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Doris Reeves-Lipscomb

Thomas Friedman on Human Interaction in the Digital Age - The Aspen Institute - 0 views

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    "Thank You For Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations." Think we need to read this book to understand the "eye" metaphor that we can help at WLS.
Doris Reeves-Lipscomb

Sebastian Thrun and Udacity: Distance learning is unsuccessful for most students. - 0 views

  • The problem, of course, is that those students represent the precise group MOOCs are meant to serve. “MOOCs were supposed to be the device that would bring higher education to the masses,” Jonathan Rees noted. “However, the masses at San Jose State don’t appear to be ready for the commodified, impersonal higher education that MOOCs offer.” Thrun’s cavalier disregard for the SJSU students reveals his true vision of the target audience for MOOCs: students from the posh suburbs, with 10 tablets apiece and no challenges whatsoever—that is, the exact people who already have access to expensive higher education. It is more than galling that Thrun blames students for the failure of a medium that was invented to serve them, instead of blaming the medium that, in the storied history of the “correspondence” course (“TV/VCR repair”!), has never worked. For him, MOOCs don’t fail to educate the less privileged because the massive online model is itself a poor tool. No, apparently students fail MOOCs because those students have the gall to be poor, so let’s give up on them and move on to the corporate world, where we don’t have to be accountable to the hoi polloi anymore, or even have to look at them, because gross.
  • SG_Debug && SG_Debug.pagedebug && window.console && console.log && console.log('[' + (new Date()-SG_Debug.initialTime)/1000 + ']' + ' Bottom of header.jsp'); SlateEducationGetting schooled.Nov. 19 2013 11:43 AM The King of MOOCs Abdicates the Throne 7.3k 1.2k 101 Sebastian Thrun and Udacity’s “pivot” toward corporate training. By Rebecca Schuman &nbsp; Sebastian Thrun speaks during the Digital Life Design conference on Jan. 23, 2012, in Munich. Photo by Johannes Simon/Getty Images requirejs(["jquery"], function($) { if ($(window).width() < 640) { $(".slate_image figure").width("100%"); } }); Sebastian Thrun, godfather of the massive open online course, has quietly spread a plastic tarp on the floor, nudged his most famous educational invention into the center, and is about to pull the trigger. Thrun—former Stanford superprofessor, Silicon Valley demigod, and now CEO of online-course purveyor Udacity—just admitted to Fast Company’s openly smitten Max Chafkin that his company’s courses are often a “lousy product.” Rebecca Schuman Rebecca Schuman is an education columnist for Slate. Follow This is quite a “pivot” from the Sebastian Thrun, who less than two years ago crowed to Wired that the unstemmable tide of free online education would leave a mere 10 purveyors of higher learning in its wake, one of which would be Udacity. However, on the heels of the embarrassing failure of a loudly hyped partnership with San Jose State University, the “lousiness” of the product seems to have become apparent. The failures of massive online education come as no shock to those of us who actually educate students by being in the same room wit
  • nd 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.
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    Slate article by Rebecca Schuman, November 19, on why MOOCs a la Udacity do not work except maybe for people who are already privileged, enjoy fast access to the Internet, have good study habits and time management skills, and time to craft their schedules to fit in MOOCs among other assets/strengths.
anonymous

Thomas Friedman: Sophisticated online classrooms will revolutionize education - 1 views

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    Another approach might be with engage a large or small company to guide their employees through courses that would improve their current job skills. I shared a writing course I found at the Purdue sight with me daughter. She shared it with her supervisor suggesting that their whole team take the course. There may also be opportunities to work with job centers to educate potential employees on specific job skills required by a company. I mentioned online learning at my most recent book club. WOW, they see it as a way to exchange money for a degree. The response was very negative. Now, Judge Judy is offering online access to cases - and you can weigh in on how you think it should be resolved. Online interaction is coming but, there needs to be a clear case made for its value as an educational tool. I have always had a fear about "experts" teaching the courses. It reminds me of cloning.
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