Application: Blog—The Impact of Open Source
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| Eric Cartmenez "How Do I reach these Kids?" |
When
I had first heard about free courses for learning, I was on the social site
reddit. There was a post about the pros and cons of online learning,
specifically how schools are somehow manipulative when offering courses at extravagant
prices. The debate was in regards to accreditation, and how free learning
should be available to everyone, and not just those who could afford the
privilege. This is the focus of openculture. I really like how this site is set
up in a blog type format. Open Culture brings together high-quality cultural
& educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community. Web 2.0
has given us great amounts of intelligent audio and video. It’s all free. It’s
all enriching. But it’s also scattered across the web, and not easy to find.
Our whole mission is to centralize this content, curate it, and give you access
to this high quality content whenever and wherever you want it.
Openculture in
itself isn’t the learning platform. Instead editor Dan Colman scours the web
for the best educational media. He finds the free courses and audio books and
post them as an update regularly. So essentially, you could be taking a public
speaking course at Penn State, or an Intro to Engineering course at MIT. Their
mission is to centralize this content, curate it, and give you access to this
high quality content whenever and wherever you want it. It has 6 main
sections: Audiobooks, Online courses, Movies, Language lessons, e-Books and Textbooks.
This isn’t how
the textbook lays out how the course should be laid out. However the way in
which it is presented is excellent. It informs the user briefly about the
course prior to having them visit the schools site. The work has been done for
the user and they even let us know if taking the course will yield a
certificate or credential. Learners have become so tech-savvy that to catch up
with them and maintain their interest, teachers have to be a couple of steps
ahead.
My guess is
people will come for the movies, and stay for the courses, I couldn’t help but
view this website as bound up with the issue of self-motivation. Without a
strong desire to learn, I fear that users will inevitably drift towards the “junk
food” part of the buffet. (Rossoff, 2011) That’s my sentiment as well. I feel
as though I would take a course that is free if It offered a certificate and
transcript that I can show to employers that is valid. With a large buffet of
learning to acquire, can it be successful without students motivation to learn?
References
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