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?

 

 

Tools: Zotero

Website: http://www.zotero.org/

Since I decided to pursuit my doctorate studies, I am looking for tools that can help me study anywhere, anytime and on any device. One reserach that synch across many computers is Zotero. It has nice features like capturing web bibliographies, quotations, take notes and few more. I will be testing it and give my verdict if it is a useful too.

 

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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

Mobile Learning: The mobile nomad

Who do I consider a mobile nomad? First, let's agree that learning is converting the public information to personal knowledge.

The obvious answer is that the mobile nomads are the busy workers who seeks education anytime and anywhere. The one who spend so much time idling waiting for the next process of his work. Those who commute. Or those who work in modern corporate world where they have to spend 8 hours at work while their actual work load needs far less than that. Or those who live in locations that lack traditional cable internet connectivity.

The non-obvious answer is still unclear. I think the real mobile nomads are the  lifelong learners who can learn when new knowledge is needed. Information is exponentially changing and knowledge need to be created based on the most up to date information. This is a new breed of beings who are among us but not widely recognized by education. The wikipedians (i.e volunteer collaborators and open source developers) are very good example. They contribute to their knowledge and the global information anytime, anywhere and with any device.

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

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!

Oxen, cars and Education

This excerpt was a rely to one of my colleagues who shed some doubt about the effectiveness of online courses in regulated courses:

Doug: This is so very true. We have a dilemma. Trying to use the wrong tools for the solution. It is the curse of living at the verge of change.

This reminds me of an Australian movie about something that happened in 1920's. The scene shows a farmer who owns a lot of horses and oxen that he use to plow and harvest his field. His young son, who just graduated, came back to the farm driving one of those newly invented cars. He told his father that this machine is the future and it will replace the animals in the field work. His father rode on a horse and told him "show me". Obviously, the horse was much faster running on the field terrain and the car got stuck in the mud after few yards. The father sat triumphantly on his rocking chair and cynically asked his son: "It will never replace my animals. How do you feed hay to this machine?"
Obviously the car was the wrong tool for the period. Few years down the load, the car evolved into a tractor and replaced the animals and changing the farming industry and proved Malthus wrong. The son was right, but the father did not see at the time.
We are in a similar situation. Online courses and technology are not the solution for everything yet. We still have to use the horses until online courses and education evolves to become suitable. Until then, we have to use the "cars" where they are applicable. Like driving from the city to the farm and not more.

Subways and Mac's

Daydreaming...

I want my online courses to be like Subway sandwiches and not like MacDonald buns! I want the learner to choose the ingredients of the course. To choose the style of activities that makes them learn. They cannot choose the objectives nor the duration. Subway and Mcdonalds have the same objectives: to give you calories and nutritions. One style allows you to choose the ingredients that the you want. The other gives you limited alternatives to choose from.

At Subway, if you aim is to lose weight, you choose more vegies than bacon. If you want to put on weight, you double the cheese, bacon and mayo's. At Macdonald, you do not have this flexibility. I want my online courses to be the same. They should have clear objectives: (1) the learning outcomes dictated by the curriculum; a and (2) a fixed duration by which the learner should complete the outcomes*. The course will offer a variety of activities. Paced and self paced. Traditional sequential reading material and leaping hyperlinked reading material. Videos and handouts. Synchronous and Asynchronous interaction. Learning by doing and learning by observing. Self reflection and networked interaction. Mayonaise and Catchup. Peer learning and self-learning. The list need to be completed.

The one who chooses to learn using my online course should know what they want and how they learn. Like the Subway customer: they know what they like to eat and know how to choose. For the others, let them go to a Mac restaurant (i.e. packaged courses) or to a fancy restaurant (i.e the structured-constructivist-interactiving course) . Not mine. I want my student to "Learn Fresh". ... and I woke up!

Questions: Was it a daydream or something that I can really make? Do you think there must be more objectives? Like assessment? Any suggestions for more ingredients I need to add the "menu of the course"? I know McDonals is far more popular and profitable than Subway around the world! Do you think traditional online/distant course delivery will prevail over my styles?

My Virtual World

I have been spending the last few days interacting with new virtual friends over the concept of online teaching and learning. This morning, I felt I need to live the real life. I needed a break. I needed to touch again with reality. So, I went to FaceBook and redecorated my CafeWorld and redesigned my mansion on FarmVille... Where is my reality? This is like an onion... you peel one layer to find more layers... and as I understand, most of the nutritions of the onion is in the cover, which we throw away...

I know this should make me think about my life... but what is wrong with doing what I enjoy even if the society say otherwise... I am reacting with real people except I do not experience their physicality... how different is this from talking with a real person? ... more realities to be discovered from the virtual world...