Online education is witnessing its own Avengers-like uniting of superhero forces as Harvard University and MIT recently announced “edX”, a combined $60 million joint initiative to offer their college-level courses online for free. Launching in the fall of 2012, edX is a not-for-profit organization formed by the two universities to bring each institution’s free online course offerings to a broader global audience.
Jack Choi: On the virtual dissection table
TED 2012
In 2011, the poster child of digital education was the Khan Academy, Sal Khan’s brainchild of over 3,000 lessons, but a new star is emerging for 2012 that’s taking Khan’s approach to the crowd. It’s a free whiteboard app called ShowMe that will currently play 1.5 million teacher-produced lessons. The first iteration of the app has been downloaded over 400,000 times. Now, with an updated version that empowers users to create, search and share lessons, it’s ready to emerge as a leader in the digital education revolution ushered in by the iPad.
In my last post, I argued that software will take over many of the tasks doctors do today. And what of education? We find a very similar story of what the popular – and incredibly funny! – TED speaker Sir Ken Robinson calls “a crisis of human resources” (Click here for the RSA talk from the same speaker which has been animated in a highly educational fashion). At the TED 2010 conference, he stated that “we make poor use of our talents.” Indeed, in the same way that we misuse the talents and training of doctors, I believe we misuse the talents and training of teachers.
Participants in the exam included teachers and promoters from promotional and educational nanotechnology companies from across the country. In this examination, the scientific capability and skills of the participants in transferring the concepts of nanoscience and technology were evaluated. Participants who acquire the required grade in the two scientific and educational indices will obtain teaching certificate in three levels of “Trainer Level A”, “Trainer Level B”, and “Trainer Level C” from Promotion Workgroup of Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council.
Creating an original pedagogical tool to get students interested in technology and robotics: this is the challenge that was undertaken by a group of the researchers led by Fancesco Mondada, in EPFL’s Robotics Systems Laboratory. In collaboration with the University of Art and Design Lausanne (ECAL), they developed Thymio II, a little programmable white robot, jam-packed with sensors and LEDs, that can exhibit a wide range of behaviours. “We worked really hard on the hardware,” Mondada explains. “Each sensor is associated with a coloured LED, which allows the kids to visualize the activation of the sensors during a specific manoeuver.” The Thymio II robots, which made their debut in May during EPFL’s robotics festival, has been presented to teachers on November 25, as part of a course organized by the cantonal teacher’s college (HEP).
In a bold move towards digitizing education, South Korea’s Ministry of Education Science and Technology has announced it is spending 2.2 trillion Wan ($2 billion USD) over the next four years, to convert its schools from classic paper textbooks to new digital versions on tablet PCs. The adoption of tablet based reading will also be accompanied by WiFi and cloud computing systems in schools. South Korean students can look forward to enjoying their new digital textbooks complete with multimedia presentations, interactive documents (like FAQs), and all the other trappings of modern digital education. If ultimately successful in evolving its classrooms, the rest of the world may soon follow in Korea’s footsteps.
Ask any kid what Facebook is for and he’ll tell you it’s there to help him make friends. What else could he think? It’s how he *does* make friends. He has no idea the real purpose of the software, and the people coding it, is to monetize his relationships. He isn’t even aware of those people, the program, or their purpose.
The kids I celebrated in my early books as “digital natives” capable of seeing through all efforts of big media and marketing have actually proven *less* capable of discerning the integrity of the sources they read and the intentions of the programs they use. If they don’t know what the programs they are using are even for, they don’t stand a chance to use them effectively. They are less likely to become power users than the used.
