UDACITY, una universidad en línea, abierta, libre.

"We believe university-level education can be both high quality and low cost. Using the economics of the Internet, we've connected some of the greatest teachers to hundreds of thousands of students all over the world"

UDACITY es el nuevo proyecto de Sebastian Thrun, una universidad abierta, en línea, gratuita, para alumnos de todo el mundo. (Recomiendo leer la presentación que hace de sí mismo Thrun acá "I am against...")

Thrun (junto a Peter Norvig) en 2011 diseñó y facilitó el curso abierto de la universidad de Stanford sobre inteligencia artificial AIStanford. Me anoté en dicho curso para conocer su modalidad y diseño desde adentro, impresionante dispositivos de reemplazo de las intervenciones del docente en aula presencial a través de videos interactivos, con consignas de trabajo del formato pregunta-respuesta, con evaluación y certificación. Luego de las dos primeras unidades la especificidad del contenido del curso superó mis necesidades de aprendizaje pero me llevé varias riquezas e ideas de la experiencia.

Luego de ese curso, el profesor  Sebastian Thrun ¿deja Stanford? y lanza una universidad abierta y en línea: UDACITY.

El primer curso de UDACITY comienza ahora, el 27 de febrero, la inscripción está abierta hasta entonces. El curso tratará sobre la construcción de un motor de búsqueda, sin la necesidad de contar con conocimientos previos en el tema. Duración: 7 semanas.

Change seeks being comfortable

photo:  genesconectados.com

My first movements on #change11 MOOC were modest, not anxious at all (not like in cck09 that on first week I learned about PLE and didn´t sleep till I designed my own).

 Now I´m looking for Spanish speakers. Not because I don´t want to share in English but because I want to explore participating in Spanish too, also sharing with language peers. I´m more intelligent in Spanish. At least, faster.

 Though being slow wasn´t bad at all in other open courses in English I participated (the English version of me is a words creator, and that is very similar to an ideas creator, fun!). Many Spanish speakers joined in a Facebook group in Spanish: #change11ES Come visit if you want: http://www.facebook.com/groups/change11es/

MOOCs tought me that I can be totally creative trying to be confortable. My personal way of learning is the best way.

 Thanks George Siemens, Stephen Downes, Dave Cormier and all participants for this new massive open online freedom game.

What is wrong with autonomy learning? People drop-out of MOOCs

Reflecting on MOOCs, George Siemens asks  “What’s wrong with MOOCs?"

I wrote the following on that excellent post an thread of comments:

I comment on this post to provide with an example for the drop-out issue, the lurkers, the traditional numbers/results that courses give and MOOCs don't (so we have "problems").


I comment so you see me. I'm here, involved, doing, thinking with you, learning. But really, so many ideas in this thread and as MOOC problems are a topic I'm working on, I need a little time. I'm writing a chapter for a book about reinv2010 (a MOOCs´ son I've designed and facilitated) and reflecting on some of the ideas written here (some are new approachs, thanks!).


Now you see me, but in this kind of moment of a learning process in a MOOC you wouldn't see me, I would be silent, in my own process, though really thinking with you.


I´d have the face a student has in class and the teacher asks: "Are you following? Need help?" But in a MOOC I would be trying to solve it by myself (or in a me-peers-google way).


When we see problems in MOOCs we are talking about issues traditional courses also may have. Drop-outs? Even with much more structured courses and a paper for accreditation, we drop-out. In my country good education is for free (national universities in Argentina are free) dropping out is common: we drop-out because we have much work, we don´t like the teacher or whatever...is common dropping out. My experience tells me that is not so important for staying in a course the lack of accreditation as the lack of payment.


And the main issue: for autonomy learning we need to learn. We have been learning (or not!) with teachers and syllabus telling us what to do, in MOOCs we need to find coherence by ourselves. That is a lot of work and a skill we need to develop. How? May be, lurking or dropping out of MOOCs for a while.

• Lisa M Lane wrote an interesting post about this topic: http://lisahistory.net/wordpress/?p=727
• And José Motas´ post: http://orfeu.org/2010/12/21/is-intrinsic-motivation-enough/

Learn by doing, doing by learning - Co-facilitating a MOOC

I´m co-facilitating with Eduardo Peirano a very special connectivist MOOC about New Ways of Learning TIOD10. What is really special about this online course?

It was designed thinking about teachers, the everyday-classroom-teacher-with-kids, not the university-theory-researcher-professor. Is a course for the edubloggers without a blog yet (because they dont dear to write one, they dont think they have something to say or dont know to whom they might be speaking). Mostly, they don´t have a blog because they are not ICT teachers, and they don´t have the time or motive.
After working for some years trying to make teachers use ICT on class, we thought: and if we think of teachers as learners? Simple idea, isn´t it?

This course (that we call workshop so they don´t expect teachers from us and we can be facilitators) is inpired in the connectivist CCK09 because is the best example we have of an online course for learning in a chaotic and free and fun atmosphere where knowledge grows between connections and learning is creating your own network. May be, the best way of understanding why CCk09 (an cck08 too) is an inspiration is reading this post that for me is kind of "the bible for teachers online".