How the internet is revolutionizing education

1. How the Internet is
Revolutionizing Education
“Learning is not a product of schooling but the
lifelong attempt to acquire it.”
Albert Einstein

2. In our era, free education has never
been so accessible.
The Web gives lifelong learners the
tools to become
autodidacts, eschewing exorbitant
tuition.

3. In April 2001, Charles M. Vest, the MIT
President at the time, announced that the
university would make its materials for all
its courses freely available on the Internet.
This initiative, found at OpenCourseWare,
has enabled other teachers and lifelong
learners around the world to listen and read
what is being taught at MIT.

4. In April 2006, UC Berkeley announced
its plan to put complete academic
courses on Apple’s iTunes U, beginning
what is now one of the biggest
collections of recorded classroom
lectures in the world.

5. The world’s encyclopedia is as
weightless, free and instantly accessible
as Wikipedia, which is quickly gaining
legitimacy in the education sphere.
Using the Internet, you can learn a new
language or delve into the depths of
metaphysics with just a click of a
mouse.

6. Open Culture
Should knowledge should be open to all to both
use and contribute to?
Yes, and it’s this intuitive philosophy that forms
the base of The Open Education Movement,
which has been gaining momentum since 2006,
the same year Dr. Dan Colman, launched
Open Culture, the greatest free cultural and
educational media website I’ve ever come
across.

7. Open Culture is the largest database of free
cultural and educational media in existence.
Open Culture features over 350 courses in
its collection: links to epic TED Talks, over
380 high quality streams of classic movies
and tens of thousands of hours of audio
book material. In fact, 50% of Open
Culture’s collection is audio content.

8. Khan Academy
Khan Academy is an online collection featuring
over 2,100 educational videos.
Khan Academy includes an important recording
feature; every time you work on a problem or
watch a video, the site remembers what you’ve
learned and where you’re spending your time.

9. Academic Earth
Academic Earth is working its way up to
being the Hulu of academic videos and
courses.
However, they don’t cover audio, which is
a shame because a lot of courses are only
taped and released in audio since it’s easier
on the budget.

10. P2PU
John Britton, now a developer evangelist at
Twilio, spent his first year at RPI studying
nuclear engineering, then switched to computer
science.
Britton now works with the founders of P2PU,
“a grassroots open education project that
organizes learning outside of institutional walls
and gives learners recognition for their
achievements.”

11. In the past year, they teamed up with
Mozilla to create the P2PU School of
Webcraft, a new way to teach and learn web
developer skills.
Classes are globally accessible, 100% free,
and powered by learners, mentors and
contributors.
Their goal is to provide a free pathway to
skills and certification to help people build
careers on open web technology.

12. Skillshare
We were the first to write about Skillshare when
the NYC startup launched in early April 2011.
Simply put, Skillshare is a community
marketplace that enables users to learn anything
from anyone.
Teachers can host classes anywhere, literally;
classes are happening everywhere from NYC to
Boston to San Francisco right now.

13. Scitable
Scitable is a free science social network with a
peer-reviewed on library built on top of it. The
network, which launched in 2009, is a product
of the Nature Publishing Group, one of the
largest, most prestigious science publishers in
the world. It’s dedicated to encouraging students
to take part in science education and science in
general, which is a huge problem today.

14. Skype’s Role
Skype’s global platform and massive user
adoption makes it one of the most
influential technologies in changing the
reach of education.
At the moment, Skype is speaking with a
number of different organizations that are
trying to level the playing field of access to
education.

15. But can the Internet really replace
higher education?
According to Mike K, Founder of Skillshare,
education is going to move away from antiquated
accreditation systems and towards a focus on real-world
skills.
Our vision is to unlock this knowledge and allow
people to share their skills with those who want to
learn them. Let’s be honest – by the time a college has
a class on how to build an iPhone app or use social
media to market your business, it’ll be completely
outdated because the world is moving so fast.

16. But what do the academics have to
say about this?
The Internet is an amazing tool. But it’s also a tool
that’s built on the capabilities of the people who are
using it. The Internet alone won’t be able to replace
higher education.
We need a better integration between the videos we’re
capturing in the classroom and the experience learners
have when interacting in a social context. Online, you
don’t get that same sort of feedback.

17. It’s clear that the world is moving faster than it
ever has before.
As we learn more about ourselves and more
about the world around us through massive
amounts of data collection and data transfer at
ever increasing speeds, surely the foundations of
learning must change too.
After all, it’s clear our current education system
is broken, from the bottom up. If we’re going to
continue to evolve as a species and as a culture,
we’re long overdue for an education revolution.

18. Thank you for your attention!