The 100,000 Person Classroom

Last fall, I took an online class in Artificial Intelligence from my colleage Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun.    It turned out that I was one of over 150,000 students who signed up for that class.  It was the beginning of what has now become Udacity.  In this short video, Peter Norvig talks briefly about the experience of teaching 100,000 students.

We talk about this a lot here at Digital Diner.  I think this is a very exciting time for education.  We are in the midst of a significant change.  Among other things, we a separating the concept of education from what happens to kids in school.  Sure, there is concentrated learning going on in school, but as education resources become more widely available, I think we'll find that what once was the domain of matriculated students is now open to everyone everywhere who is willing to put in the time and effort to learn.  Education can truly become a life long process instead of something that you look forward to finishing so that you can get into the real world.
If you have the time and interest, you may want to watch the following 45 minute video of a Google+ Hangout with Peter Norvig, Sebastian Thrun and Salman Khan.

Jailbreaking the Degree

Monika and I were talking a bit today about what the changes in the educational system will mean to future generations.  What happens when classes from Stanford, MIT, Harvard and other top tier universities are available for anyone to take.  Suddenly admissions to the university changes completely.  In a sense, everyone who wants to try is admitted, just by signing up for a class.  The value then is in the degree.  There may be a future world where students just take classes as they see fit.  Then eventually they bring their transcript and a large check to the dean and say, "I'd like a degree please."  Only then would the university actually scrutinize the student's accomplishments, take their money, and grant them a degree.  Under this model, you can take all the courses you want, but ultimately, to get the degree, you have to write that $200k check to get your Stanford degree.  It reminds me of a conversation a colleague had with his professor at a high end university about degrees.  He asked, "why is it that you let so many kids go through several years of work only to let them fail out at the end?  Why not just give them the degree?"  The professor responded, "Each degree that we give out just cheapens all the ones we've already given."  That professor clearly sees the degree as the scarce, and thus valuable, resource.

Interestingly, the folks at TechCrunch started thinking along the same lines, but instead saw a parallel to how the music industry has changed in the last few years.  They think that the current degree-based educational system is analogous to albums in the music industry.  iTunes has been a major force in changing the music industry (for better or worse) toward a pay-by-the-song economy.  You can read about their ideas for jailbreaking the degree here.

Education Revolution

Don't blink your eyes.  Something is changing and it is changing very quickly.  Here at Digital Diner, we've talked about many ways that places like Khan Academy and Udacity are changing the world of education.  Well the changes are coming faster and stronger now.  Harvard and MIT have announced their intentions of getting in on the act.  They have created an not for profit entity they called edX which will create a platform for the online classes.  They intend to ultimately make it open source so that others can use it as well.  Both MIT and Harvard will add content to make their classes widely available.  As Alan Garber says in the press conference, they expect that what they do will look very different in five years than it does now.

Whenever there are changes like this, I always start to think about the unintended consequences.  What will happen as a byproduct of these changes?  One that I can think of is the impact this could have on teachers.  In a weird way, teaching is incredibly isolating profession.  Teachers work independently in their own classrooms apart from each other.  Yes, they compare notes in the teacher's lounge, but for the most part they go off an do their own thing.  If more classes are online, their will be more opportunities for teachers to see how others teach their classes.  Maybe this cross pollination will allow teachers to collaborate and refine their work to a new level.  It is likely that this revolution will be just as transformational to teachers as it will be for students.

A second consequence of these changes is that I expect to see a change in the concept of what a student is.  Right now, students are young people.  Schools are mostly set up to handle certain age ranges rather than grouping people by ability.  Highschool is for teens.  College is the next step.  With these changes, I expect you will see all maner of people with a diverse set of interests and motivations sharing a common virtual classroom.  This will add a new dimension of diversity to the student body and it could have a dramatic effect on the dynamics of the classroom.

Maybe we are getting closer and closer to the vision of education that Isaac Asimov told Bill Moyers about way back in 1988.  If you don't know about those predictions, you owe it to yourself to watch the video below.

TED-Ed

As a fan of both TED Talks and Education in general, I was pleased to hear about the new TED Ed initiative which allows you to make online educational resources out of any TED talk and in fact any YouTube Video.  One of the nice features is the ability to "flip the classroom" which is the trendy term for making the lecture homework so that class time can be spent in more interactive pursuits.

While I'm all for flipping the classroom and any other fancy tricks that will get kids to think a little more about their classes, I firmly believe that education is far too important to be restricted to schools.  One of the really exciting trends that I've seen growing immensely in the last year or two, is a broader definition of schools and students.  We are all in school and we are all student.  I for one am happy to admit that I have plenty more to learn.  I find it really exciting that the resources that are becoming available are open to all... whether we are "students" or not.  To me this is a great step forward from our traditional concept of schools that, much like jail, the reward for good behavior is getting out.  No people, education isn't just for kids.

To that end, I've decided to "flip the post" here and use the new TED Ed tools to create a little class for you.  I put together an example, and I like you to try it out.  Watch the video, answer the questions and experience it for yourself.

Try it out here.


If you enjoy that, take a look here.

Sparkfun Education

SparkFun has been a source for parts for a lot of our projects here at Digital Diner.  We are fans.  That is why we are excited to tell you about something new that was announced today.  They have launched a new education website at http://learn.sparkfun.com.  They have tutorials and classes for a variety of Maker related topics including basica electronics, soldering and Arduinos.  It looks like a great place to get started if you need to learn a thing or two before you get started on building that next great gadget.

Take a look.  It wont bite.
http://learn.sparkfun.com

Talk Reminder

Building a Robot for Autonomously Photo-Documenting Parks

Digital Diner ALERT!!!  This is NOT a drill!!!  

Tomorrow Tuesday April 10, 2012 at 1:30 pm PT, at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley, our own Widdakay will be giving a talk.  If you can't make it in person, you can tune in live on the web at the time of the talk.  

Exclusive Preview:  We were able to obtain exclusive inside information on this talk just for you, our readers.  Our sources tell us, it will be a very technical talk, but there will be a little something in there for everyone.  It will include adorable childhood pictures as well as complex algorithms and demonstrations of truly cutting edge robotics techniques.  

To view on the web, follow this link at talk time and then "enter as a guest."

  

Abstract

This talk will describe a 13 year old’s experiences and path as a maker. I will talk about my explorations of power electronics, sensors and computers leading up to my current two-wheeled balancing robot. The two wheeled platform is being designed for autonomously taking 360 ̊, panoramic photos on walking paths. I will demonstrate the current prototype components and discuss future plans. As background, I will also give you a glimpse of my world. As a young maker, I have access to the wide range of software technologies, hardware parts and educational resources that make my projects possible. This hardware and software, such as the Arduino platform, are amazing resources for the home hobbyist. I will tell you where I find these tools, how to start using them and, I hope, inspire you to build gadgets of your own.

Bio

Widdakay is a 13 year old homeschooler who is fascinated by hardware and software and loves to create things. He has always been fascinated with how things worked. His first interest was plumbing, then came vacuums, four stroke engines, electronics and programming. By the time he was 6 years old, he had created his first simple electronic circuit, etched a circuit board and soldered components on to make it function. In the years since then, he has gone on to design and build systems such as a 13 gram device, which measures and logs 12 different sensors, to record the flight of a model rocket. He has earned his General class amateur radio license. He has won his category in the San Mateo Science Fair three times, received the IEEE award at the San Mateo County Science Fair 2012, the National Society of Professional Engineers and Professional Engineers in Industry Award at the San Francisco Bay Area Science Fair 2012, the Silicon Boule Award at the California State Science Fair 2011, and has shown his projects at the Maker Faire on multiple occasions. In 2007, he and two friends won the North Star Academy Invention Showcase for their built from scratch, electric car that was capable of carrying a driver and passenger at speeds that made his parents quite nervous.

Motivation

Motivation is an interesting and complex subject.  Much of the work environment is focused on financial incentives... $money$ The video above seems to say there is much more to it than that.  And, while it is directed mostly toward the work environment, I believe it applies to educational and social situations as well.  In education the system focuses on grade, but that hardly captures the real thrill of learning.  In social situations it is more complex, but clearly it seems to me that the research supports the idea that relationships need to involve support for individual growth.  Good to keep in mind.

What motivates you to be your best??

OpenCourseWare

A little more about how technology is changing education...

via Online College Course

Udacity

I recently had the opportunity to take the Stanford University Artificial Intelligence class online.  It was pretty amazing to take a college level computer science class from Stanford for free online.  Most amazingly, over 100,000 people signed up for the class.  It was taught by a colleague from Google, Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun from Google and Stanford.

Well, apparently Sebastian Thrun has decided to teach more online classes.  He and David Evans have started udacity.com, a new, free,  online education resource for learning about computer science, so you you can add this to your list of resources.

Additionally, Stanford is offering several free online classes in Entrepreneurship, Medicine, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Complex Systems, and of course Computer Science.

You can also check out Google Code University for classes on thing like the programming language Python or developing applications for Android devices.

You may recall that in a recent post I told you about a few resources for learning to program.  
You now have now excuses.  Get out there and learn to program.

Cool Video

This is a really cool animation that goes with Sir Ken Robinson's talk about education.

The place that does other videos like this is called http://www.cognitivemedia.co.uk/

Salman Khan Interview

Salman Khan recently spoke at the Web 2.0 summit.  His talk is included below, but in addition to that, there is an interview with him above.  I really think its interesting to hear him talk about the directions that education can go and how the learning experience can change.  He always seems to make it clear that our current system is based on assumptions that might not be appropriate anymore.  Good stuff.