Blog 4: Responding to Changes

Flexibility is a crucial aspect of being a teacher in our world today. As a teacher, I will need to notice and respond to the changing nature of education.

Free Online Instructional Videos K-12

The first way education is changing is through free, online instructional videos for grades K-12.  Khan Academy is an organization that provides free ten minute lessons in physics, biology, history, astronomy, and medicine. Students hear the voice of the teacher, Sal Khan, while they see his colorful writing on the screen to guide them in learning. This format allows students to work at their own pace and gain mastery over subjects before moving to the next subject. It also allows teachers to monitor progress of each student throughout the learning process.

Free Online University Classes and MOOCs

The second change in education deals with the free, online university classes and MOOCs. As I researched these things, I realized that there are so many online learning opportunities for upper level studies! The springboard for this idea was from a professor of computer science at Stanford who offered a free, online course, paralleling the one he taught at the university. This was so popular that he created Udacity (described in this video) which is an online engineering and science curriculum.  The University of Virginia is also offering courses online for free along with eleven other universities through an online learning system. In addition, there are MOOCs, Massive Open Online Courses, which provide a myriad of free online courses for anyone to would like to use them.

Plans for Free Online Degrees

Third, there are plans for free online degrees. Daphne Koller on TED Talks noted that high quality education is not always readily accessible and/or affordable to the general public. She and one of her colleagues founded Coursera, which takes the best courses taught by the best professors at the best universities, and provides them to everyone around the world for free. This is such a large step in promoting universal access to education.

New Writers/Sources of Textbooks

Last, there are new writers and sources of textbooks. iTunes U provides all the content of one course in a single app for iPad! Creating and sharing the course with students is a simple process with the help of this app. In addition, OpenStax is in the process of creating 25 online textbooks on the most popular college courses. Other benefits of open source textbooks are the fact that they are digital textbooks complete with relevant content, videos, visuals, and study aids. The amount of change occurring in education is tremendous and will continue to impact our world as new trends grow and gain popularity.