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A free online course at Stanford University on artificial intelligence, to be taught this fall by two leading experts from Silicon Valley, has attracted more than 58,000 students around the globe — a class nearly four times the size of Stanford’s entire student body.

The three online courses, which will employ both streaming Internet video and interactive technologies for quizzes and grading, have in the past been taught to smaller groups of Stanford students in campus lecture halls. Last year, for example, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence drew 177 students.

How will the artificial intelligence instructors grade 58,000 students? The scientists said they would make extensive use of technology. “We have a system running on the Amazon cloud, so we think it will hold up,” Dr. Norvig said.

“The key thing is to use existing architecture where possible. Institutions develop institutionalized approaches. Like locking themselves into inefficient, inappropriate and expensive software systems,” says Worth “Twitter granted me access to the discourses that I wanted to listen to, learn from, and engage with.”

“That ideological program is pushing an out-moded model of learning, where more time in the classroom listening to a teacher’s broadcast is the goal. Thinking creatively about teaching demands an emphasis on engagement. Leveraging social media technologies to extend learning beyond the classroom is central to engagement.”

The classes are centered around experimentation with – and use of – social media tools, because Worth believes them essential to his students’ future career. In the internet age, the photographer is not only a producer, they are also distributor and publisher. Getting the University to adopt services like Flickr, Soundcloud, Audioboo, Twitter and Google Docs was essential to eliminate any barriers to entry, but it was a difficult battle to wage.

If kids can get the lectures, can get the content delivery and skill modeling as well (or often better) by computer lecture than in person, why do we have use precious class-time for this purpose?  Why do we, in the status quo,  replicate in person in our classrooms what is easily available elsewhere, the content delivery/skill modeling, and then have kids apply their learning to difficult problems at home, without us there to help? Increasingly,  education’s value-add is and will be in the coaching and troubleshooting when students are applying their learning, and in challenging students to apply their thinking to hands-on learning by doing and teaming:  so let’s have them do these things in class, not sit and listen.   We know that collaboration is a critical skill set which can’t be developed easily either on-line or at home alone– let’s have students learn it with us in our classrooms.   Let every classroom be a collaborative problem solving laboratory or studio.