Udacity, San Jose State University offer online classes for credit | Internet & Media So you've graduated from high school and been accepted at a four-year college. But when you arrive on campus you find out that you can't pass college entry-level courses, so it's back to remedial classes. That's the fate of half of all freshman at San Jose State University, according to Provost Ellen Junn. Add to those woes decreases in funding for higher education across California, higher tuition fees, and greater competition for college admission. Those are just some of the reasons the university has partnered with Silicon Valley startup Udacity to offer San Jose State Plus, online courses for academic credit. Udacity began offering MOOCs in early 2012. When students sign up for an Udacity MOOC, they watch short interactive videos online and take quizzes to make sure they've grasped the material before the next concept is introduced. To start, San Jose State Plus is offering three classes: entry-level math, college algebra, and elementary statistics. Thrun isn't done yet, though.
The 12 Most Strangely Satisfying Videos on the Internet If you're anything like me, you'll go to YouTube looking for obscure turn-of-the-century girl bands and find yourself, five hours later, watching 12-minute-long videos of old men shaving sheep. I'm not talking about a nude sheep fetish, I'm talking about soothing, satisfying videos showing a process -- objects being crafted, art being created, a job being done with mesmerizing precision. If you want to lower your blood pressure a bit, sit back and enjoy some of the most hypnotic and satisfying videos on the 'net. #12. Machine Making a Chess Piece OK, of all the weird shit I've said here and on my Twitter account, this may be one of the more surreal if taken out of context ... or used exactly in context: I am a sucker for lathes. They're making a rook, and because I knew that going in, I had to stick around until the little castle hat part was made. Oh, and here's a bonus video for my fellow lathe lovers. Yeah, that's the shit right there. #11. #10. #9. #8. #7.
FutureSchool: A Teen Perspective #edcmooc « Amy's MOOCs: Professional Digi-velopment Since we’ve been exploring the future of education / ed reform in #edcmooc, I thought I’d share something my IB Theory of Knowledge students participated in last semester, as we examined the Nature of Knowledge / Learning, and the History of “Schooling”. Throughout the semester we watched several TEd talks and other videos by great people like Sir Ken Robinson, Will Richardson, Michael Wesch, Clay Shirky, and Stephen Fry. One of the best was Seth Godin’s TEdxYouth@BFS talk based on his “Stop Stealing Dreams” book. We then read and collaboratively annotated the book in our Diigo group, focusing on the overarching question: What is School For? Some choice excerpts (though you can read them all in the link): “I still think kids are an investment in our economic future. “Our mind has been comprised. “I think that we should have courses that will help us prepare for the responsibilities of being an adult. “I feel like an inanimate product. “This guy really, really hates conventional schooling.
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How the Student Voice Can Make Education Better How can school be better? Student answers: “More practical courses (like consumer math, finances, life skills)“, “Internships and real-world experiences“, “Students grouped not by age, but ability and interest“, “High expectations but more freedom” and “Meaningful work [with a] purpose; no more busy work; students need to be able to make connections (esp[ecially] to real-world)”. Student responses in class, IB Theory of Knowledge, as recorded in a teacher’s blog post, FutureSchool: A Teen’s Perspective. I wrote in my last post about a vision for the future of education—Sal Khan’s vision of a One World Schoolhouse. Value of the Student Voice The student voice as mentioned, is garbled at best, which is [unfortunately] a sign of an institution-focused education system. Stakeholders in Education Students have a significant stake in the education system, in terms of their time, energy, intellectual development and money. However, student contribution was minimal. Resources: Like this:
Teaching and learning center Teaching and Learning Centers are independent academic units within colleges and universities that exist to provide support services for faculty, to help teaching faculty to improve their teaching and professional development. They may also provide learning support services for students, and other services, depending on the individual institution. These centers may have different kinds of names, such as faculty development centers, teaching and learning centers, centers for teaching and learning, centers for teaching excellence, academic support centers, and others. Purpose[edit] University professors, part-time instructors, or teaching assistants approach teaching as experts in their field and know their contents. Teaching and learning centers exist to help instructors to modernize their teaching style, to scaffold concepts and information in a way that students can meaningfully take in, and to help students learn more deeply and retain what they have learned. Other activities[edit]
Can We Transform Education with Sal Khan’s ‘One World Schoolhouse’? “As our world grows smaller and the people in it more inextricably connected, the world itself comes to resemble one vast, inclusive schoolhouse” Sal Khan. I am a big fan of Khan Academy. I turned my youngest two teenagers onto Khan’s videos when they were struggling with their Calculus homework, which they shared with their friends, then their classmates and finally their teachers. That is when I knew Khan Academy was going to be big—when an online platform that I thought was useful and ‘cool’, was good enough to be endorsed by my kids. Which is why I read the book The One World School House: Education Reimagined written by the founder himself, Sal Khan. Khan shares how Khan Academy came to be by tutoring his niece, and how he eventually quit his job as hedge fund analyst to launch Khan Academy and filmed hundreds of videos in his closet. Snapshot of the One World Schoolhouse Before I analyze Khan’s vision of the one world schoolhouse, I’ll review Khan’s journey to the Academy.
Don't dump electronics in landfills, Colorado health campaign advises By Adrian Garcia The Denver Post Posted: 04/02/2013 12:01:00 AM MDT|Updated: about a year ago Discarded electronics equipment sits in boxes at Metech Recycling. Beginning July 1, Colorado residents can no longer dispose of electronic waste in their household trash, including TVs, computer monitors, laptops and DVD players. (Joe Amon photos, The Denver Post) Starting in July, the trash worker won't be able to haul your dead TV — or any other discarded electronics — to the dump. Residents who put such items at the curb expecting pickup will instead find a green sticker affixed to the object reading: "Devices like this are prohibited from Colorado landfills according to the Electronic Recycling Jobs Act." That doesn't mean you have to save your boxy big-screen TVs and obsolete VCRs, though. Metech's Claudia Maldonado and Ana Chavarria Chavez remove boards from hard drives to be sure all data are destroyed during electronics recycling.
Community colleges to release scorecard rivaling the president’s Students planning to attend one of the nation’s 4,500 colleges and universities have a new interactive College Scorecard touted by President Obama in his State of the Union address as a tool “to compare schools based on a simple criteria – where you can get the most bang for your educational buck.” Example of a California community college scorecard. The actual design has not been finalized. Source: California Community College Chancellor’s office. (Click to enlarge) Community college leaders say the focus on costs and graduation rates is a flawed lens for measuring their worth. The federal scorecard is “very four-year centric data,” explained Patrick Perry, Vice Chancellor for Technology, Research and Information Systems for California Community Colleges. The new scorecard will shine a light on key indicators of success and provide data on how well each of the 112 campuses is measuring up. pyramid. “I am telling you it’s really unbelievable,” said Fulks. The economic payoff