The document discusses how the Internet is revolutionizing education by making educational resources freely available online. It provides several examples of open education initiatives like MIT OpenCourseWare, UC Berkeley's open courses on iTunes U and YouTube, and Khan Academy. Experts comment that while free online resources enhance learning, they do not fully replace the traditional higher education experience of interacting with faculty and peers. Some see online education as democratizing access to knowledge, while others argue it is not a complete substitute for a university degree. Overall the Internet is transforming learning by expanding access to educational content beyond the walls of the classroom.

1. HOW THE INTERNET
IS REVOLUTIONIZING
EDUCATION
Gousseva Xenia, 3rd year, group 2
Gousseva Xenia, 3rd year, group 2

2. As connection speeds increase and
the ubiquity of the Internet pervades, digital
content reigns
Free Education
Tools to become autodidacts,
eschewing exorbitant tuition

3. “Learning is not a product of
schooling but the lifelong
attempt to acquire it.”
(Albert Einstein)

4. 10 years ago 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.
5 years later, 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.
One year later, in October 2007, the school launched UC Berkeley on
YouTube. According to Benjamin Hubbard the Manager of Webcast at UC
Berkeley, the school has had well over 120 million downloads since first sharing
videos online, which they began doing in 2001.

5. “I think there’s a wide array of reasons why
faculty should be engaged in recording and publishing
lectures online. The first is wanting students to have
access to materials. The second is for cultivating a
really great affinity for a public university. The third is
closely aligned with this opportunity to provide
educational resources all over the world to those from
all walks of life.”
(Benjamin Hubbard,
the Manager of Webcast at UC Berkeley)

7. 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.
The Web has unlocked the keys to a worldwide virtual
school, potentially leveling the playing field for
students around the world.

8. Should knowledge 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. Almost 5 years old,
Open Culture is the largest database of free cultural
and educational media in existence.

9. “I’m trying to bring the best good ideas
to the rest of the world. There currently
exists too much of a gap between the
university world and the general public.”
(Dr. Dan Colman)

10. The site has two dimensions: First, it acts as a portal,
collecting external links so users are able to access
materials directly from the distributor, whether the
media be on a site, YouTube or iTunes. Second, it
includes blog-style content with 2-3 posts a day of
handpicked media bites like “The Existential Star Wars:
Sartre Meets Darth Vader.”

12. Khan
Academy
Khan Academy is an online collection featuring over 2,100
educational videos ranging in intensity from 1+1=2 to college level
calculus and physics. 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. It keeps all of this data private but exposes
powerful statistics to each user. Coaches or tutors can also log
into Khan Academy through Google or Facebook and track their
students progress.

13. “With just a computer and a pen-tabletmouse, one can educate the world! Even
better, the content never goes old. My
(or your)great-great-great grandchildren
could learn from the very same videos! ”
(Sal Khan, Founder of Khan Academy)

14. 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.

16. John Britton, now a developer evangelist at Twilio, spent his first
year at RPI studying nuclear engineering, then switched to
computer science. He quickly realized he didn’t like school, but
not wanting to drop out, he had to game the system.
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.” P2PU’s Founders include Philipp Schmidt, Delia
Browne, Stian Haklev, Neeru Paharia and Joel Thierstein.

17. “I don’t like school. It’s why I’m working
on starting my own.”
“It’s kind of like couchsurfing but for
learning.”
(John Britton,
Entrepreneur and Unicycler)

18. P2PU started in 2008 and launched its first 6 peer-based, free
courses on 09/09/09. The courses had 15-20 people enrolled for 6
weeks. Each subsequent cycle, the number of courses nearly
doubled. The most recent, 4th cycle had 60 courses with 20
people in each course. P2PU had to turn down nearly 17,000
additional people who applied.
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.

19. 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.

20. “Technology
has
the
opportunity
to
completely
disrupt
education
by
democratizing learning. There’s something
fundamentally wrong when a college degree
can cost upwards of $100,000 when all of the
information can be learned for free on Khan
Academy. We need to go back to the true
goal of education: learning new skills.”
(Mike K, founder of Skillshare)

22. Want to learn about genetics?
Cell biology? Ecology?
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. In fact,
science high school education has a depressing 40% attrition rate
in undergraduate science students. The site, which has just over 1
million users, recently launched The Green Science and Science
In Africa sections, as well as a mobile site.

24. Skype’s role
As our Midwest Editor Alex Wilhem wrote earlier this year, without
a doubt, technology has changed education in the classroom.
And Skype’s global platform and massive user adoption makes it
one of the most influential technologies in changing the reach of
education.
A professor of education technology at UK’s Newcastle
University named Sugata Mitra, whose work inspired the film
“Slumdog Millionaire,” decided he could use Skype to improve
literacy and education around the globe by getting 200 story
telling Grannies to read to children in India over Skype.

25. Jacqueline
Botterill
leads
Skype’s
CSR
(corporate/social
responsibility) initiatives for Skype in Europe. Skype in the Classroom,
which launched March 30th, 2010, is one of the company’s first forays
into the education sphere. Since it’s launch over 12,000 teachers have
signed up for Skype in the Classroom.
Betsey Sawyer, a middle school teacher in rural Groton, Massachusetts
integrated Skype into her classroom to regularly connect students with
an Afghan youth peace volunteer group.
Teach the World Online is using Skype to give young students in Haiti and
Cambodia access to English teachers. The News Literacy Program is
also using Skype so journalists can give guest lectures to students all
over the world on how to sort fact from fiction in the digital age. At the
moment, Skype is speaking with a number of different organizations that
are trying to level the playing field of access to education.

26. But can the Internet
really replace higher
education?

27. There’s a lot of debate right now about whether or
not paying for a degree is worth it, a particular
problem facing entrepreneurs. TNW’s U.S. editor
Brad McCarty recently wrote a piece titled, “Stay
in or drop out? The entrepreneur’s education
fiasco.”
Entrepreneur Peter Thiel has recently sparked a
big debate lately focused on: you don’t need to go to
college, smart people should go out in the world and
do.
Education is a bubble in a classic sense. It’s
basically extremely overpriced. People are not
getting their money’s worth, objectively, when you
do the math.

28. Likewise, innovators such as John Britton,
Sir Ken Robinson and Mike K of Skillshare,
see the future of education as something of
a necessary revolution, thriving on the
powers of the Internet.
“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.”
(Mike K, Founder of Skillshare)

29. But what do the academics
have to say about this?

30. “I think courses on the Internet are a
great way to continue learning and to
acquire new information and new
knowledge, but they only partially
address
furthering
education.
An
education is more than just passively
listening to lectures.”
(Dr. Dan Colman)

31. “Replace? Oh no. 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. I’m looking to enhance
the experience of the user whether they are sitting in their dorm room or
half way around the world…I wouldn’t say hitting play and pause for an
hour can replace the experience of being in the classroom and
interacting with a faculty member but perhaps for a larger class size
that’s less true…
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. What are the
ways we can take the data about these videos and analyze that and
understand if students are having trouble understanding something?”
(Benjamin Hubbard,
the Manager of Webcast at UC Berkeley)

32. So where does
that leave us?
To pay or not to pay for a quality education? Much of it depends on the
job you want, but then again it always has. If you want to be a fireman,
you don’t need to go to graduate school. But if you want to be an
orthodontist, please don’t just watch YouTubes and practice pulling out
cavities on your dog.
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.

33. «The dogmas of the quiet past, are
inadequate to the stormy present.
The occasion is piled high with
difficulty, and we must rise — with
the occasion.»
Abraham Lincoln,
December 1, 1862

34. Thank you for your attention!