How the Internet is Revolutionizing Education

“Learning is not a product of schooling but the

lifelong attempt to acquire it.”

Albert Einstein

In our era, free education has never

been so accessible.

The Web gives lifelong learners the

tools to become

autodidacts, eschewing exorbitant

tuition.

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.

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.

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.

Open Culture

Should knowledge should 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.

Open Culture is the largest database of free

cultural and educational media in existence.

Open Culture features over 350 courses in

its collection: links to epic TED Talks, over

380 high quality streams of classic movies

and tens of thousands of hours of audio

book material. In fact, 50% of Open

Culture’s collection is audio content.

Khan Academy

Khan Academy is an online collection featuring

over 2,100 educational videos.

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.

Academic Earth

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.

P2PU

John Britton, now a developer evangelist at

Twilio, spent his first year at RPI studying

nuclear engineering, then switched to computer

science.

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.”

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.

Their goal is to provide a free pathway to

skills and certification to help people build

careers on open web technology.

Skillshare

We were the first to write about Skillshare when

the NYC startup launched in early April 2011.

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.

Scitable

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.

Skype’s Role

Skype’s global platform and massive user

adoption makes it one of the most

influential technologies in changing the

reach of education.

At the moment, Skype is speaking with a

number of different organizations that are

trying to level the playing field of access to

education.

But can the Internet really replace

higher education?

According to Mike K, Founder of Skillshare,

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.

But what do the academics have to

say about this?

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.

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.

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.

Thank you for your attention!