[Sheflug] MOOC Online Learning

[Richard Ibbotson <richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi

  This isn't strictly a GNU/Linux topic bit it's based on similar 
ideas but this might give someone out there some further background to 
what all of this is about here it is...

When I built this LUG and when I was a student at UC Berkeley and 
Caltech I wanted to see some changes in the way that higher education 
was offered.  Although I'm not a socialist or communist I've always 
thought that just allowing the sons and daughters of millionaires to 
have access to higher education and keeping the rest out was not the 
way to do things.  When I was a teenager I was subjected to a five 
year long vocational training course on a day release scheme at Thos. 
W. Ward at Saville Street in Sheffield which gave me a good grounding 
in what to do as a stills photographer working in industry and how to 
make 16 m/m films.  I learned a lot more from this than most people do 
on a degree level course in the present day.  I cringe every time I 
hear another one of them telling me that they "have a media degree in 
visual studies".  More like a GCSE in flower arranging.  My own City 
and Guilds course was way above their level of understanding.

So, with this in mind Massive Open Online Courses came along.  Been 
around for a while now.  The New York Times has this today.  Good to 
see New York coming back to life once again..

http://tinyurl.com/d6vvrbm

" IN late September, as workers applied joint compound to new office 
walls, hoodie-clad colleagues who had just met were working together 
on deadline. Film editors, code-writing interns and âedX fellowsâ â 
grad students and postdocs versed in online education â were 
translating videotaped lectures into MOOCs, or massive open online 
courses. As if anyone needed reminding, a row of aqua Post-its gave 
the dates the courses would âgo live.â  The paint is barely dry, 
yet edX, the nonprofit start-up from Harvard and the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology, has 370,000 students this fall in its first 
official courses. Thatâs nothing. Coursera, founded just last January, 
has reached more than 1.7 million â growing âfaster than Facebook,â 
boasts Andrew Ng, on leave from Stanford to run his for-profit MOOC 
provider. âThis has caught all of us by surprise,â says David Stavens, 
who formed a company called Udacity with Sebastian Thrun and Mike 
Sokolosky after more than 150,000 signed up for Dr. Thrunâs 
âIntroduction to Artificial Intelligenceâ last fall, starting the 
revolution that has higher education gasping. A year ago, he marvels, 
âwe were three guys in Sebastianâs living room and now we have 40 
employees full time.â  "

For myself I can say that I used to find going to a piano or guitar 
teacher and getting them to help me was so slow a process and so anti-
social an activity that I gave up every time.  That combined with a 
lack of interest in teaching written music put me off altogether.  
Present day I use various resources around the internet which finally 
taught me how to use the piano and guitar properly.

-- 
Richard

https://twitter.com/SleepyPenguin1

_______________________________________________
Sheffield Linux User's Group
http://sheflug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/sheflug_sheflug.org.uk
FAQ at: http://www.sheflug.org.uk/mailfaq.html

GNU - The Choice of a Complete Generation