Top Notch Education for Us All
February 27th, 2008 | by Bloddard |I read about this new technology, as I like to call it, called “open courseware.” It allows anyone and everyone with an internet connection to access course material from over 150 universities around the world. Basically, major colleges and universities post their curricular material on the net and at no cost, anyone who’d like to, can access this information and learn from it. Some courses are in the form of video or audio and some are in transcripts. Originally, this was planned for educators to share material. But it did not take long before this quality material was discovered by far more people than anticipated. The great thing, in my opinion, is that about half of the readers, visit these sites for the sake of learning; which goes to show and proves me wrong in that there still are people out there who appreciate the truly meaningful and important things in this world. The resources are vast and are expanding at a rapid rate. MIT has all of its 1,800 courses available and Yale University has 7 out of a scheduled 30.
This new way to learn, is extremely exciting because it opens many doors for many people. I myself know people that because of varying reasons, are not able to attend the the top schools. With this material, they can expand and better comprehend that which they are studying. For me, this is like striking oil because I am always curious about things and I’m open to learning more. In Indonesia, the cost of text books is higher than some can afford, so students and educators utilize open courseware, instead. The same is done by others, who would like to change careers, but don’t exactly know what to focus on. Some question how effective this method of learning is by pondering how much a person can learn without having others to argue with and bounce ideas off of. Others, downright criticize it by saying that one on one interaction is a must.
You can visit: ocwconsortium.org, oercommons.org and uocwa.org in order to find “open courseware”
Technorati Tags: open courseware, MIT, Yale University, new way to learn, text books, change careers, ocwconsortium.org, oercommons.org, uocwa.org
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