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ohn Sterman's business management courses have gone toe-to-toe in simulated business arenas, with the latest being a concocted world of video game companies looking for an edge in marketing and selling their gaming consoles and software.

Mark Reford, who heads the school, and Michael Zeigler, the school's technology director and a teacher, said a new course marries the worlds of art and technology for middle school students, promotes higher-order thinking and gives kids insight into the future of manufacturing. 3D printers are not new but If you 've never heard of them it is a fun technology to investigate.

Online foreign language learning for high school students at Woodridge High. ""Either we get on the [online learning] bus or we're going to get hit by the bus", says Superintendent Walter Davis.

The Cyberlearning Research Summit will take place in Washington DC, with speakers from industry and academia, who will share visions for the future of learning with emerging technologies. Topics include role of emerging technology in learning, individualized learning, augmented reality, and many others topics covered in T561. HGSE Faculty Dr. Todd Rose will also be a speaker.

Todd Rose presented here last year and it seems highly relevant to our course. In class right now. More on this later.

Founder Institute goes global using technology and helps entrepreneurs create their own companies.

Maung, Thanks for sharing this article. I liked the basic premise but also agreed with the comment by Babson College President "the vast majority of ventures take more than that amount of time [ 4 months] to become operational businesses people can be proud of". I think this 4 month program can be nicely incorporated as a course in a formal entrepreneurship program.

edtech platforms should truly empower teachers to teach effectively, control their content, and engage their students. The platform does this by making all content created within, regardless of type, property of whoever creates it.

First non-university course on edX! Will be interesting to see what else they will add...

A step forward in comprehensive online ed, and also an example of "mashing up" existing offerings by a third party. This guy "thought it would be an interesting exercise to see if it was possible to design a reasonable computer science curriculum using just Coursera courses (a MOOC)."

I think that's a really interesting exercise--especially the one comment about "you could take all these in about six months." Thanks for the link!

Here's an example of one person who excelled in a MOOC. While everyone may not have the drive of this student, this is a good example of how an online technology facilitated a social learning group. Also - yet another example of how online resources can benefit people across the country who do not otherwise have access.

A friend just sent me this same article, Molly! However, my takeaway was much different. Whenever I read articles about young people doing extraordinary things with limited resources and technology, my first thought is always "how is this possible??" The article addresses my question directly: "The answer has to do with Battushig's extraordinary abilities, of course, but also with the ambitions of his high-school principal." The principal, also a graduate of MIT, was focused on developing more skilled engineers in Mongolia, and made it his mission to bring science and tech labs to his students; while MOOCs, the government's heavy investment in IT infrastructure, and the ubiquity of a 3G network made it possible to extend and enhance learning opportunities, the students may have never been exposed to engineering were it not for the encouragement of the principal. This human component, combined with technology, was what nurtured Battushig's drive and talent. This path will not work for just any student. If most homes in Mongolia have an Internet connection and even nomads cell phones, why have more people not found success with MOOCs? The author of the article summed it up best when she said, "Battushig's success also showed that schools could use MOOCs to find exceptional students all over the globe." Battushig is exceptional, just as elevated learning through MOOCs is still the "exception" and not the rule. MOOCs still lack a certain (perhaps human?) element that can move them from producing the anomaly of one "boy genius" to a more widespread level of learning.

Hi Laura - That's a good point about the principal. The principal and the student were both exceptional. While I do not think that MOOCs, as they are right now, can work for everyone, I do think that this example of educating an exceptional student is heartening. Maybe this exceptional student can learn a lot and then in turn, help others in his community. As undemocratic as it is, many advances in society are made by individuals or small groups of people. Overall though, I agree that MOOCs lack, as you said maybe a human element, to promote widespread education.

Sebastian Thrun, CEO of Udacity, has openly admitted that his company's MOOC courses are a lousy replacement for actual university class and instead will be taking his company to focus more on corporate training. I personally will reserve further judgement until after I finish the readings for next week.

Grif - where did the Stephen Downes quote come from ? I read the Rebecca Schuman article and don't really agree with her. To expand on the Schuman quote you posted - it's really interesting how she says the massive lecture format doesn't work but then provides two examples of massive technology that do work - texting and World of Warcraft. This relates directly to some of what we talked about earlier this semester. I don't think it's the 'massive,' as Schuman implies, that causes the failure of a MOOC. It's part of the design. Once the design is better and more engaging, then MOOCs may find that they have higher retention rates. Schuman: Successful education needs personal interaction and accountability, period. This is, in fact, the same reason students feel annoyed, alienated, and anonymous in large lecture halls and thus justified in sexting and playing World of Warcraft during class-and why the answer is not the MOOC, but the tiny, for-credit, in-person seminar that has neither a sexy acronym nor a potential for huge corporate partnerships.

The Downes quote was from OLDaily, which is a daily listserve of his that I subscribe too. I think the difference between texting/WoW and MOOCs is that, while both have many many users, the former two have means in which those groups are disaggregated into smaller units that are largely responsible for the UX/individual growth that goes on. I agree with you that massive is not necessarily the failure, in fact, I think it's the best thing they have going for them. However, until the design can leverage meaningful collaboration, like WoW and texting, the massive will remain a burden.

Special report on the ways technology is remaking every aspect of education-bringing top-notch courses to the world's poorest citizens and reshaping the way all students learn

Optimists have scoured the dictionary for superlatives to describe the future of internet education. But the cult of the Mooc - massive online open courses - took a blow last week when one of its leading Silicon Valley pioneers, Sebastian Thrun,

This line caught my eye - "The appropriate use of technology in education-as defined by educators rather than entities driven by for-profit motives..." Thanks for sharing Jenny!

Great read, thank you for sharing. Nicely touches upon a lot of topics from our course -- blended and hybrid learning, student-centered learning, teachers as curriculum designers, equity, technology as a tool...

This goes along with our course discussion of online learning on Oct. 28. Also plays into the evolution, transformation, and disruptive discussion, as it is written by Clay Christensen.

Background on Augmented Reality. Reading for 9/14.

A pretty bold assertion - "On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction."

I believe it. Having come as close to a controlled study of this as is possible in day-to-day life (taught the same course in classrooms and online), there's definitely a different level of engagement online.