Peace to me!

In a letter to a friend, I mentioned that most of the people use the phrase "Peace Upon You", "Shalom" and "Salamu Alaykoum" (which all mean Peace) without knowing what the Peace really means.

Then a friend of mine statused his facebook with the phrase: "Kindness is to love others even if they do not deserve it".

Then it came to me. I commented on his status with "Peace is to love others without thinking if they deserve it or not". What an epiphany!

This matches Jesus wisdom: Love Thy Enemy. I need to find reference in other religions!

Fool on a Hill

I just finished watching Dinner with Schmucks. And this resonated with me‬‏.

McCartney said the song relates to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi:

“

'Fool on the Hill' was mine and I think I was writing about someone like Maharishi. His detractors called him a fool. Because of his giggle he wasn't taken too seriously ... I was sitting at the piano at my father's house in Liverpool hitting a D 6th chord, and I made up 'Fool on the Hill.'[r]

”

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Detect language » Arabic

Learning: Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality is a new science that is emerging where technology act as an extended tool for our reality. Such tools allow us to recognize more facts about the physical reality that human faculties (like memory or 6th sense) does not recognize. One of the first layperson such tool was the MediaLab 6 sense I showed it an earlier post. With the sophistication of the mobile devices, augmented reality is becoming more popular than anticipated. I think this has a major impact on teaching and learning. Future education, if it survives, will find teaching facts to students is obsolete. The real focus will be developing basic faculty skills and train on methods of utilizing knowledge obtained from AR tools. An example:



As you can see from video, education is trying to get the AR into the classroom. But I think, real AR technology will take learning away from school into real life. Wait for more posts about the topic.

Learning: Two modes of Learning

This is an old idea that I mentioned before and now I want to express it in a different way.

Now I believe that learning has two modes: natural and forced. In natural learning mode, we want to learn because we have a natural drive to learn. This drive comes from our talent and who we are. The force learning mode is when something want us to learn in an area that is not natural force. Theat we find difficulty to relate in a natural way. For example, trying to learn math when we hate math. Or to play basketball when we do not like sports. It could be more global. Like wanting to drive a car when the State does not permit it. Or learning to enjoy straight sex when you are gay! Or forced not pray when you have an urge for it.

Schools are created to promote forced learning. People do not need teachers to learn their talent. Most poets never went to school to learn poetry. Musicians do not need formal teaching to develop their music ability. They go to school only to complement their and enhance talent. I still need to find a real musician who does not have talent and a school system helped him to develop it. Similarly artists.

I just wanted to jot down these ideas while they are fresh in my mind.

Online Learning: Khan Academy in Numbers

I think we should put Khan Academy in perspective. It is not suitable for all. It is good for 1 in every 90 individuals. Is it worth it? let's do the analysis:

First Pedagogy: Based on Paul Kurucz, there are 3 types of learners: those who learn by seeing the big picture, those who learn by seeing the process and those who learn through networking. Coupled with Kelb ideas, it is easy to recognize that Khan's style is suitable for the learners "who like to see the process and observe someone else doing it!". It is not suitable for all.

Mathematically: combining Kurucz 3 criteria and kelb 4 styles, and for simplicity let's assume that an individual can be only one of them, it is easy to calculate the permutation: 1 in every 90 people find Khan's method suitable for their learning. This means, the other 89 finds it useless.

Demographics: Roughly, if 40% of the world population are learners (students, lifelong learners, adult, informal, etc..), and there are there 1.8B users of the internet in the world, then there are 720 Million active learners around the world who have access to the Internet.

Conclusion: as we said, only 1 in every 90 of these learners can learn based on Khan method. This means, there are 8 Million learners around the world who have access to the internet and who are in benefit from Khan's work. 8 Million!

Isn't this phenomenal? One person (i.e. Khan) offering a suitable learning material for 8 Million people, for free... around the world? the way they like to learn? Isn't it outstanding! Or should we focus on the the other 712 Million to prove it futile? I am on Khan side. I like to see the droplet in an empty glass!!

P.S.

1) I am ready to offer data to submit my arguments.

2) An opportunity: we still need to figure out a good teaching tools for the remaining 712 Million people. I see a lot of money here! Any partners?

 

 

Learning: Disposable Knowledge and Learning

I was in the middle of the following discussion that ignited in the Mobile Learning Course. The Professor wrote:

In reviewing the blog posts, I came across some interesting comments. Some of which I am bringing into the class for further discussion:

Anas' comments to Brandy's post read

"Hi Brandy, like you, I am still researching and checking all Apps as much as possible. I haven’t made my mind what would be really useful. So far, I find myself heavily attached to Media Apps (Movies and news). I use the How To apps (cooking, do it yourself) a lot. Those help me get things done quickly but I do not retain the information. For example, I can cook the best disk from Betty Crockers App, but I cannot repeat it unless I have the app next to me. Is this learning? Don’t you agree that these small devices are forcing us to redefine the term “learning”.

Good post. Thank you."

What is learning in this respect? Has retention been relegated to rote learning and therefore dated? Does the fact that most of the information we need are available on the mobile device, in our hands or the computer hard disk at home, prevent us from retaining knowledge? Where do you think the future of mobile learning could lead to when we consider what is retained and what is not? When can we apply the "sixth sense" as provided by our mobile devices and when are we allowed not to? Can we ask our job interviewer to wait while we contact our mobile device for a response to his/her question?

Here is my answer:

Yes, definition of learning needs to be modified.

According to earlier work of Clifton and Buckingham, and recently by Robinson, we have certain talents and strengths that in many cases ignored by the educational systems. Very few individuals align their talent to the requirement of education. These individuals become high academic achievers. The majority have talents that does not match the educational requirements. These individuals are forced to learn things they do not feel comfortable with. Those students memories the information and rarely convert them to knowledge or apply them. Consequently, due to modern knowledge tools, they can use mobile devices to learn on demand. We do not have to retain them for they are readily accessible. Does this mean we stop learning? No! Because we have tendency to learn concepts related to our talents with no problems. We will continue learning them. It is those we do not like, or have talent to do, we capture them through the knowledge tool and dispose them when not needed. This is good. Developing such an attitude will help to endorse change instantaneously. It will increase the human ability to evolve. I like to call this "disposable knowledge"!

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Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bulgarian Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Georgian German Greek Haitian Creole Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Korean Latin Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

Detect language » Arabic

CI: What is the "Controlling Instinct"?

I keep using the term: "Controlling Instinct" in my blogs. What is it?

I have coined the term. I am not aware that it was used before in the same context I am using it. It is popular in the sense that a person should control his instincts. In my context, it means the set of values that instinctively control us. These are values that we build up in our subconscious, without recognized that, and it becomes the drivers of our action, understanding of the world around us and controls our communication, reaction, and the day to day decision making. In many cases, it controlls our passion and drive us to think emotionally rather than intellectually.

For example, tale the concept of "family". It is simple, universal and understood clearly by all. Its basic connotation is "the people I feel I belong to and who can make me feel safe and who I can trust". However, the actual meaning and definition of the word differs largely between one person and another. For those who do well in the educational system, family means the immediate direct family: Parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts and children. For another person who lived in an agrarian setting, it will mean the extended family that includes all the tribe. With the younger generation, it is forming a new meaning: the set of friends on the Internet.

In my premises, most controlling instincts are developed through observance and not through education. Education will play a role as well. But mostly, the person can recognize the education created instincts. The actual controlling instincts is not recognized in an individual. For example, the idea of "Time". Education explain to us the value and meaning of time. Encourage us to be on time. Forces us to adhere to deadlines. Still, Time has a deeper controling instinct. For an industrialist, time is fixed and nonstopable. To an agrarian person, time is flexible and repeatable. So, an industrialist student, will understand the time presented in education. To the agrarian, time presented in education is a challenge and an obstacle in achieving as expected in education.

Most of our controlling instincts are built at an early age. Younger than 8 years. I believe that the ability of kids to learn is far superior than adults. There are many reasons for that. Mainly neurological. A baby learns by trial and error and observation. They try to internalize the world around them. A red flame is harmful. A sour lemon tastes strangely. All of these experiences become controlling instincts. If the family laughs when the child touches flames this makes the kid think that harming himself is good, and we have a masochist. If the parents does not allow the toddler to look at a girls body, but permits looking and male bodies, the boy become gay. And so on. We learn by observing behavior. And these observation generate our controlling instincts.

So far, I am able to group the translation of the meaning of a value-set into three groups: those who were living in an agrarian background, those who were living in an industrial background and those who were brought up in the Internet Age.

CI: Wikipedian Controlling Instincts

I have talked before about my experience with Wikipedia. As well, I mentioned in a couple of previous posts (here and here) that the Middle Eastern Revolutions should not be considered a FaceBook revolution, but a Wikipedian Revolution.

In this post, I will outline some terms that reflects the controlling instincts of a Wikipedian:

• Stubbing: the drive to contribute


• Idling: Make use if Idle Time


• Tolerance: accepting difference


• Collaboration: work with others without expecting return


• Non-personification: can work with strangers


• Contribution: sense of giving


• Vim: taking initiative


• copyleft: does not believe in copyright. Believes ideas are contributors to other bigger ideas and it does not matter who started it


• manytasking: can work on more than one task at the same time.


• Everchanging: change world around him is the norm.

I am still working on the right choice of words. And I will explain them in another post.

Learning: Sir Ken, Theatre, Education and Personalized Curriculum

The Link: http://blip.tv/learning-without-frontiers/sir-ken-robinson-march-2011-learning-without-frontiers-4928095

Some quotes:

• A person graduating from an educational experience must have his confidence improved.


• Human Resources is like Natural Resources... Individuals have deep talents that are buried deep within their surface, educators need to mine them like other resources.


• 3 Purposes to education: Personal (connect people to their own sense of possibility, give them sense of creativity, and give them self confidence), Cultural (enable identity, share the identity of other and tolerance) and Economic (must address economic needs and prepare for evolution, prepare ourselves to the challenges of economy.)


• TV Program to watch: How Many People Can Live on Earth: if everybody consume food and water like a person in Botswana, Earth can handle a population of 15B, if we consume like someone in North America: 1.2B only.


• HG Wells: civilization is a race between education and catastrophe.

Quotes: Lazy like a Fox

I was watching Evan Roth video when he related the idea of "Lazy like a fox" to the idea of low work, maximum impact. I always believed that efficiency is a superior state of laziness and I have been thinking if this is making me justifying laziness. Does it? Evan does not believe so. What I do not like about him is he is using it to annoy people who annoys him. I still hate to use a negative approach even in a positive way.

Some terms of his outstanding terms: Severe Cultural Impact; Traditional Education taught us "To Obey". New education should promote: "disobey!".

You may watch his video here:

[[CCK11]]: I am not a connectivist!

In a post on our CCK11 group I wrote:

I am confident, so far, that I am not a real connectivist... the real connectivists are now changing governments (like in Egypt and Tunisia), they are changing the meaning of diplomacy, dignity and conspiracy (like in Wikileaks), they are creating knowledge (like Wikipedia), writing phenomenal apps (Open Source) and so on... they live connectivism naturally. They do not need MOOC to become connectivists.

They developed skills that our generation strives on eradicating... for example: they utilize their idle time, they change their values when needed, they are not afraid about their identity, they are not afraid if someone else use their information, they do not believe retaining information themselves is essential, they can work with massive knowledge add-ons (like knowledge on machines), they do NOT plan for the deep future, they do not have worries (although we push them to develop theirs), they believe EVERYTHING can supply knowledge (whether friend or enemy, genius or ignorant, machine or ??), they are not worried if the information is correct or not, their friends and community is on constant change, their friend-set changes based on the issue they are addressing... They do not worry about respect or trust ... and few other skills that I do not own... yet!

Who among us have these skills? not me so far!

Don't get me wrong: I am connected, I have a huge PLN that helps me with my day to day learning and decision making, I believe that knowledge resides in machines and I make a good use of these tools. But all of these are "simulated connectivism". They are not natural traits. When I compare my connectivism with my son, I still find huge gaps between how my brain is connected and how his brain is connected. Adopting the famous phrase: I am an emigrant to the connectivim and not a naturalized connectvist!

[[CCK11]]: Is Connectivism Accepted?

One of my "connectee" on the Facebook asked: "Is Connectivism already accepted as a Learning Theory?"...

I replied first saying: "Good Question" just to lock myself to the discussion hoping someone would give a good answer. Then I did a mini research then I commented with:

Short answer: Not Yet.

Long answer: Connectivsm creates a new paradigm where "acceptance" is determined by the "connected masses" and not necessarily by the academicians.

So, if you are asking if it is academically accepted, the answer is "not yet", for the academics will require a long time to decide (I have seen academic researches with and against the idea). But the process is still going*.

If you are asking if it is accepted by the masses? The answer is another "not yet". The number of individuals who are accepting the concept is increasing. But it did not reach a critical mass to call it a global acceptance. I think it will get there soon*.

Is there someone out there who would like to make me a better person by proving me wrong?

---

PS: * This is my opinion as of NOW. I am ready to change it the moment someone/something convince me otherwise. So, don't stop trying to convince me otherwise!"

[Check full conversation on FaceBook CCK11 group]

[[CCK11]]: Connectivism and Collaboration

Trying to answer the question: "how connectivism and collaboration are similar, yet, different. Or, are they? ", I commented:

In my opinion, connectivism and collaboration are different.

As of today, I understand connectivism to be "connection(s) that induce learning". While collabrotion, on the other hand, is "connection to reach an outcome". They will be the same if, and only if, the outcome is learning.

Note that, in connectivism, collaboration is not essential; especially when the connection is established with a none human entity (like Google search or a database!)...

Then I got this reply from one of the connectees on the site

I do not think they are mutually exclusive and tend to think of them both as, perhaps, contiguous and both contained in the flow of processes in learning. What is learning? How, and by whom, is learning determined? The short answer, for me, is ... it depends :-) ... there are many variables and possible permutations.

What do you think?"

[Check full conversation on FaceBook CCK11 group]

[[CCK11]] - Machines and knowledge

This is a dailog that happened on our FaceBook CCK11 group:

Katy: Maybe I am looking at PLNs a different way, as a newcomer to the idea - I think that a PLN is mostly people. People who make up the network, whose expertise or viewpoint or experience "rubs off on you" as you interact and connect and communicate with them. Yes, some nodes are one-way (as with a website that shows a presentation from an expert) but most nodes are two-way, like colleague who points you toward the site with the presentation and who you get into discussion with about the presentation and whose other friend disagrees with the expert and gets into the discussion.
Me: ‎@Kate: you are right, but not in the CCK11 context. In connectivism, knowledge resides with people as well as machines... so, we cannot limit it to people only! Unorthodox, I know!

Katy: ‎@Anas: So the site where the expert's presentation is housed is part of the PLN as well as the expert and the friend who tells you about the site? That makes sense. But it's not just the sites - a collection of site bookmarks on someone's computer doesn't tell you about the connections between them and -more importantly- how the human people in that person's PLN have made sense of the sites and connections between the sites and the people and the problems needing to be solved.

Me: @Katy: like you, I am still trying to make peace with this concept. This is what Connectivism advocates, not me, at least not yet :-) Machines as machines contribute to the knowledge. The closest example is Google: the information generated by google is collected, collated and compiled by some creepy entities (called bots or spiders) that sniff the whole world wide web and present them to us in a format we understand. Some of this information is created by other bots! Similarly Wikipedia, bots contribute to the creation of its articles. So, the machine started to contribute to our knowledge, not people only... creepy. Right?

Katy: @Anas - maybe by the end of the course I will see more eye-to-eye with Connectivism on this idea! Machines contributing to the knowledge is easier for me to deal with than the idea of machines 'creating' the knowledge = information is not the same as knowledge, is it>?

Jaap: @Katy What do you think of this example? a machine can make a diagram of your contacts in Linkedin, this machine creates information/knowledge that was not there before.

Me: @Katy: mhmm... Good point. To me, information is different from knowledge. Information is public, while knowledge is personal. The moment I communicate my knowledge to you, it becomes information to you. How you interpret it becomes your knowledge. We might end up having different knowledge although we "consumed" the same information. At this end, I should agree with you: machine creates "information" and we create our "knowledge". This makes me think: does the machine has its own "knowledge"? Can we call it knowledge? I like this mooc thing. Thank you for drifting my attention to a real issue.

Katy: @Jaap- yes, the machine creates patterns from information. Those patterns, that new information can open our eyes to new possibilities. But I don't think that we can equate information with knowledge @Anas- good point about 'consuming' the same information, yet generation different knowledge. We all have different backgrounds, experiences, prior information that cause us each to process the connections between information bits differently= each of us make unique knowledge of the world. And the different, unique knowledge is what our PLNs are exploring, right? If we just wanted to hear the same opinions and information over and over again, we'd go to a faculty meeting or a family reunion (joke) instead of investing time in cultivating a PLN to broaden and deepen our knowledge.

The Question is: if Knowledge is personalized information, can we use the term "machine knowledge"? Consequently, can we say the distributed knowledge may reside in machines as well?

[Check the group for complete transcript and context.]

Information Explosion, CCK11

I have just finished the second Webinar about CCK11... and just discovered that I have to change the ways I do things... integrally.

In the last years, I had 4 main emails I manage periodically, subscribed to few interesting list services and social media. I have created an environment to manage the overflow of information I face everyday. I was successful on tracking the daily changes on FaceBook, the few hundred emails I get everyday, the twitts, RSS, summaries I get and had enough time to contribute to them and to Wikipedia. I was happy and well informed and evolving at a comfortable way.

With the CCK11 course, my exposure to knowledge has already multiplied by 10... and I did not start interacting yet... I think once I start "artifacting", or as the mooc video suggest: network, my daily intake of information will multiply unimaginably.

My old way of interacting with the information will not work. I need a new way. I hope I can figure out something soon to make good use of this experience... I will post it here once I know.

But hey, this is evolution.

One second: could this be considered my "artificat"? Is my topic "How to survive (manage) the overflow of information that connectivism create"? Maybe! Let me digest this mooc concept first before I commit. Reading time.

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Detect language » Arabic

Updated PLE (Dec 2010)

I have chosen to divide my third attempt on my PLE into 3 branches:

(1) My Learning: Sites or Internet Activities that helps me learn. It is part of my lifelong learning activities. You may call this branch: lifelong learning.

(2) Future Learning: The activities I would like to learn in the next 3-6 months.

(3) Trouble Shooting, or what I like to describe as Knowledge-On-Demand. In general, this type of activities does not require me "to learn" as such, but it is essential for my day to day operation.

Details

(1) "My Learning" branch

I recognize the I have 3 levels of learning: the cognitive (i.e. the information I have to retain), Behavioral (i.e. learning that changes my habits and behavior) and Paradigm Shift (i.e learning that changes my values). In my PLE, I havr outlined SOME of the web sites that helps me in each level. For example, playing SIMS helped me (and helps me) analyze daily routines and social interaction that, after playing for a while, help me develop new habits or behavior. As you may have noticed, my life is filled with online cognitive opportunities. This is the real purpose of the internet. Isn't it?

(2) "My Future Learning" branch

In the next 6 months, I need to learn about mLearning (=Learning using the mobile devices), developing audio-visual materian for online courses (this course gave the push for it) and about Avatars and 2nd Life (my next online course).

(3) Troubleshooting branch

In my life, I face a lot of problems that I need to solve immediately. Due to the nature of my field, most of this knowledge is obsolete and worth learning (eg: programming languages... the moment you learn it, it become obsolete, so spend time learning languages is a life killer.) so, I revert to online friends or resources to find solutions either by searching previous cases, or asking in forums. This is what I like to call Knowledge on Demand.

The PLE (Bubbl.us disabled embedding their chart, so I replaced it with a static image.)

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Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Belarusian Bulgarian Catalan Chinese Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician German Greek Haitian Creole ALPHA Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

Detect language » Arabic

Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Belarusian Bulgarian Catalan Chinese Croatian Czech Danish Detect language Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician German Greek Haitian Creole ALPHA Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish ⇄

Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Belarusian Bulgarian Catalan Chinese Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician German Greek Haitian Creole ALPHA Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

Detect language » Arabic

Noosphere

I just got involved in translating Wikipedia articles about the concept of "Noosphere"... I was fascinated to discover that there were people in the early 20th century were prophetically predicting  about the internet... Amazing.

Noospher, according to these prophets, is the 3rd cycle of the evolution of Earth. The first phase was the "Geosphere", that is the creation of the physical earth. The second phase is the "biosphere" which is the phase were the physical earth evolved to create living forms. The next phase is the Noosphere when the living form evolves to the level of creating awareness. Awareness being the collective concept of knowledge and consciousness.

The first prophet of the concept was Vernadsky who in the 1920's introduced this concept building on Darwin theory of the survival of the fittest.

The came De Chardin who elaborated the concept and tried to explain it theologically through his Omega Point theory. Obviously, his theory died when the church opposed it although he did his best to show that the Omega Point is the personification of Jesus.

Both ideas suggests that the next level of the evolution of Earth is to create a global awareness... which is the collectiveness and interrelationship of global knowledge!

Isn't this what the Internet is all about? Interesting concept that requires further contemplation.

Learning Desire

I was asked:

For learning to take place do we have to have a teacher? Customized teaching or customized presentation of information for student acquisition?

I replied:

No… we do not need a teacher to learn. Learning is an individualized process. Except for Pavlov approaches, there is nothing that can make us learn except us. This is why I believe that the only thing a teacher can do is ignite the desire to learn (i.e switch to learning mode) and offer the right environment for the individual to learn on their own (i.e the experience and information). Once the student becomes in the “learning mode”, she will interact with the teacher and other individuals to clarify the vague idea while building up her knowledge.

Igniting the desire to learn happens instantaneously when the topic aligns with the individual’s personal intelligence, talent and values. This is what happens with life-long learners!

Knowledge, Talent and Intelligence

In my last article, I mentioned that learning is the process of creating knowledge through personalizing information. Then I touched on talent and intelligence. This morning, I was thinking if the created knowledge persevere. I though not. Then, I started thinking about knowledge on demand which is creating the knowledge as needed and discarding it when it is not! This lead me to think: what is the knowledge that is retained. Reflecting on myself, I discovered that I retain the knowledge that interests me. I discard the other. Then I thought what interests me. I concluded that my talent (set of strengths) and the set of my intelligence (according to MI) determines my interest. Then I recognized that my values and controling instincts have roles to play. This made me come up with the following theory:

Learning is the process of converting information to knowledge. Retaining knowledge is another process that relates to intelligence and talent. It requires a name. Applying the retained knowledge requires a third process (that needs to be named!). Consistently applying the knowledge is the geniusity!

Data > Information > Knowledge > *retained knowledge* > *applied knowledge* > *the knowledge becomes controlling*

This theory needs more work. I need to find terms for the missing names from the literature. I need to relate talent/intelligence/values to it. I need more readings.

Dialogue about Subways and Mac's

The below is a dicussion that happened around my "Subways and Mac's" post on another blog. I thought to copy it over here for the records. Oxana commented:

Anas, I like your analogy. It shows some of your goals you are striving to achieve. Did you think of the “counter”/delivery people? Who will serve your course, you alone or other tutors ? Are you aiming to franchise it and give other people to run it with consistent quality and outcome? Cheers

Then Doug posted:

Anas: Its a daydream because like Oxana pointed out the servers will be in control. As you must realize the objectives and outcome system is to satisty government requirements and once the funding is in place the who knows what the assessment process will provide. Teachers like MDs are controlled by a government bureaucracy. Just calculate how much is paid to institutional Presidents for X universities in Alberta…why not have X-y and put the money into back into teaching and instruction? have fun Doug
PS its all about the beef.

Then I replied:

@Oxana: (1) no servers. Learners pick and choose. There will be the cooks who are usually invisible that prepare the material, and support staff who keeps cleaning stuff and answering odd questions. (2) no franchise. It GNU based.

@Doug: (1) Servers will never be in control. Look at our course, are our Facilitators in Control? They just ensure we adhere to goals and give us support if we ask for it. Beyond that, they are almost invisible… right? (2) This is the beauty of dreaming: You don’t have to worry about what would go wrong. I understand where you come from about regulated studies. This is why I believe there must be other “restaurants” to cater for these cases. I, myself, will always avoid creating online courses for them, although in my heart, I am sure we can use the Subway method as well… but it is headache… and as Dawnn suggested in her video, I want to be happy!