Barnhard Blog

MIT wants to up the ante on the certification of free courses. Starting next spring, the university, already famous for its OpenCourseWare project, will launch MITx, an e-learning initiative that will offer certificates to students demonstrating mastery of free MIT courses. According to a new set of FAQs, the certificates won’t bear MIT’s name. Rather, “MIT plans to create a not-for-profit body within [MITx] that will offer certification for online learners of MIT coursework. That body will carry a distinct name to avoid confusion.” The courses will be free; the certificates will cost just a “modest” sum. It’s all a big step in the right direction.

Good news. But will it create new value? Or as a cynical commenter argued:

Faculty at top ten universities are NOT good teachers, research has consistently found—though students benefit from great lab and research work they come from. BUT there is some worth here—in terms of unlocking the secret treasure box, where the secret is, top universities are MOSTLY FILTERS not adders of value Restricting access was their primary route to high status, not improving student minds and civilizational outcomes (example Harvard’s destruction of $13 trillion of US wealth via its wall street ethos and faculty). Any move to actually educate not merely up status by restricting access is welcome though too late to save GENERATIONS OF Americans now hopeless incompetent to continue the American dream.

It is a step into access, but we should need more in the direction of what Lessig and Nielsen talk about. Real open education.

Het Pentagon heeft de leertijd van de nieuwe piloten aanzienlijk weten te bekorten door inschakeling van een EEG. Door de betrokken hersengebieden van de leerlingen wordt een kleine hoeveelheid elektriciteit geleidt terwijl het de kennis wordt verstrekt. En wat blijkt: ze leren veel sneller. Stel je de implicaties voor die dit kan hebben. Kennis die rechstreeks wordt overgepompt. Dat kan het begin zijn van iets groots. En engs. (via en meer)

The episode @ Tegenlicht

An anonymous reader writes with news that 25,000 staff across 13 hospitals in Denmark will be switching to LibreOffice over the course of the next year. “The group of hospitals is phasing out a proprietary alternative, ‘for long term strategic reasons,’ which at the same time saves the group some 40 million Kroner [about $7.7 million] worth of proprietary licenses. The ditching of the proprietary alternative is a consequence of the group’s move to virtual desktops, allowing staff members to log in on any PC or thin client. The group found that deploying this new desktop infrastructure would ‘trigger unacceptably high costs’ for proprietary office licenses… The move is Europe’s second largest migration project involving public administrations using an open source office suite.”

Stallman: “Free software guru Richard Stallman claims consumers should reject eBooks until they “respect our freedoms”. He highlights the DRM embedded in eBooks sold by Amazon as an example of such restrictions, citing the infamous case of Amazon wiping copies of George Orwell’s 1984 from users’ Kindles without permission. He also rails against Amazon for forcing people to identify themselves before buying eBooks. His suggested remedy? Distributing tax funds to authors based on their popularity, or “designing players so users can send authors anonymous voluntary payments”.”

For some reason, the industry doesn’t learn from itself.