gets a natural high and a good mood fort he entire the day“.
KA is about ‘self paced learning’; teachers becoming ‚moderators/facilitators’; creating strong interactions between students and innumerable ways of creating new learning and teaching models using these building blocks.
Thanks to the new team of software engineers, a number of features were added to the platform which helps students to conduct self assessments; or ways that help teachers to track the learning patterns and jump in if help is necessary. With KA, teachers would “intervene only when a student is stuck.” One surprising knowledge gained by these tracking methods was that the seeminly ‚slow learners’ show the ability to become ‚gifted learners’ within a matter of weeks – they may be slow at certain times/certain topics, but once they ‘get it’, they can race ahead.
Promising results of tests have triggered off a discussion in the USA about using the KA as a basic building block for all schools in the country.
The Khan Academy has started moving into fields outside maths and physics, creating videos on history, the sciences, finances and venture capital. But mathematics is not history. Things may get complicated with value based issues – hopefully they are aware about the cultural and political sensitivities in education.
Salman Khan, father from Bangladesh (Barisal) and mother from India (Calcutta), was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. He went to MIT and Harvard Business school.
Links:
TED lecture of Salman Khan March 2011 (20 min)
On Wikipedia; On TED Lectures (March 2011);
An example of Salman’s videos on “Statistics”
Two weeks ago, one of the most important international conferences on education took place (for the second time) in Doha, the capital of Qatar, a country now widely known for it’s winning the bid for Soccer World Cup in 2022, and less known for its enormously ambitious educational development program. The Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, led by Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, is the organization spearheading this ambitious program. Its flagship product is the ‘Education City’, a campus comprising six (!) universities including Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Carnegie Mellon and others. Qatar is surely one of the places where innovation in education is taking place in a very thoughtful way.
Looking into the website of WISE surprises you not only with an excellent collection of videos of keynote highlights from the conference but also a collection of films made by their ‘Learning World Channel’ that show short films like on Finnish Schools or on the international winning projects prized by the Summit. The summit is not a one-time thing, its becoming a platform. Very enjoyable and informative!
