moocs + online + whatever - choice = much less than what we're capable of..
no?
as long as we're pushing any compulsory learning... the shininess will never get us to breathtaking.
period.
no?
just one example for online-ness:
online-schools-spend-millions-of-tax-dollars-to-advertise/
They recruit for two reasons: one, to add more dollars to their bank account. Two, because they have a high dropout rate and must keep replacing students.what really gets me is this:
This is a huge waste of taxpayer dollars. Money spent by taxpayers to pay for art classes be reduce class size is instead being paid to ad rise the wares of shoddy online schools.
what about the human capital we are losing, what about the spirits we are breaking, much more important than any money.. we are killing curiosity/creativity.. and people - notice suicide rates.
from http://healthland.time.com/2011/04/25/why-the-happiest-states-have-the-highest-suicide-rates/“Perhaps for those at the bottom end, in a way their situation may seem worse in relative terms, when compared with people who are close to them or their neighbors. … For someone who is quite unhappy, the relative comparison may lead to more unhappiness and depression.”Sadly, this may mean that increasing happiness by reducing economic inequality could paradoxically produce more suicides as a “side effect.” But this is one problem we are unlikely to have, as economic inequality is high and rising in the U.S.
Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/04/25/why-the-happiest-states-have-the-highest-suicide-rates/#ixzz2Ddky3zEb
anyway - all the reports on moocs et al - are great news.. it's showing us that some of our glitz, most of our need to manage et al.. isn't the problem. the problem is choice. the solution is choice....
an example for mooc-ness
In 2011 160,000 students from 190 countries enrolled in an Artificial Intelligence course, CS221, taught by two eminent computer scientists from Stanford University and Google Corporation. 20,000 successfully completed the course. Two other similar courses were simultaneously offered on the subjects of Machine Learning (104,000 registered and 13,000 completed the course) and Introduction to Databases (92,000 registered, 7,000 completed). Udacity a for-profit start up from the authors of the AI-Stanford course started delivering similar free online courses. For example, 90,000 students have enrolled in the CS101 on computer science (Python Programming and building a Search Engine). More recently, EdX (a joint partnership between from MIT and Harvard) and Coursera (an educational for-profit company founded by professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller from Stanford University) were added to the list of AI.In addition, during the last years, online courses that don’t align with the course content nor the instructor, but to other learners and their knowledge, commonly referred as c-MOOCs (Connectivist Massive Open Online Courses) have been carried out with great success.
roger schank:
learning happens when someone wants to learn not when someone wants to teach.
or has a shiny new way to teach
