If you were asked to name the most important innovation in
transportation over the last 200 years, you might say the combustion engine,
air travel, Henry Ford’s Model-T production line or even the bicycle. The list
goes on.
Now answer this one: What’s been the single biggest innovation in education?
Don’t worry if you come up blank. You’re supposed to. The question is a gambit used by Anant Agarwal, the computer scientist named this year to head edX, a $60 million MIT-Harvard effort to stream a college education over the web, free, to anyone who wants one. His point: It’s rare to see major technological advances in how people learn.
Agarwal believes that education is about to change dramatically. The reason is the power of the web and its associated
data-crunching technologies. Thanks to these changes, it’s now possible to
stream video classes with sophisticated interactive elements, and researchers
can scoop up student data that could help them make teaching more effective. The technology is powerful, fairly cheap and global
in its reach. EdX has said it hopes to teach a billion students.
Online education isn’t new—in the United States more than 700,000 students now study in full-time “distance learning” programs. What’s different is the scale of technology being applied by leaders who mix high-minded goals with sharp-elbowed, low-priced Internet business models.
In the stories that are included in this month’s business report, MIT Technology Review, the impact of free online education, is analyzing, particularly the “massive open online courses,” or MOOCs, offered by new education ventures like edX, Coursera, and Udacity, to name the most prominent
Some thoughts…
Now answer this one: What’s been the single biggest innovation in education?
Don’t worry if you come up blank. You’re supposed to. The question is a gambit used by Anant Agarwal, the computer scientist named this year to head edX, a $60 million MIT-Harvard effort to stream a college education over the web, free, to anyone who wants one. His point: It’s rare to see major technological advances in how people learn.
Agarwal believes that education is about to change dramatically. The reason is the power of the web and its associated
data-crunching technologies. Thanks to these changes, it’s now possible to
stream video classes with sophisticated interactive elements, and researchers
can scoop up student data that could help them make teaching more effective. The technology is powerful, fairly cheap and global
in its reach. EdX has said it hopes to teach a billion students.Online education isn’t new—in the United States more than 700,000 students now study in full-time “distance learning” programs. What’s different is the scale of technology being applied by leaders who mix high-minded goals with sharp-elbowed, low-priced Internet business models.
In the stories that are included in this month’s business report, MIT Technology Review, the impact of free online education, is analyzing, particularly the “massive open online courses,” or MOOCs, offered by new education ventures like edX, Coursera, and Udacity, to name the most prominent
Some thoughts…
There
is no doubt that education nowadays changes dramatically. All we agree that the
impact of new technologies is powerful
inserting certain changes. Stream video classes, online education,
distance learning in addition to low
cost and its globalism makes education a very powerful tool in people’s hands.
But can it really replace the “face-to-face”
contact?
Can a
pc replace a professor?
Can
we trust new technologies and if so to what extent ? 
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