I just spent the last two days at a great conference convened by M.I.T. and Harvard on “Online Learning and the Future of Residential Education” — a k a “How can colleges charge $50,000 a year if my kid can learn it all free from massive open online courses?” Read the rest of this entry
Category Archives: MOOC’s Global Ed Conference
Thought Leaders – Cerf, Sir John, Isaacson
A confluence of events and opportunities has caused me to return to recordings made during Global Learn Day Voyage Ten, October 2004 – to include this one with Sir John Daniel, Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist, Google, Blaine Berger and Hibbs.
Click the link below (audio recording only)
Audio recording Berger, Cerf, Daniels
Let us now fast-forward to a video of Vint Cerf, (Google Evangelist) Walter Isaacson and Dr Bob Kahn.
Then let us ask ourselves the this question:
Where is there — is there? – a “Headquarters” where these kinds of thought leaders can comfortably, affordably gather? Where both the ordinary folks and the extraordinary are likely to be?
Where the ideas and arguments advanced by Walter Isaacson in his brand new book The Innovators could be put on high display? A very compelling showcase – and stage – proving that physical collaboration is the single most powerful ingredient to speed up innovation, invention, disruption.
I believe there is such a place. Ready and waiting for Sir John, Vint and Walt to come there and tell us more on how they could help spearhead this Next Big Thing.
Adding “pop” to the MOOCs
In the world of higher education, all the talk these days is about MOOCs. That’s fine. Deservedly so.
But it seems to me there is a key element that is missing from this conversation….an element that Aaron Hirsh nailed in this NY Times September 8 article, A good read, as below Read the rest of this entry
What if Barnum and Bailey Ran the MOOCs?
P. T. Barnum and James Bailey and their Ringling Brothers made rightful claim that their circus was “The Greatest Show on Earth“. I say they would do just as well in the business of MOOCs. And they wouldn’t have to know a lick about quantum physics or Big Data or the Brothers Grimm. Read the rest of this entry
Franklin Summer Camps – Imagination Workshops For Passionate Souls
Preface: The idea of Franklin Summer Camps arises from the two brightest gems in the vast treasure chest of the World Wide Web. The gems are labeled – MashUp and Disruption. The most obvious MashUp examples are Apple and iTunes, Amazon and Kindle. Those MashUps brought a tsunami of Disruption to the business of music and books. The next tsunami? Read the rest of this entry
Theta Chi Alumni – Just Do It!
NOTE: The Commentary below was submitted to the Alumni Board, Alpha Sigma Chapter, (Oregon) in early May 2013. In view of the deep resistance to putting “a lighthouse on the front lawn of the Theta Chi House at Oregon, my own thoughts have turned to the far greater potential of a Gerlinger Lighthouse “smack dab in the center of the campus of the University“. However, the linkage between that undertaking and means and methods to restore the intellectual, cultural and economic vitality to the Grand House at 1125 East 19th Avenue remains. Here, below, is what was submitted to the Alumni Board for their May 20, 2013 meeting. Read the rest of this entry
Facebook, Amazon, Google – Missing the boat?
Leave it to Vanity Fair’s brilliant editor Graydon Carter to synthesize the sea change in marketing now underway. Read the rest of this entry
GLD – A Giving Machine
With all of the gazillion webinars, on-line and physical events all around the world, what makes Global Learn Day special? Here’s the short answer.
Part of it is, of course, the unique idea of a 24 hour 24 time zone undertaking where presenters, crew and audience are gathered on an imaginary 19th Century Clipper, the Franklin. On a Voyage that crosses all five Oceans of the world, And nobody has to go farther than their Smart Phone or their Desktop.
We know of no other 24 hour event which opens “where the planet begins the new day“, and closes on some speck in the far reaches of the Western Pacific. With real time physical participation from the South Pole to Outer Space. (And just about everywhere in between. Yes we did this by ham radio from both Poles and with the Russians aboard their Soyuz.)
We also don’t know of anyone else that works as hard as we do to “partner” with English speaking radio stations around the globe. What good is it to have jaw-dropping conversations about the great issues of our time if only a relative few ever hear what was said? Read the rest of this entry
Tom Friedman On MOOCs
When Tom Friedman speaks, people listen. Here’s what he had to say in today’s New York Times
March 5, 2013
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Voyage Ingredients of High Power and High Impact
For nearly twenty years I have been pounding the same drum.
- That ignorance is the greatest enemy of those seeking a safer, saner planet.
- That access to affordable, quality education is, by far, the greatest antidote to ignorance.
- That increasing access to education is best done by events with high-octane speakers with inter-active presentations that are globally broadcast/webcast in ways that reach audiences in the millions.
- That the Web makes all things possible — IF you use all the tools at hand.
Lately, I have been advocating that by brilliantly weaving the three great issues of our time – Increasing Access to Education (with a heavy focus on Massive Open Online Learning); Climate Change (with a focus on Healthy Oceans); Gender Equality (with a focus on violence against women and spectacularly involved with VDay and One Billion Rising. Presentations that are washed, waxed and polished then weaved, layered and flavored together like the Hippocratic Twins who laugh and cry together.” Read the rest of this entry
Digital Globes Offer a Dynamic Vision
Vincenzo Coronelli World’s Greatest Globe Maker
Antiquarian globes have always fascinated me. Proof of this is that inside my home are three near-perfect replicas of globes originally made by Vincenzo Coronelli in the 17th Century. The story of the making of these globes is way too long to relate here — except to say that until you yourself try to put a flat map on a round sphere, you don’t know how hard this is.
My sense is there are some deep connective tissues between Global Learn Day “Voyages” and Global Imagination, the makers of Magic Planet. (See NY Times article below.) Not only are their Spheres a brilliant learning device, they have a Mission Statement as grand as the globes they make: Global Imagination’s mission is to improve the way people perceive, explore and act upon global information.
Stay tuned. Anyone that operates as company called Global Imagination is someone with whom I want to spend lots of time.
Read the rest of this entry
