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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.

Don't dismiss delegation as an outmoded concept that's part of the "command-and-control" model of years past. You may not believe in rigid, hierarchical organizations. But even the founders of flatter, more collaborative young businesses must ensure that every employee can acquire higher-level skills and duties.

Delegation is not task assignment. You're not simply assigning work to employees that falls within their job duties and responsibilities. To delegate, you must give someone the responsibility and authority to do something that's normally part of your jo

Delegation involves three elements: responsibility authority accountability

Be mindful in your intention setting. What do you want? You may have already found your tribe.Know thyself. Be self-aware and connected with what is going on within you.No judgement. We are not perfect. Build up those around you instead of breaking them down.Surround yourself with like-minded people.Get over yourself. Only you and your fears prevent you from achieving your goals.Be brave. Put it out there -- start a group. You never know where this might lead and what connections you might make.Be picky.Stay true. Do it your way, work with integrity and kindness.

BMW and Toyota have collaborated in the area of sharing costs and knowledge for electric car battery research, despite the fact that both compete in the luxury car segment. In fact, they have a history of collaborating with each other.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded a collaborative research consortium comprised of investigators around the world in order to speed up HIV vaccine development.

Be clear about what you are collaborating on. Set boundaries for collaboration at the beginning.Have a limited and well-defined purpose for the collaboration.Be clear about use and ownership of existing and jointly-created intellectual property.Depending on the situation, you may need to involve legal counsel. Collaborating with other firms, even competitors, may be what is needed to help both parties advance and improve. Be open to the possibilities, yet clear about the boundaries.

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SeniorNet's mission is to provide older adults education for and access to computer technologies to enhance their lives and enable them to share their knowledge and wisdom.

Founded in 1986

Tagging content as licensable via Creative Commons Ensuring content is easily downloadable for use in a variety of learning environments Eliminating cost barriers to participating in a course Eliminating technical barriers to participating in a course Opening courses to the public, so users don’t have to log in

There is a growing demand for the ability to connect to others. It is with each other that we can make sense, and this is social. Organizations, in order to function, need to encourage social exchanges and social learning due to faster rates of business and technological changes. Social experience is adaptive by nature and a social learning mindset enables better feedback on environmental changes back to the organization.

the role of online community manager, a fast-growing field today, barely existed five years ago.

The web enables connections, or constant flow, as well as instant access to information, or infinite stock. Stock on the Internet is everywhere and the challenge is to make sense of it through flows of conversation

They have advanced the careers of male economists, often at women’s expense

The central problem is that employment policies that are gender-neutral on paper may not be gender-neutral in effect.

Succeed within seven years and you have a job for life. Fall short, and you’re fired.

Algorithms have become one of the most powerful arbiters in our lives. They make decisions about the news we read, the jobs we get, the people we meet, the schools we attend and the ads we see. Yet there is growing evidence that algorithms and other types of software can discriminate.

The people who write them incorporate their biases, and algorithms often learn from human behavior, so they reflect the biases we hold.

Fairness, Accountability and Transparency in Machine Learning workshop, which considers the role that machines play in consequential decisions in areas like employment, health care and policing.

Not that this was necessarily the takeaway from a recent interview that the OECD Education Today blog did with economist Tyler Cowen, but still: 'There are two things people need to learn how to do to be employable at a decent wage: first, learn some skills which complement the computer rather than compete against it. Some of these are technical skills, but a lot of them will be soft skills, like marketing, persuasion, and management that computers won't be able to do any time soon.' Cowen, a professor at George Mason University, in Va., is more focused on higher education than K-12, but the teaching of soft skills has become a big factor in discussions of college and career readiness. As important as soft skills, though, Cowen said, is the ability of people to be able to learn new things, especially without the formal structure of school to support them: 'Twenty to thirty years from now, we'll all be doing different things. So people who are very good at teaching themselves, regardless of what their formal background is, will be the big winners.'

Date: August 21, 2017Author: tmiket 3 Comments If you know me, at some point you’ve heard me talk about working smarter instead of harder. In all the years I’ve been talking about that I’ve never had anyone disagree. Yet, far too often when the conversation progresses to exploring new ways of working I hit the “I don’t have time for that.” objection. Or “We can’t do that here.” Or “I would love to do that but our people would never go for that.” Or a bunch of others that you’ve probably heard yourself. Don’t fall into that trap if you want to be a valued contributor to your organization. To steal a term from Jane Bozarth, be a “Positive Deviant”. “While there are individual positive deviants who work alone, a key factor is working with the community to surface, spread, and sustain solutions rather than try to force outside-in answers—as is so often the case with training. … Leveraging social tools and workplace communities, and encouraging people to show their work, can help to surface and spread solutions and to sustain application of new learning to the workplace” Anyone, anwhere can surface, spread, and sustain learning in the workplace.

“Creating workplaces that have a lot of flexibility, that allow for people to work in a way that fits best with them, boosts creativity and job satisfaction,” Metcalf says, and these are the settings where women stay and thrive.

No matter what type of organization women work for, large or small, public or private, their relationships with their immediate bosses are critical to whether they feel engaged and content. The ideal supervisor is committed to his or her subordinates’ advancement and development, assigns stretch projects, and provides necessary support and feedback to help them be successful, Bilimoria says. And workplaces that employ women in higher levels are more apt to retain women at the lower levels. “There need to be multilevel champions [of&nbsp;women] from the top as well as from the bottom and the middle, because women are more sensitive to dealing with gender bias,” she says. Workplace initiatives that offer leadership development, mentoring, and networking for women reap the benefits by retaining women, Bilimoria’s research shows.

What is a learner profile? &nbsp;A learner profile includes three elements: Learning transcript: grades, courses (and/or learning levels), state and district achievement data Personalized learning information: supplemental achievement data, record of services received, feedback on work habits, record of extracurricular activities and work/service experiences. Portfolio of student work: collection of personal best work products.

What about children with disconnected parents? As the number of learning options expands many students and families would benefit from a chosen guide. The Donnell Kay Foundation imagines a new system of education where learners create customized paths with advocates who work with them to connect their present learning to their desired future. This role of mentor/advocate/coach could benefit all students but particularly students without the benefit of engaged parents. In some cases, parents/guardians will choose to allow designees (e.g., mentors, relatives) to manage learner profile privacy settings. Young people in the foster care and juvenile justice system may have a court (or state) appointed guide that would manage privacy settings.

Data Quality Campaign recently noted, “With access to current education data child welfare staff can help the highly mobile students in foster care achieve school success by providing support such as the following: helping with timely enrollment and transfer of credits if a school change is needed, identifying the need for educational supports, working with school staff to address attendance and discipline issues, and assisting with transition planning to post-school activities such as higher education.”

The relevance for leadership?&nbsp;Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and their lesser cousins have proved the power of the platform. They have shown that if your average 21st century citizen is given the tools to connect and&nbsp;the freedom to&nbsp;create, they will do so with enthusiasm, and often with an originality that blindsides the so-called creative industries.&nbsp; The result is a&nbsp;growing awareness from those who think about business structures for a living, that good leadership is no longer about ‘taking charge’ or imposing a strategic vision but about creating the platforms that allow others to flourish and create. By way of example,&nbsp;Frederic&nbsp;Laloux&nbsp;– the organisational theorist currently developing a cult-like following across the world – offers a telling story about his meeting with Jos de Blok. De Blok is the founder and CEO of&nbsp;Buurtzorg, a&nbsp;Dutch&nbsp;nursing care&nbsp;firm&nbsp;that has grown from four&nbsp;to 9,000 employees in&nbsp;nine&nbsp;years, by devolving all decision-making down to small teams of nurses across the country. It’s a structure that leaves only 45 people working in central administration and management but has delivered huge gains in the efficiency and impact of nursing care in The Netherlands.

Like social media networks, their job is to create the frameworks that let others take decisions and make change.

It’s what being a leader in this new world is all about: helping others to generate change on their own terms rather than taking on the role of sole changemaker yourself.

Government surveillance programs point up new data-mining concerns. But the NSA monitoring programs focus on collecting "meta" data—not the actual procedures you've undergone, but merely the records of things you searched for online, or people you telephoned. What can this metadata reveal? Plenty about your health, experts argue; simply knowing who you're calling can be just as revealing as what you say. If you can track a series of calls, one privacy expert tells tells the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, "you know exactly what is happening—you don’t need the content.”

David Vladeck began an inquiry into data brokers' practices, concerned that algorithms that mined for data patterns could create unfair stereotypes. (Vladeck recently stepped down.) For example, "whether someone would be classified as a health risk just because they bought products linked to an increased chance of heart attack," the Associated Press reports.

Bethel and Grandview both pursued open resources in large part because they were not satisfied that commercial curricula were closely aligned with the common core.

They called on their teachers, and other content experts, to help them find the open resources that hit the mark.

It's safe to assume many districts switching to open resources will have to devote large amounts of time and money to finding what they need and preparing teachers to use new materials, Mr. Bliss said. Yet that work brings rewards, he argued. In going through that process, teachers get "some of the best PD they've ever had."

1.&nbsp;Make a digital home for projects in a learning management system (LMS). This type of digital organizer is somewhat similar to the tools, such as Microsoft Sharepoint, that PMs use in the work world. For class projects, an LMS can act as a container and organizer that supports team communication and collaboration, the project calendar, assignments, polls, journals or blogs, grading, and other resources and materials. The New Tech Network of PBL-focused schools uses a proprietary LMS called Echo. Another PBL-focused platform to consider is Project Foundry. More general LMSs include Schoology, Edmodo and Google Classroom. Chalkup has a rubric builder built into it. Or, if a minimal project organizer will do, consider constructing a wiki. A simple wiki site such as Google Sites or Wikispaces might be all a class needs.

And as Robert Stephens, founder of the Geek Squad says “Marketing is the price you pay for being&nbsp;unremarkable”. What is necessary is to define what will be the key focus of the company and what it should be renowned for e.g. how should the intended customer experience look and feel like. Unless you do that there won’t be enough of a common ground to smash the silo thinking and deliver a consistent and deliberate customer experience. Take for example the way Paul O’Neill made the turnaround in Alcoa (the biggest aluminium producer in the US, manufacturing everything from the metal for the Coca Cola cans to bolts that hold satellites) as presented in Charles Duhigg’s book “The Power of Habit”.

Silos allow staff to specialize in their unique talents, give them accountability, and provide clarity about tasks that need to be accomplished. “When we start talk about silos, it goes immediately to the negative,” Clancy says. “It's important for leaders to talk about what silos add. They do have a place in organizations to allow for focus on what you're responsible for, moving things forward and getting jobs done. To a certain degree, they are a necessary requirement to getting work done.” Of course, the problems begin when the intensity of organizational silos shifts to the extreme, and inefficiencies and animosity bubble to the surface. Fortunately, there are many ways to break down silos. It's an ongoing process, and nonprofits are continually striving to improve the way people interact with one another.