EPB Final Post
Your Free School that pays you.
I am going to sum up some of the principles of free education along with the economic solutions to major problems associated with it.
1. A school run by cooperative means a school where employees, teachers, students and all stakeholders pool their efforts and run their own finances and OWN their schools. They decide their salaries, finances, duties and are responsible for their own management.
2. In a commercialized western version of education, its sub-consciously understood and taken for granted that its ok for teachers to act as smug, emotion-less employees with no spiritual responsibilities towards students, school and culture as a whole. Our exam systems further consolidates this assumption by leaving marking to them giving them the ultimate power. This not only stifles creativity but also makes teachers despot. In a cooperative school, duties should be divided and 'irrelevance of specificity' should be ensured. What this means is that marking, teaching, policy making and management should be irrespective of specific people. Standardized, objective marking should be introduced.
This also means that teachers who teach and mark should be different. A rubric should be designed to analyze the learning of students irrespective to their tutors and whole class should be given the same test irrespective of the teachers of different sections. Ofcourse, this test will be designed by teachers mutually but should be objective, computer-based and thoroughly inquisitive.
3. If you wear a necktie, tuxedo and too shiny shoes at school, maybe you wouldn't want a janitor near you to mop the dust on your shoes and impart some sweat. This is the beginning of pride and hubris in academia. I envision in a cooperative school run by employees itself, students mop their own classes with the help of teachers. Play grounds, fields and plants should be watered by themselves. Finances should be put up on wikis to be analyzed by everyone. All documentation should be put online for inputs and discrepancy checks. I don't see a need for more than 10 employees which are not part of learning/teaching to be at school. Best work is done by yourself. If you aren't down to earth and love doing little things as much as people who get to do the dirty work for you, the last thing you should be is a teacher.
4. Multiply the wealth of content. You don't have to do it all yourself. As much as i would like to set my teaching standards high, i understand that teachers are put the 'wrong' load on them. If you are teaching an english class and there are two books you have to teach in a school year and the aim is to get them to read and get to know more classics, you could teach them 30. That sounds odd but thats how it should be. Ask each child to select a book, read it and present it. Help your class find a repository of classic books and assign them a book. How wonderful is that to get them to read and understand a lot more than you could possibly teach them?
5. Slay the hen who lays golden eggs. It was the wrong thing to do in the story, but in reality of education, its the best thing to do. Show the children and their parents what are they going to get. Put all your course content, syllabus, teaching methods, everything online. Children work on different paces because of their abilities. Why stop a bright kid at first base when he could hit the home run. Respect for slow children and tolerance can be taught in class. They don't have to do that at home. Self-paced learning is the future. You can't stop it. Don't try it.
6. Internet is not a curse. I was writing a paper on ICT in developing countries and i was researching for the material and i found out that in Senegal parents were willing to pay extra fee for their children to learn computers. I hope its same all over the world. In developing countries it goes a mile beyond and i know parents who spend half of their income on fees. Its painful to see they don't get what they pay for and children come back with raps songs and absurdities in English, which the illiterate parents take for education. In a cooperative school, parents can donate money to buy low-cost computers and internet access. You would be amazed by the willingness of parents to do that if a well thought-out plan is laid out. Projects like Flatclassroom project and Digiteen have been a phenomenal success because of its innovative crux which is collaboration. Is no more a closed-world. Don't close it for your students.
7. Good content is what changes people's life for good. its an individual sense of accomplishments which can not be measured. So, don't use statistics and reports of your success. You send out your graduates to speak for you. Thats all that matters.
8. If you know it and you can show it, you don't need people to accept it. Complacency is the best by-product of a good education comprised of spiritual and practical worlds. 50 Harvard business school students broke into its database and the head told they will not be allowed to do that. If you could break into a system and all of them couldn't do a thing about it, they don't deserve to be your mentors even if that's ivy league. Believe in yourself.
9. Tell them who they are and they'll find who they want to be. A child born in China has its culture and there is no good reason for him to be learning english to be able to get a good job. Its her moral right to know about Chinese Calendar, Mao tze tung and Communism. There is no good reason for anyone to be encultured by someone else. Let them read their own books and culture. Give them both toys before they decide the better one. A nation brought up learning english as FIRST language is doomed to disaster and psychological slavery if english isn't its first language.
10. Governments, NGOs, Fifth Columns and terrorists can't stop one thing. That is learning. When you let it out for grabs, free and easy it just can't be stolen. Its your own responsibility to educate yourself and your family. cooperative schools and exporting of knowledge online is the way you could get it. Homeschoolers have done that. Its about time nations should embark on that.
Islam and Science. History of Europe and Modern Sciences
Its amazing that western world is spending more time to belittle people who they owe their education, lives, development and technology. This documentaries answer the question itself perfectly that the only thing Europe failed to acquire was spirituality and tolerance and humanity from Islamic Era that helped create horrible frankenstein that ruined their culture, society and values.
WIAOC09 Presentation
Its was a wonderful opportunity that i missed to a larger extent because of my internet issues to present at WIAOC09 in front of an audience who more or less cares about free education and universal access of knowledge. Good part of the Webheads events is its passionate participants devoid of high profile academics and bandwagon proponents of defunct education. So, for me it was a good opportunity to present my views and work towards the design of free, open and universal education. My presentation, IMO, was pretty self explanatory but it would have been nice if i didn't have internet problems.
As its evident from the presentation that i argue here that wikis are the best tool for sustainable, free and universal educational design. University courses should be created in open wikis and content should be accessible, open and exportable. Through widgets its now possible to embed all kinds of content into wikis and benefits of using wikis is its low bandwidth usage, edit history, ease of use and accessibility. This does not mean that MediaWiki software does not need significant improvement. It has a long way to go to become an optimal tool for course design but i see it as a way strong candidate over blogs, html pages and AJAX powered facebook.
I might add audio to this presentation in future depending on when i get relieved from rather hectic schedule at the moment. I have been admitted to masters program in Sweden and now i am trying to fulfill the funny requirements of immigrations to put 30K USD in the bank to get a visa. As discriminatory as it gets, its also is the end of a wonderful era of Scandinavian education system which i used to idealize. Maybe in another blogpost, i'd explain how the last educational model we had on earth died of its emulation of the capitalistic west. Its not just the citadel of education that fell, its a whole set of values and a national demise for Sweden. My only optimism comes from the distributive learning and online networks that would live for ages to come and will make up for our dead values.
FLC Post 4
For this week, Universal Design is one of the topics to be researched. It sounds like an imperialistic, standardized measure of designing courses in the context of education which it isn't when you dig deep. Quoting Wikipedia on it
Universal design is a relatively new paradigm that emerged from "barrier-free" or "accessible design" and "assistive technology." Universal design strives to be a broad-spectrum solution that produces buildings, products and environments that are usable and effective for everyone, not just people with disabilities.
My understanding of barrier-free is non-paid, subscription less and freely available online resources. Accessible to me is, without copyrights terms which hinder the ability of users to copy, remix, modify and distribute for any purpose. Assistance technologies refer to the tools used by people with special needs and disabilities. One such tool for blind people could be JAWS, software for on-screen reading. It has been used widely for educating blind people with the use of computers.
Universal design being a broader term for design of products and environments make it harder for us to completely understand its relation with education, but i would argue here that it relates to the instructional design and courseware creation. I have found some of the links to be important in terms of Universal Design in Education here. Otago Polytechnic's photo slide, and to an extent the presentation on Dump the Drone gives us a realistic need to ponder on a universal, communicative educational design.
This book on Universal Design in Education is specially interesting written by Frank Bowe.
Culturally i identify myself as a south-eastern Pakistani. We NORMALLY have collective society with an emphasis on social welfare, collectivism and strong religious affiliations. A little on culture and tourism can be found on the official website. You could also read the Wikipedia Entry on that. I wouldn't regurgitate on my views on things through a rather alien opinion online but i would like to refer to some of the posts i have written in the past which would give you an idea of my arguments and disagreements with largely mainstream and western POVs. My chats and opinions on copyrights for instance with Alec Couros and Leigh Blackall gives an idea on the differences. I have been interview along with other south-eastern intellectuals (no, i am no intellectual) on copyright issues which can be found here. More views can be found by googling my name and reading my blog posts.
Paper by Lockwood on stress management and workload in educational sector has been the most interesting paper of this course. I am glad i read that. Some of the points i like about it are as under:
- Importance of workload management, stress, performance, readability and output.
- Suggestions on work hours per course/program although they are different for different programs depending on the needs and level of complexity.
- Financial burden on students and its impacts on performance
- Readability with Flesch Reading Ease Scores.
- Difficulty in counting study load because of non-textual information e.g charts, graphs, maps.
- Although its a strong, thought-provoking paper i don't necessarily agree with the standardization of workload design. It is hard to standardize because of the issues of nature, complexity, diversity and perceived difficulty of the course which should be determined by faculties independently without benchamrking.
FLC Post 3
Kaplan University's videos as part of this week's assignment give most us not only an honest reflection of draconian picture of our education system today, it also gives us an out-loud lesson on whats wrong with the system. If you look at the videos one and two it dwells on an irrelevant assumption that a degree has something to do with 'learning' itself. It also implies that 'coughing out' thousands of dollars will not only get you the status, sustenance and self-confidence that you need in order to become 'somebody' you are not. Rosy picture of a Kaplan degree without sacrificing your work is like a ponzy long-term scheme. Like Illich's Deschooling Soceity's 'institutional attribution' phenomenon Education has been mistaken for Learning and Intellect. Kaplan is cashing out this misconception depicted in these videos which is not only intellectually abhorable but also a thought-crime in a puritan sense.
I should be honest here about my lack of experience with an organization's strategic plan with all the buzzwords mission, vision and goals. I would be a charlatan if i claimed to know strategic plans. I have mostly worked as an independent consultant helping people and organizations with 'specific' work related issues related to my field of expertise in courseware design, ICT policy, technology incorporation and human capital development. It might be a good idea to put down your goals in quantitative and pragmatic manner but to me words like vision, mission and strategic plan without quantitative numbers for expected outcomes is a wasteless debate which i am strongly averse to, as i've mentioned in my posts on this blog. I have found, to be honest, Otago Polytechnic's Charter more or less a document like United Nation's Human Rights Bill with all verbosity and positivity although Polytechnic has practically done amazing work. Maybe this is some form of 'rules of the trade' to have such documents but they are doing a great job even without it.
Phil Kher's rather long Elluminate session has given us a very clear and thoughtful insight into IP initiative at Otago Poly Technic and its relation to flexibility. Phil himself has been long assosciated with teaching and learning to qualify for an authentic voice on education. His blog brings forward a lot of practical and mind-food issues relevant to education today from a pragmatic point of view being a CEO. Open Educational Resource initiative by Otago Polytechnic is one of the most exemplary step taken by a rather small institution in this direction which can be replicated throughout the world. Using WikiEducator, an open education resource creation platform for that purpose was another wise decision. Most of his work in this domain not only deserves appreciation but also makes you a fussy critic of beauty of innovation if you have something to say against him. I had some of the ideas that i have conveyed to him through comments on his blog post and i guess it should suffice as a guideline, IMHO for the future of OERs for Otago Polytechnic and also as requirement for this post.
Finally for the interview part, i decided to get Leigh Blackall himself to explain his experience on flexible learning. Interview is as under:
- Introduce yourself (shortly) and your work?
Leigh Blackall, educational developer for Otago Polytechnic. I focus on the use of social media in educational contexts, helping staff develop skills in the use of the Internet to find and post information, and to facilitate online communication. I also work on developing models for open education.
- Explain your experience in designing flexible learning.?
Flexible learning has been a working concept for me since 2001 when I started working for Technical and Further Education Colleges in Australia. At that time, most of us made the mistake of thinking flexible learning meant online learning, and we focused on the production of information media that we called "learning objects". Since the marked impact that social media has had on the Internet, I have reconsidered that work, and as a result I think I am more appropriately considering the working concept of flexible learning.. ie.. not necessarily online learning.
- how do you define it and give some of the criteria to assess a course as flexible?
Flexible learning (in educational organisations) is a concept used to design courses in such a way so as to minimise as many barriers as possible to people who want to engage in the course. Barriers can include cost, location, time, access generally.
- What do you think are some of the problems in designing flexible learning?
Well, one problem is that many people still think of it as online learning or eLearning, thereby excluding other methods that afford flexibility, such as negotiated curriculum, assessment prior to study, access issues generally etc.
- What are the pros and cons of flexible learning?
Well, obviously when done well, flexibility in a course can afford people better access to education, and improved chances of succeeding. The problems with it is that it seems to be poorly understood as a working concept and confused as primarily online learning. This leads many people to misguided thinking, resulting in flexible learning designs that can be poorly implemented. Poorly implemented courses that are redesigned for "flexibility" can result in increased barriers and increased workloads for everyone involved.
- Do you think flexible learning has a future? If so, why?
I would hope that the working concept flexible learning has NO future, because it will become so common place that it doesn't need a word to describe it.
- Give some suggestions to improve, design, implementation, standardization and evaluation of flexible learning.
Consider making your course open access through the Internet, with the content designed for offline use wherever possible. Think about how people might be able to start and finish your course at different times and at different points depending on what they already know and don't know. If your course has a fee to participate, could it be possible to charge that fee on completion of the course rather than before the start? Do you have a facility to assess people before they start the course, offering people the opportunity to shorten their time in the course? Does your course need to be as long as it is? Could you do night classes, multiple classes? Record lectures for access later? Do you need to run all your course on campus? Once you think of flexible learning as a working concept to reduce barriers, then recognising barriers and developing methods for reducing them can become endless...
EPB - Proposal
Proposal for Evaluation
By
Minhaaj ur Rehman
Table of Contents
Introduction: ....................................................................................................................................... 3
Background: ........................................................................................................................................ 4
Purposes: ............................................................................................................................................... 4
Objectives ........................................................................................................................................... 5
Questions: ........................................................................................................................................... 6
Methods: ............................................................................................................................................. 6
Limitations:.......................................................................................................................................... 6
Logistics: .............................................................................................................................................. 7
References: ......................................................................................................................................... 7
Interview Questions ............................................................................................................................ 7
Introduction:
The purpose of this plan is to outline an evaluation study to be carried out which will look at the
learning outcomes and experiential gains of a classroom which had participated in a borderless
and timeless online collaboration project called Flat Classroom Project in 2008. Included in the
plan is the rationale and background of the evaluation together with the methods employed
and target audience. The plan will also seek to identify any limitations posed by this evaluation
and anticipated decisions that may result from the evaluation. An outline of the expected
timeline and budget prediction will also be included.
This evaluation falls into the Constructivist-Hermeneutic-Interpretivist-Qualitative Paradigm and “has
the most potential for enhancing interactive learning systems and providing evidence of their
effectiveness and worth” (Reeves & Hedberg, 2002). The paradigm I’d use for evaluation is a
Summative analysis owing to the fact that I’ll be using evaluation after the process of content creation
and idea formulation which makes it harder for me to use other models in theory e.g. Front-end analysis
or integrative evaluation.
Method used to gather evaluation facts will be open-ended questions from a group of students
and their teacher who participated in the project. Questions will garner openness, creativity,
reflection and sharing of vision students and teacher had for the project. Relating to my specific
guidelines according to which I’ll ask questions, I’ll focus on the issues of perceived and actual
amount of support required by students, cultural issues relating to online learning and
technology related problems during the tenure of the project.
Interviewer will make sure that personal biases, structural construct, and assumptions are
avoided to ensure academic honesty in research. Issues and limitations regarding these will be
discussed in limitations section of the proposal below.
Background:
Flat Classroom Project is one of the largest project of its kind bringing together classes from
different countries on earth together through intelligent use of technology online. Ground
breaking idea was conceptualized by Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay in 2006 and has since grown
into a phenomenal role model for classes all over the world to emulate. It has won numerous
accolades and awards including much coveted best wiki award for 2008 by Edublog Awards. It
has been mentioned in the economics best seller ‘World is Flat’ by Thomas Friedman.
Participants of the project are schools with high school classes. Project included diverse
participation from Bangladesh, Pakistan, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Austria and Qatar. I was
invited to judge the works of these students for the award to be presented to winning team in a
final conference. A thorough and elaborate rubric was designed to ensure standards, quality
and innovation. Spreadsheet included complete breakdown of judgment elements e.g.
innovation, creativity, complexity of tools used, importance of idea and relevance to the theme.
Each judge had to fill in these spreadsheets and scores were tallied to find out the winners of a
strand. A Meta judge for each strand would announce winner for particular theme/wiki.
Purposes:
The purpose of the evaluation is to identify the impact of the project on personal learning of
students and their post-test level of confidence, motivation, ease with technology and outlook
for the future. It would include their subjective ideas on technology, amount of support needed
(perceived/actual) to learn technology, usage in daily lives, impact on education and learning. It
would also give us an opportunity to understand through reflection, participants’ take and
feedback on current processes and issues.
The following overarching questions have been adapted from Guidelines for the support of e-
learning in New Zealand tertiary instructions:
1. Do students get clearly defined learning objectives that assist them in focusing on
their learning activities?
This information needs to cover the concepts and ideas of the course to ensure that students are clear on the course's focus and that they are properly prepared for study.
Clear documentation, complying with a consistent institutional template sets out the
course learning objectives, concepts and ideas. This information should be integrated
with details of assessments and with the underlying logic clearly apparent. Information
literacy should be reflected in the learning objectives. Institutional policy should require
that this information be accurate, regularly reviewed and provided to students in
advance of enrolment. Templates should be provided to ensure a consistent
organization and content. Elements that are standard to all courses should use
consistent wording.
2. Guideline for the online teaching's diversity handling issue is 'Assumptions and
presumptions should never be made in online contexts'.
Primary reason is the sensitivity levels of different people even if they don't belong to diverse
group of people. Common ethics, compassion and ability to be a good listener makes e-learning
easier than it already is. It’s a fallacy that online facilitation is as easy as face to face for most
part. Not only you are dealing with people from different cultures, you are also teaching yourself
things that you have not known in your entire career. Beliefs, traditions, cultural norms, pace of
tutelage and behavior of facilitator can significantly shorten or prolong the learning curve of
participants sometimes creating altercations too. Words should be chosen carefully. Asking
questions in a polite manner and identifying with people is the key to a friendly and passionate
learning experience.
Objectives
As part of the evaluation, the following processes will be undertaken:
1. Interview with students and teacher who participated in the FCRP.
2. Ensuring openness and subjectivness by pre-interview explanation of the interview
structure.
3. Compliance with the guidelines used in evaluation process.
4. Recording of podcast into an audible conversation with high audio quality specs.
5. Uploading the podcast online
6. Post to link to podcast online 7. Submission and write up of evaluation formally.
Questions:
The evaluation will focus on two main areas:-
Do students get clearly defined learning objectives that assist them in focusing on
their learning activities?
Guideline for the online teaching's diversity handling issue is 'Assumptions and
presumptions should never be made in online contexts'
Methods:
Only method of evaluation adopted here is Open-ended questions asked from students.
Questions are given below and limitations are listed in order to present the results impartially.
Limitations:
Views and experiences of the class cannot be generalized to all participants and cannot be used
to form an opinion or judgment on learning outcomes and experience of ALL students in the
project. Reader should keep in mind that these views are highly subjective and can be
attributed to the class interviewed only. Environment, pre-conceived notion of interview, presence of a teacher, confidence levels,
recollection of project events and stress levels can affect the answers and can change the
responses of students/teacher significantly.
Logistics:
The creation and execution of the interview will be undertaken by the evaluator of this project.
Subsequent recording, uploading and write up will also be done by evaluator according to
methodology and guidelines mentioned above.
References:
Guidelines for the support of e-learning in New Zealand tertiary institutions, version 0.8
(June 2006), retrieved from http://elg.massey.ac.nz
Reeves, Thomas C., Hedberg, John G. (2003) Interactive Learning Systems Evaluation,
Educational Technology Publications Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Reeves, Thomas C. & Hedberg, John G (2003) Interactive Learning Systems Evaluation,
Educational Technology Publications, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, companion website
http://it.coe.uga.edu/~treeves/edit8350/tools.html
Interview Questions
1. Was this the first time, class participated in a project like that?
2. How familiar were you using technology before this project?
3. What were the basic problems (if any) you faced during the project?
4. Did you feel overworked during the project or discouraged by challenging tools?
5. Was your teacher helpful in providing you the support that you thought was needed in
order to complete the tasks related to project?
6. Did you enjoy your during the project?
7. What are some of the cultural issues relating to participation in the project?
Revival of Religious Science by Al-Ghazali.
First time, i found that book it was deep under the dusty shelves of one of the largest libraries here in Bahawalpur, my birthplace. I sat down on decrepit chair skimming through it. I knew i'd find this master piece deep down where i have to find it hard. This book 'Revival of Religious Sciences' which isn't all religious by the way and comprises almost every aspect of human life and spirituality. Being a digital enthusiast i wanted to OCR it and put it on the web to be save it forever for the posterity to read if they care to find the truth but there were two problems
- There isn't an Urdu OCR software, afaik.
- I didn't have a scanner.
And guess what?
Somebody beat me to it. Its already up on the internet. Something that amazes me and have done so my entire life. The replication, creation and dissemination of data at this rapid speed is unbelievable. I never expected that to be up there. Icing on the cake is its translations in Turkish and English, not to mention original Arabic version plus the Urdu version that i have. Whoever said that maybe didn't know how true it was:
'Where there is a will there is a way'.
To the Minister of Education
Looking at that presentation i have a plan and a good laugh! Over 60 years we have finally been able to
teach 50% of our population how to write their names. What a wonderful accomplishment!!
This was a presentation made to our Minister of Education. You don't have to have EDUCATION to be the minister of education normally but lets assume he got it right i have some ideas for him:
- Stop wasting our taxes and invest in distance learning and R&D. Pakistan's only decent distance learning and Virtual University has become second largest university with respect to enrollments within 3 years. You gotta be dumb which apparently you are to see the potential there.
- Create standardized test for evaluation and not subjective criterias by abysmally rude and neurotic professors to play with human future. Being objective in outlook is more important than subjective.
- If you can't teach them all, which you've proven that you can't, let them teach themselves. With the serendipitous departure of internet, mobiles and digital communications, its about time you allow people to teach themselves. To be exact, allow them to be on the web.
- Stop appeasing your American Gods with Intellectual property scourge. You know your culture, people and tradition. Nobody is going to buy this absurdity and never has. Save yourself the trouble.
- Import duties on computers and local manufacturing should be discouraged. A personal computer is a PC. It can be made locally without feeding Corporations. China made computers could be one way to foster the low-cost computer culture.
- Find a back up for lousy underwater cables which are supposed to be the only connectivity route to the world. It isn't going to last long.
- Find international linkages to distance research programs. Higher Education Commission's Personnel development drama for 5 years has come to an end and you don't have enough money left for more personnel development. Its an insult to ask graduates to find indemnity and sign a bond before you give them scholarships. They deserve education not your crap. This is the cheaper solution.
- Promote a culture of informal talks and guest speakers. People who do things are more important than people who tell students about them.
- Choose between education and learning. You have done a great job with spoiling yourself with Education. Giving learning a chance now.
- If you are born human there is no way you could emulate a swan perfectly. Stop omitting texts from culture, religion and values out of our text books. Benchmarking societies who are on the verge of self-destruction and exploitation isn't going to make you any better than you already are.
- How hard is that to make a centralized system for credential verification, admissions and a qualifications framework? High school kids could design one for you.
- They don't need to see you harangue about education and philosophy. Give them the tools and they'll find a way to ignore you for good.
- Stop demonizing education by attributing tuition, debts, textbooks and teachers. They are pre-conditions to institutional education not literacy.
- If Swedes can do that with a land half as big as ours with most of it frozen, you should try it or die trying.
- Find a computer to train your employees, teachers and high ups. At least let them try it themselves. You could fill a river with the papers you have blackened with rubbish. Most of them are already online.
- Create an OCR tool for converting all Urdu books to digital format. Countries as small as Malaysia and Serbia teach in their own language. We got freedom in 1947. Its about time we free our minds from this psychological imperialism.
- Bring the drained brains back. Use them to help their own country or they'll help its enemies.
FLC Post 2
The generally silent struggle underway within the academy to determine the appropriate means to employ technology – using it to either fundamentally change the way education is delivered to students, or using it to augment the traditional way that higher education has been conducted by replicating the classroom in an electronic environment – is far from resolved. If creatively implemented, significant transformative change may be realized within current academic structures. However, heightened aspirations of a burgeoning world population, coupled with a growing perception that development of more affordable, widely-accessible education systems is desirable because civilized societies should provide their citizens with the education they need throughout their lives, create pressure on the academy to change perhaps too quickly.Following are some of the observations i have come across that underscores the importance of flexibility, technology and innovation in education.
- Wikipedia's success given its participatory culture and flexibility in both learning/teaching.
- Luddism, Fordism, French Revolution, Greek academy and contemporary education's lessons that lead us to alternative systems of sustainable education.
- Didactic to Facilitative pedagogy
- Mainstreaming of distance education as the future of universities.
- Existence of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) e.g Connectivism, Facilitating Online Communities etc
- Evolution of alternative licensing Creative Commons, BSD, W3C, Apple Public Source, MIT DB etc
- Exponential growth in computing power
- Changing demographic trends and special needs assosciated with them
- Changing economic conditions and higher education requirements putting individuals in a dilemma.
- Increasing content creation in english by non-english countries and aversion to imperialism in developing countries
- Enervating Intellectual property laws and human collaboration at its best.
- Hyperlinked knowledge, online conferencing, knowledge aggregation, low costs of communication and wider audiences.
- Universities like Walden, Fielding and Phoenix providing open courses.
- Open Access courses and documents by institutes like Otago Polytechnic, BYU, MIT and other Ivy leagues.
- New Media affordances like iTunes U, Youtube Edu, TeacherTube, Podcasts, Documentaries and VLEs.
- Instant messengers, web-based tools, cloud computing, SCORM compliant content, VoIP and Social networking tools.
Annand, D. (2007). Re-organizing Universities for the Information Age. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Vol 8, (3), 1-9.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Odiogo
