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Deron Durflinger

The Internet will not ruin college - Salon.com - 0 views

  • What happens to the people who make their livings from teaching, when their jobs are replaced by online courses available for free? All we need is one superb remedial algebra course that can be effectively delivered online and, theoretically, the demand for a zillion remedial algebra courses taught at a zillion community colleges suddenly drops off a cliff. Ask the music business what happens when you can get good stuff for free instead of paying for crap. Daily newspaper journalists learned a similar lesson all too well over the past two decades. The Associated Press business model — licensing the same story to multiple outlets, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense once a single news outlet puts that AP story online for free.
  • My own daughter is a freshman at a U.C. campus, and has already experienced lectures attended by more than 500 students with sections led by teaching assistants who are utterly uninterested in doing their job. For dollar paid, the value received is questionable, and whenever that kind of situation exists, the status quo is ripe for disruption. (It’s also worth noting, perhaps, that over 60,000 students applied for spots in a freshman class that ended up enrolling only 4,500 applicants, a sign, I think, that the brick-and-mortar university is in no imminent danger of going the way of the dinosaur.)
  • Education, I’d argue, has always been the most likely sector of society to get transformed by the Internet, because the thing the Internet does better than anything else is distribute information.
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  • ut how could anyone argue against the premise that our ability to educate ourselves, on just about any topic, has vastly expanded in tune with the maturation of a global network of computers?
  • kind of amazing that it’s taken this long to start figuring out how to offer truly high-quality college level courses over the Web — isn’t this exactly what the damn thing is for?
  • browsing some of the various course offerings available at edX and Udacity and Coursera, I had to restrain myself from suddenly diving into The Ancient Greek Hero, Professor Gregory Nagy’s spring 2013 edX offering that promises “to use the latest technology to help students engage with poetry, songs, and stories first composed more than two millennia ago.” It strikes me as a profound realization of the fundamental goal of the university — any university — that a course taught by an icon at one of the most elite institutions in the world would be accessible to me for just the cost of a few clicks.
  • But what’s absolutely clear is that a vast number of people can’t afford a good education, and many of those who are paying through the nose aren’t getting a good education, and that kind of situation provides a clear opportunity for the Internet to do what it does best: spread knowledge at low cost.
  • For years we’ve just been scratching at the surface of what the Net can deliver. Now we’re beginning to dig deep.
  • I barged into my son’s room on Wednesday afternoon to ask him when he wanted dinner, and discovered him watching a Khan Academy video to help with his chemistry homework. And I thought: that story I’ve been working on about the backlash against MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses)? Why am I even bothering? The war is already over. Debating the value of online education at the current moment in history makes about as much sense as questioning the tactics of the losing Roman generals in the great third century B.C. battle of Cannae. Perhaps of some interest to academics, but moot. Hannibal kicked ass. End of story.
  • he tidal wave is already here
  • utting their teeth on Khan Academy videos for help with their chemistry and calculus homework will grow up correctly assuming that there will always be low-cost or free educational opportunities available to them online in virtually any field of inquiry.
    • Deron Durflinger
       
      How do these changes in how the internet is being used impact K-12?
Deron Durflinger

Barriers to competency-based innovation aren't just coming from above | Christensen Ins... - 0 views

  • Districts’ and schools’ organizational structures and long standing policies built around traditional seat-time metrics may be inhibiting their ability to move toward competency-based models. For example, bell schedules, grading policies, academic department structures, fixed sense of course scope and sequence, and familiarity with whole-group instruction may all be exerting the tug of status quo bias. As such, transforming districts and schools to competency-based systems is not a simply policy change: it’s a fundamental reconfiguration of teams and structures inside schools, that allows for students to progress at their own pace and demonstrate mastery in a variety of ways. In New Hampshire’s example, for those schools that have yet to move to fully competency-based systems, getting unstuck from the organizational structures and processes that guide them appears just as potent a barrier to innovation in some schools as the state’s policies are a gateway to innovation.
    • Deron Durflinger
       
      Sound familiar:)?
Deron Durflinger

Innovation Weblog - Trends, resources, viewpoints from Chuck Frey at InnovationTools - 0 views

  • Teachers as project managers means they can establish the curriculum for a course, and point the students to outrageously cool and interesting on-line spaces to discover what the teacher is aiming for them to learn. On-line testing can be interactive, embed many visuals, and allow the student to better define what they have learned. The teacher can serve as the organizer and teach the students to work together in teams to define answers to complex problems
  • y understand
Shannon McClintock Miller

SimpleK12 » Blog Archive » A MUST-SEE for Every Educational Administrator in ... - 0 views

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    LOVE this video about educational transformation!  WOW! 
Deron Durflinger

Elearning - 0 views

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    A collection of helpful sites and nifty tools that help with e-learning. Our group is interested in integrating latest technology innovation to transform education
Deron Durflinger

Struggling North High buckles down, pulls itself up | The Des Moines Register | DesMoin... - 0 views

  • “A true transformation in a school begins and ends with the attitudes of the teachers, administrators and staff,” Smith said. “There is no laptop, tardy policy or program that is going to make a change. My role is to surround myself with unbelievably smart and fantastic people, and then I get out of their way and let them do what they do best.”
    • Deron Durflinger
       
      Love this quote!
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