Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Special Blog Assignment

A World Where Grades Will be Left Behind
This entire article is based around revolutionizing education. "A single class might enroll tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of students, but "there will be no more one-size-fits-all," Thrun says. "Education will respond to you." Grades will no longer exist. Sebastian Thrun describes grades as the "the failure of the education system". In this type of education system students will learn at their own pace and take as much time as they need to master a certain skill. Thrun taught an online artificial-intelligence class with over 160,000 students. The aim of this type of system is to make online education cheap, and as affordable as a cell phone bill. "Instruction will be free, but related services might involve a fee. Among those are certification and exams, which will be conducted separately from the learning process." Thrun explains that his aim is not to take over traditional education. He explains it with such that traditional education is to theatre as online education is to film. Film did not end the theatre. Film replicated theatre into its own being and made it available for a wider audience, which is his aim for revolutionizing education.


I thought this article was very intriguing. I love the idea of revolutionizing education and making it into something more relatable to students. Learning in a brick-and-mortar environment was dreadful. The prospect of teaching, and learning how to teach, in a game-based manner is something I would be greatly interested in doing. On the other side, I have taken an online class or two and it is easy to get lost in the shuffle and get behind. But I suppose if it is done in the right way it could be effective. I think an online course, like this article suggests, centered on group projects would be most effective. It gets students interacting with other students. I know in my online class I almost never talked to anyone else taking the same course. I had no one other than the professor to contact; and online professors are very hard to get in touch with. This article also suggests having multiple professors from around the globe. I would take a course like that. I would love the opportunity to learn from a professor 100,000 miles away. The prospects of an idea such as this are endless.

No comments:

Post a Comment