Here at Astraea, we have used the internet to teach ourselves many skills and ideas that helped enrich life and work. We’ve also tried to share ideas on our website, such as through the blog and putting our course notes on the website. That was fine 15 years ago when we started, but nowadays on-line learning is coming of age as huge institutions and pioneers invest in on-line education technology.
A quick search yielded a couple of handy resources:
A review by the BBC of university powered on-line course, many of which are free. Referenced organisations include Khan Academy, edX, Udacity, Coursera.
Sugata Mitra gives a leading practitioner’s views on implementation of on-line learning in this short BBC video – The Classroom in the Clouds. Mitra endorses the advantage of being able to “beam” a good quality teacher to any school on the planet, whether it is deep in the jungle or high on a mountain, noting that young people adapt quickly and well to new technology, though its application must be wholesomely implemented (ie not Twitter and Facebook all day long). One counter-intuitive measure is, if you have say eight children together, only give them two computers not one each, as this will facilitate discussion.
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