MIT’s OpenCourseWare project recently added its 1,800th course. Started in 2001, MITs OCW has grown from 50 courses to virtually their entire undergraduate and graduate curriculum. The content is out there. The learning is out there. As long as we insist on thinking of education as being something that happens in here — in the classroom, in the textbook, from the mouths of teachers, then it will become increasingly irrelevant for our students — and it seems to me that each dropout is another nail in the coffin.
I think that another difference between MIT’s OCW and other similar projects and the way that we traditionally “do” education, is that those courses use the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license. The information is usable. What, how, and from where we are accustomed to teaching all seems so proprietary.
“No! You can’t write in your text book.”
Proprietary simply can’t mean as much as it use to, in a world that is changing too fast that it just can rest on a book shelf.
As an aside, Creative Commons turns 5 this month (dec 15). So celebrate in some way their efforts to free information.
MIT’s contributions to the educational community should be commended – their recent addition of Highlights for High School (link below) shows they continue their leadership in this area.
I agree, David, we must start moving to a 24/7 learning environment model. Students are increasingly taking advantage of this type of model and fleeing our districts to enroll in cyber school. Recently I was able to interview a few of the parents of such students. The major reason they are doing it? Flexibility. Not only flexibility in choosing when and where they do their learning, but flexibility within the curriculum. Students can move at a pace that works for them – not the majority of their peers in the static classroom.
Who wants to be tied to the same old model in today’s rapidly-changing, globally-connected world?
Highlights for High School announcement:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/ocw-side-tt1128.html
One of my top ten life mysteries is why open source textbooks aren’t seriously happening with K12 yet.