A bold experiment in distributed education, “Introduction to Databases” will be offered free and online to students worldwide during the fall of 2011. Students will have access to lecture videos, receive regular feedback on progress, and receive answers to questions. When you successfully complete this class, you will also receive a statement of accomplishment. Taught by Professor Jennifer Widom, the curriculum draws from Stanford’s popular Introduction to Databases course. A syllabus and more information is available here. Sign up below to receive additional information about participating in the online version when it becomes available.
I love where this type of thing is going…
“If what I say is wrong (because it is illogical or lacks credible scientific evidence), then it is my problem. If what I say offends you, it is your problem.”
Prepare to be offended.
Yes.
Pretty much. It’s even worse with “cured cancer” and “solved immortality” pieces out of the medical space.
This causes me great physical pain.
According to a 2010 study by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, only 11 percent of college-educated Americans divorce within the first 10 years today, compared with almost 37 percent for the rest of the population.
It’s striking that the numbers are so different–11% vs. 37%.
One problem is personnel. “People who come out of college with a degree in education and not a degree in a subject are severely handicapped in their capacity to teach effectively,” Mr. McCullough argues. “Because they’re often assigned to teach subjects about which they know little or nothing.” The great teachers love what they’re teaching, he says, and “you can’t love something you don’t know anymore than you can love someone you don’t know.”
Another problem is method. “History is often taught in categories—women’s history, African American history, environmental history—so that many of the students have no sense of chronology. They have no idea what followed what.”
What’s more, many textbooks have become “so politically correct as to be comic. Very minor characters that are currently fashionable are given considerable space, whereas people of major consequence farther back”—such as, say, Thomas Edison—”are given very little space or none at all.”
I think, along with Latin, Rhetoric, and Dialectic, History is the most important thing we can teach kids. Unfortunately (and this is one of the main reasons it isn’t taught), history deals in reality whereas teaching history to human children in 2011 deals with political correctness.
It’s a travesty.
Common Sense[1] is a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine. It was first published anonymously on January 10, 1776, during the American Revolution. Common Sense, signed “Written by an Englishman”, became an immediate success.[2] In relation to the population of the Colonies at that time, it had the largest sale and circulation of any book in American history.
I just finished this essay. It’s stunning to read this and imagine the time (1776). It reminds me much of The Prince, which I’m about to finish, and desperately makes me want to visit Boston.
Education-focused startup OpenStudy is a platform for “massively multi-player study groups.” What this means is that students who are studying the same subject like math or writing can ask and answer questions on OpenStudy, which uses Facebook Connect to let users interact and learn collaboratively through profiles and group chat.
OpenStudy aims to make education fun by providing users with gamification (yeah I know how terrible using this word is, but I make an exception for things education-related) elements like medals and achievements for completing actions like answering a question quickly or answering more than ten questions. You can also fan people you’d like to follow, giving users incentive to engage and contribute.
If you’re going to gamify (make like a game) something, and add a Facebook/social element to it–I can think of few better things to do it to.
tcpdump Tutoriallsof Introductiongit Primerfind Command lsof Commandtar Referencelsof TutorialDaniel Miessler | 1999-2012 | Share Alike
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