Having created online courses with Udacity, Udemy, NovoEd, and OpenEdX, I’ve been compiling thoughts on components of an online education platform. Frustratingly, the features I describe below are not all available for any one platform, but alas, we see time and again that we are both advanced and restrained by technology. Whether we like it … Continue reading Online Education Delivery Platforms
As educators get involved in online education, they'll start to realize their unique style in teaching, which is totally different online than in-person. Here's a demo of my online teaching style. See Make your own instructional videos to learn how I make these. This is one of my favorite topics because it demonstrates the similarity between … Continue reading My Online Teaching Style
The modern educational model is to “flip the classroom.” Rather than being “talked at” for hours with little interaction between students and instructors, students learn the information on their own – whether it’s at home in their pajamas at 3 am – and come to class to discuss it and do other collaborative activities. Today … Continue reading The Flipped Classroom
Skeptics are calling online courses the “Wal-Martification of higher education.” You get what you pay for, they say. But just like traditional brick-and-mortar courses, there are low-quality and high-quality MOOCs. If we judge the potential of online courses based on disengaging, non-interactive videotaped lectures, we’ll handicap our ability to envision the extent to which they … Continue reading Looking Forward Toward Education’s Potential
Most kids spend the majority of their lives in school. If I had children, I would want them to get the most out of the unique opportunities that school provides. These do not include reading, writing, worksheets, or textbooks. In short, these opportunities do not include anything that students can do at home by themselves. … Continue reading What would I want my kids to do in school?
http://youtu.be/xeFpRXln3cY This awesome bicycle was at a math exhibit at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley, CA.