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The goals of this course follow. Participants will: better understand the historical role technology and media have played in educational & social change; become knowledgeable of social learning tools & FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software) as tools for teaching, facilitating learning, & designing educational environments; become familiar with the wealth of open educational resources (OERs), learning-related content, & media available for teaching & learning; become knowledgeable of relevant social learning theories and philosophies that respond to learning in the digital age; better understand the many social, educational, political, cultural, and administrative issues often associated with technology & media in education and society; become critical consumers and producers of digital media and information; and, build sustainable, personal learning environments and networks.

A significant portion of the course learning will happen outside of the scheduled, synchronous sessions. Participants will gain experience in social learning processes such as: writing reflective blog posts, commenting on participant blogs, reading and commenting on educational blogs from outside of the course, microblogging, reading and exploring other educational technology and learning-focused media, exploring social learning tools, and creating educational media.

But Thiel’s issues with education run even deeper. He thinks it’s fundamentally wrong for a society to pin people’s best hope for a better life on  something that is by definition exclusionary. “If Harvard were really the best education, if it makes that much of a difference, why not franchise it so more people can attend? Why not create 100 Harvard affiliates?” he says. “It’s something about the scarcity and the status. In education your value depends on other people failing. Whenever Darwinism is invoked it’s usually a justification for doing something mean. It’s a way to ignore that people are falling through the cracks, because you pretend that if they could just go to Harvard, they’d be fine. Maybe that’s not true.”

Thiel notes a handful of students told him that whether they were selected or not, they were leaving school to start a company. Many more built tight relationships with competing applicants during the brief Silicon Valley retreat– a sort of support group of like-minded restless students.

Of course, if the problem Thiel sees with the higher education bubble is elitism, why were so many of the invitees Ivy League kids? Where were the smart inner-city kids let down by economic blight and a failing education system of a city like Detroit; the kids who need to be lifted up the most?

But Mr. Steinhaus and other administrators soon realized that the iPad, with the slow finger-typing it requires, actually makes written course work more difficult, and that the devices wouldn't run all of the university's applications.

When the University of Notre Dame tested iPads in a management class, students said the finger-based interface on its glassy surface was not good for taking class notes and didn't allow them to mark up readings. For their online final exam, 39 of the 40 students put away their iPads in favor a laptop, because of concerns that the Apple tablet might not save their material.

iPads also foster collaboration. Students using them for group assignments in a math class at Pepperdine University were more in sync than were students in a section not using iPads. The iPad-equipped students worked at the same pace as one another and shared their screens to help one another solve tough problems, says Dana Hoover, assistant chief information officer for communications and planning.

for the most part, knowledge created by academics is placed mostly in outlets that can be accessed only by “the knowledge elite.”

I have become so used to publishing directly to the Web that I felt shackled by the constraints of the print medium.

open access and peer-review are NOT mutually exclusive

the five functions now performed by universities — teaching; providing a space for social interaction; testing students’ knowledge and offering feedback in the form of grades; cultivating a reputation as a good place to learn; and certifying what graduates know through accreditation — will inevitably change.

In October 2003, there were 511 courses available, all from M.I.T. According to Ms. Mulder, the current total is over 21,000 — with 9,903 in languages other than English, including Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Catalan, Hebrew, Farsi, Turkish, Korean and Japanese.

The school’s Masters Series Madrid is a game — with soundtrack, 3-D graphics and interviews with executives — that allows students to manage an international tennis tournament. “It’s a great way for people to see our school,” said Matthew Constantine, a member of the IE staff.

The scholarship of teaching, in particular, has been overlooked for too long.

They serve as conservators and promulgators of our cultural memories

The value of what happens on a campus is hard to quantify, but it can be life-changing. That's true for most of us who have chosen to work in higher education, as it is for many former students who pursued work in "the real world."