Wednesday, December 28, 2011

MOOC! The Future of Public Education?

What is the Future of Public Education and Higher Education? MOOCS!

Free MOOC ( massive open online course ) classes may be the great equalizer that creates equity for students needing a Public Education and or Higher Education worldwide. MOOC classes and courses give everyone access to world class teachers, universities, and curriculum.

Is there a MOOC in you and your students future!

A massive open online course (MOOC) is a type of online course aimed at large-scale participation and open access via the web. MOOCs are a recent development in the area of distance education, and a progression of the kind of open education ideals suggested by open educational resources. Wiki

The newest MOOCS that just launched in 2012!

Coursera is a for-profit educational technology company founded by computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller from Stanford University. Coursera partners with various universities and makes a few of their courses available online free for a large audience. As of November 2012 more than 1,900,241 students from 196 countries have enrolled in at least one course (although only "hundreds of thousands" have taken courses and completion rates are 7-9% -- reported in a Daphne Koller interview with Knowledge@Wharton) Wiki

Udacity is a private educational organization founded by Sebastian Thrun, David Stavens, and Mike Sokolsky. According to Thrun, the origin of the name Udacity comes from the company's desire to be "audatious for you, the student.". Udacity is the outgrowth of free computer science classes offered in 2011 through Stanford University.As of 28 November 2012, Udacity has 15 active courses.Thrun has stated he hopes half a million students will enroll, after an enrollment of 160,000 students in the predecessor course at Stanford, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and 90,000 students had enrolled in the initial two classes as of March 2012. Udacity was announced at the 2012 Digital Life Design conference. Udacity is funded by venture capital firm, Charles River Ventures, and $300,000 of Thrun's personal money. In October 2012 the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz led the investment of another $15 million in Udacity Wiki



Can MOOCS save us from bad educational policies that have bankrupted public schools and made higher education to costly for most? Can MOOCs work in public school classrooms to supliment science? Have we labored under the delusion that Americas technological greatness is waning? Are we neglecting public education so we can balance budgets, especially STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math ) learning and 21st century academic skills? Yes

When we neglect STEM curriculum, 21st century communication skills, we are creating a true digital/knowledge divide that leaves students with no future. All but a few public schools can focus on critical/modern academic areas because of budgetary constraints and the cost of implementing the CCSS. Areas such as STEM, IT, computer programming, web development, bio engineering, medical science, advanced math and science are not possible with little or no money, or are they? Flipping classrooms or flipping schools and creating MOOCs for public education may just save many students in the future from a narrow myopic education. 

MOOCs are a great way to bring STEM to every student and classroom not just Higher Education students. 



Sample College Lecture From Udacity


What is the future? Why are we are still debating full-day kindergarten and extending the school year? Money!

MOOCs are at their inception highly coast effective! 

The CCSS are designed to redress the lack of academic rigor that has hindered public education the last 10-20 but yet again the problem is the money to implement them.

Implementing longer school years, free early childhood education, free preschool starting at age 2, full day kindergarten, modern vocational training, small primary class sizes, schools paying for books and supplies not teachers, and the never ending list of teachers desires are just never going to happen. MOOCs will not fix all the problems of short sightedness or small budgets but they may free up money if schools look at instructional design through new eyes. 

     The rest of the world is changing to meet a changing future. MOOCs will change the world! Sean Taylor Dyslexic Teacher

1 comment:

  1. The future of public education is quite blurred to me. Well, the fact that some do not support the essence of public education and its importance to the society, making it more like a crap to them.

    A change should be done i terms of educational system.

    ethics and compliance solutions

    ReplyDelete

Thank you!