11/02/2012
The headquarters of what has rapidly become the largest school in the world, at 10 million students strong, is stuffed into a few large communal rooms in a decaying 1960s office building hard by the commuter rail tracks in Mountain View, Calif. Despite the cramped, dowdy circumstances, youthful optimism
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10/31/2012
Udacity, a pioneer of free online education discussed in recent Crotty posts, yesterday announced a partnership with translation platform Amara to translate and subtitle more than 5,000 of its course videos, according to an Amara press release. It sounds very inside baseball, but the partnership
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10/23/2012
Distance learning is increasingly popular and one of the reasons is the growing number of free courses being offered online.
Daniel Conn left school at 18 and started work as an administrator for Mercedes-Benz near his home in Brighton. He soon wished he hadn't spurned the idea of going to unive
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10/09/2012
The education system in India has come a long way of evolution – from the vedic days dating back to around 1700 BC to today’s computer age and e-learning. Throughout, Indian tradition has always accorded special importance to education.
The Vedic Tradition
The Vedas were the main repo
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09/19/2012
If you’re looking to develop new skills for work or simply learn for the sake of learning, you’ll have plenty of options as more and more universities are making their courses available online, for free. Online education platform Coursera has added 17 new universities to its ranks, doubling
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09/19/2012
Offerings of free online courses from top universities are expanding rapidly. The classes, known as “massive open online courses,” or MOOCs, are free for anyone who has an internet connection. They are opening up the high-priced world of study at some of the world’s top colleges and universities and
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09/17/2012
There is an eminent revolution about to happen in the online education sector. Although initiatives by MIT, Harvard and other leading universities such as Coursera, Edx, Udacity are generating a lot of of buzz, I strongly believe it will be startups led by young students themselves rather than old
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09/10/2012
For those of us with a constant thirst for education, Stanford University is currently offering online courses this Fall – for free. According to the latest Stanford Report, 16 total courses will be available, with exciting subjects like Advanced Entrepreneurship, A Crash Course on Creativity, Human
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09/07/2012
An intriguing story in The New York Times today underlines the way free “massive open online courses,” known as MOOCs, are beginning to change the model of higher education in the U.S. Yesterday Colorado State University’s Global Campus, an online university aimed at working adults, announced
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09/06/2012
In the past year, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) have emerged to be a major trend in the education space, witnessed by the rapid takeoff of online universities such as Coursera, Udacity, and EdX. Millions of online learners from all over the world are now studying science, engineering, and humaniti
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08/30/2012
Technology in the classroom is not about putting a computer on everybody’s desk anymore. It’s about getting the right software so students can absorb the information universities and schools are teaching.
Given all the high-tech help available, increasingly students may find it tough to explai
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08/09/2012
One million students have signed up for college-level classes being offered online by California-based Coursera — and most of them aren’t in the United States. A newly released list of Coursera’s geographic reach shows that non-U.S. signups account for 61.5% of Coursera’s enrollment, with Br
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07/26/2012
With the troubled economy, many people are facing unemployment or looking for a way to learn new skills to make themselves more appealing on the job market. For some, this means pursuing an advanced education, whether through a traditional university or an online college.
The traditional model
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07/24/2012
In the scramble to stake out a leadership role in the world of online education, the University of California, Berkeley, is announcing on Tuesday that it is joining edX, the free nonprofit online learning venture founded by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Berkeley will be of
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07/22/2012
Whether you’re looking to change lost your job, adding new skills is often a key to making a transition. But heading back for a master’s degree is not really what most of us need at this stage in our boomerlicious lives. It’s too expensive and time-consuming.
There are, however, some grea
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07/17/2012
In the New York Times story today about the dramatic expansion of online higher education venture Coursera, co-founder Daphne Koller is quoted as saying that the year-old company is not planning to offer degrees. But the more I read about Coursera and other outfits that offer free massive open onlin
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07/06/2012
Online MBA programs may be losing some of the stigma they have in the marketplace, as more employers say they are increasingly open to hiring graduates of these programs, according to a study published in this summer’s Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration.
The authors of t
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07/03/2012
As professionals develop their careers, distance learning is becoming a growth area for universities.
Employers and universities have been putting their heads together. Recently the Higher Education Academy reported on the outcomes of eight flexible learning pathfinder projects, funded by the
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07/01/2012
Online education is the next hot bet in venture capital.Coursera, a joint venture of Stanford, the University of Michigan, the and Princeton received an investment of $16 million back in April from two of Silicon Valley’s biggest VC firms – NEA and Kleiner Perkins. edX, a non-profit partnershi
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06/27/2012
Facebook’s post-IPO flop is a reason to cheer. It’s slowed the flow of funds and IQ into silly social media. Free-labor businesses are whimsical. Fans say Facebook can become a platform for more serious businesses built on firmer ground, such as health care and higher education. But health care and ed
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05/31/2012
In the wake of Steve Jobs’ passing, many wrote about the statements he made throughout his adult life about how to improve the U.S. education system. Some noted that for much of Jobs’s life, he had, ironically perhaps, been skeptical of the positive impact technology could make on education.
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05/07/2012
Transformational is how some describe edX, an online education platform that will make Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) courses available to everyone. Inevitable is probably a better term. As textbooks go digital, more testing is conducted on-line and mobile applications democrat
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05/06/2012
Online education is getting a sudden burst of media attention. That’s because the two biggest brands in the business – Harvard and MIT – announced a multi-million dollar program to deliver some courses online. And since these schools are widely admired, other colleges and universities are aski
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05/01/2012
Economics doesn’t play a large role in childhood education. Children learn the basics of currency and mathematics in elementary school. They may be taught the basics of interest rates as a mathematical principle, but applied economics is a topic often left until high school for study. Even the
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04/23/2012
In his 40 years of teaching, Al Hasvitz has always understood the importance of video aids in the classroom. “I am one of the few teachers in the United States who can thread a 16mm projector,” the award-winning social studies teacher from Walnut, Calif., boasts. But today, like most teachers, Ha
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02/25/2012
Just over a year ago, I wrote a column about badges, those digital displays of hyper-focused competency that migrated from foursquare, gaming, and e-commerce to education. I noted then that badges “won’t supplant transcripts, majors, degrees, and resumes anytime soon,” but that “they are a f
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02/20/2012
Despite lack of the internet, prisoners can study via distance learning, but there are many hurdles to leap.
"When I was sentenced to 10 years, I was determined that I'd get something out of it and that I'd educate myself to a level where I could do a job I wanted to, with young people, when I
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01/31/2012
The European leader of e-learning solutions providers unveils the results of a survey that sheds light on the place of e-learning within training strategy and gives a better understanding of its application. The results of the first barometer on the use of e-learning in Europe*, conducted by CrossKnowl
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01/24/2012
The concept behind Skillshare is simple: empower everyone to teach anything, anywhere. And sometimes it’s the simplest ideas that have the greatest long-term impact. The Skillshare philosophy is that everyone has something valuable to teach. Skillshare.com provides countless opportunities to enr
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01/20/2012
Apple’s digital textbook venture, launched yesterday in New York, is just the latest attempt to bridge a yawning gulf between technology and learning. It’s still the beginning. The gulf is so large, it will take decades and thousands of experiments to cross. But we’ve begun, and things will move f
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