27 oct 2013

El gran cambio en la educación actual

Cada vez vemos más contenido -con referencia a el futuro de la educación-de como se avesina un Gran Cambio !

En específico hoy La Nación (Argentina) publicó un artículo llamado "La educación a las puertas de un gran cambio" escrito por Jorge Mosquera.

Este artículo nos invita a reflexionar sobre las señales de estancamiento que tienen los actuales procesos educativos. Para los que están desarrollando plataformas educactivas tipo MOOC o portales como OpenCursos.com para indexar cursos masivos online parece que estamos proponiendo una alternativa disruptiva positiva para desarrollar los programas educactivos personalizados tal como el articuloc cita sobre lo que Isaac Asimov visualizaba.

"Si Galileo regresara a la Tierra y lo llevasen a un quirófano no sabría dónde está. Con toda esa tecnología puesta al servicio del ciudadano. Pero si lo llevasen a una universidad, sí que lo sabría, porque vería mesas, pizarras y tizas". El ejemplo no podría ser más adecuado para ilustrar la antigüedad de nuestros sistemas educativos. Fue enunciado por Josep A. Planell, rector de la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), augurando que el futuro de la educación no está en las aulas actuales, sino a través de la formación online. De ser así -y cada vez caben menos dudas que es el camino que estamos recorriendo- debemos prepararnos a cambiar nuestros esquemas sobre los análisis de selección, que pone especial atención sobre el tipo de universidad o carrera de los postulantes. Más aún: tal vez termine importando en primer lugar su actitud y vocación por aprender. Después vendrá el resto.

10 oct 2013

America Latina necesita mucho más ciencia y tecnología en sus aulas



Después de leer el post "The Technology & Programming Superiority of Eastern Europeans" en el HuffingtonpPost recordé el discurso del Premio Nobel y Ex-Presidente de Costa Rica, el Dr.Oscar Arias llamado “Algo Hicimos Mal”. 

Y con estos dos excelentes artículos que tratan sobre el desarrollo de la Educación hice algunas conclusiones, tal vez la más importante es -cuál es la disrupción más profunda que se esta dando en la educación en América Latina ?- lastimosamente mi respuesta quedo en el aire, realmente no se cual cambio o movimiento nuevo esta emergiendo, y si esto es así lamentablemente no estamos proponiendo y efectuando la innovación que con lo cual vamos a quedar asincronos con el reloj que marca los pasos de esta Tercera Revolución Industrial.


The Technology & Programming Superiority of Eastern Europeans

Bill Robinson
Technology, Entrepreneurship & Rock 'n Roll Journalist


Bear with me whilst I attempt to make a sweeping generalization stick: Eastern Europeans and Russians have better mathematical minds than most other nationalities, certainly than Americans. This forms the foundation of precisely why they are better programmers and writers of code than someone from say, Parsippany, Paris or Perth.

Better at math -- a more mathematical mind -- means you're automatically better at computer programming. Stringing together long lines of numbers for writing code is directly related to how good at and how much the coder enjoys math. See how easy that was?

Oh, you won't let me get away with that? OK, you'll take more persuading.

From my time living in Russia and getting to know some of the top minds there as well as in Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia it was my clear impression that 95 percent of those technology or other business people could run mathematical rings around me or other Americans. And, it's not because they have better schools or go to school longer or work harder or any of those things. It's because as a Russian friend of mine, who was the daughter of not just a mathematics professor father but also a mathematician mother, told me when I asked why Russians typically have such sharp mathematical minds, "In Russia, as children, we're taught that math is fun not something difficult or to be feared." I began to see the light.

Now, I had known from my many Russian and Eastern European (EE) friends, that even if their area of technology or science work focus is not computer programming but perhaps physics, photonics, nanotechnology or even biotech, they would occasionally have the burning need for some specialized computer code which would be crucial to their product or technology development path. And so they write it themselves.

They don't outsource it to India; or engage a virtual coding squad on one of the crowd-sourcing sites -- they write it themselves. This personal accountability for developing the key ingredients such as software internally is an absolute must-have for successful innovation and entrepreneurial development.

Reader: Here's where I make a tie-in for you to a related problem and opportunity for America. In order to compete on the world education stage with China, much less Russia and EE, this country must start streamlining and polishing the way we get the attention of our schoolchildren and infect them with enthusiasm for science, math and the other vital courses of study for the future of our economy.

There has been much-needed talk recently about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) education in America. Dean Kamen and his FIRST initiative are a prime example of the execution of this game-changing shift in our educational system.

Good start though FIRST is, we must do more. A few ways to explode STEM education in the USA:

1. Make science and math more fun for young children. I mean fun. Not just engaging or tempting but real, down-home fun. Teachers are pivotal in this reconfiguration.

2. Help train teachers to better understand how to magnetize boys and girls to STEM. Provide materials and the proper teasers to attract the eager minds of kids. Though I feel it has been a tad over-hyped, 'gamification' could play an essential role in this effort.

3. Conceive and execute more after-school programs such as FIRST that give children (and it's important to get them as young as possible) and young people exposure to how fun and fascinating STEM can be.

If America can get a comprehensive, working program in place for STEM education instead of a loose consortium of disparate organizations with vague government help, this country can solve the employment, small business, tax revenue and welfare dependency problems ...all at once.

Link origen:

7 oct 2013

La tecnología reemplazará el pensamiento ?


Anexo un excente post del actor Kirk Douglas sobre la tecnología, llamado -Will Technology Replace Thinking?-
El punto de fondo de este articulo de Kirk es realmente interezante ya que nos está narrando como él esta en presencia de un enorme cambio de paradigma y él hace la observación de cuanto esta cambio puede ser tan profundo que hasta nuestro"pensamiento".

Solamente me atrevo a sumar con este artículo de cuanto el nuevo paradigma educativo a través de MOOCs nos ayudará a ejercer un mejor pensamiento debido a la facilidad para obtener mucha mayor información que en el pasado paradigma.

Will Technology Replace Thinking?
Kirk Douglas

When you get to be 96 years of age the road ahead is short, so you look back at the road you have traveled for almost 100 years.

The first thing you come up against is technology. One night we took our grandchildren out for dinner. I looked around the table. Jason, the youngest, was playing games with his cellphone; Ryan, 12 years old, had his head under the table and I assumed he was watching his cellphone; Tyler, 16, and his sister Kelsey, 18, were both involved on their cellphones too. Lisa, their mother, was frantically searching in her purse for her ringing cellphone; and Peter, their father, was leaning back, laughing loudly, on his cellphone. I looked across the table at my wife. We both shrugged.

Outside is worse. People walking down the streets, holding objects against their ears, either listening or talking. When they're speaking it looks like they're just crazy people talking to themselves. They cross the road without looking, still talking, and people driving their cars are doing the same thing. Is what they're saying really that important?

I don't have a cellphone. I don't want one. But my wife secretly had a computer installed in my room. They taught me how to play Spider Solitaire. I quickly became an addict -- just solitaire, nothing else. I don't press any other keys because I'm sure it would cause an explosion.

What will become of our world in the next 100 years? Will our children and grandchildren even learn how to write or spell? Will technology replace thinking?

I just realized that you're probably reading this on your computer or on your cellphone while you're driving or crossing the street.

Watch where you're going!

Fuente:

El proximo año 22 millones de estudiantes en cursos online


La demanda de matrícula en cursos online creció en el 2012 más de 50% en el Bureau Veritas Business School, lo cual refleja que el e-learning y plataformas MOOC representarán el cambio de paradigma en la Educación de España.

De hecho Rafael Reif, rector del M.I.T, ha catalogado a las MOOC como el cambio educativo más profundo de los últimos 500 años. (ver nota)

Nuevamente respecto a España, el recurso alternativo de e-learning esta creciendo enormemente, y mucho de este cambio es debido a sus crisis económica. Es por esto que el tema de capacitación online en las empresas denominado como formación " in company" esta resultando ser la mayor apuesta para desarrollar cursos online por parte de los centros de formación especializados.

Ventajas de la enseñanza eLearning, según el Bureau Veritas Business School;

1. Mayor flexibilidad. El eLearning ofrece una mayor flexibilidad. Puedes estudiar las 24 horas del día, los 7 días de la semana.
2. Facilidad de acceso. En cualquier lugar y en cualquier momento, gracias a las nuevas tecnologías.
3. Reducción de los tiempos de aprendizaje. Se ha comprobado que los tiempos de aprendizaje pueden ser reducidos entre un 40% y 60% si se ofrecen soluciones de eLearning. Tú eliges tu ritmo.
4. Aumento de la retención. Según estudios experimentales, la información asimilada en procesos de eLearning son retenidas un 25% más que si se utilizan soluciones convencionales de formación presencial.
5. Compatibilidad de actividades. El eLearning es compatible con muchas otras actividades, casi de manera simultánea, con el trabajo, el ocio, etc.
6. Comodidad. Elimina las barreras espaciales y temporales: desde tu propia casa, en el trabajo, de viaje, a través de dispositivos móviles o tablets. Se acabaron los desplazamientos.
7. Actualización inmediata de los contenidos de los cursos. Actualizados y puestos al día de forma inmediata en correspondencia con las novedades que se dan en las materias.
8. Reducción de costes. No hay costes de desplazamiento, de logística ni de metodología.
9. Formación personalizada. La web proporciona al alumno un seguimiento de sus progresos, alertas de fechas de entrega de trabajos, reuniones virtuales o ejercicios remitidos al docente.
10. Gestión real del conocimiento: intercambio de ideas, opiniones, prácticas, experiencias. Enriquecimiento colectivo del proceso de aprendizaje, sin límites geográficos.

Más info. en:

Francia revoluciona su Educación !


Una gran noticia y apoyo a la Revolución MOOC, Francia se une a esta revolución educativa. El Ministerio de Educación e Investigación de Gobierno francés esta desarrollando un plan denominado "France Université Numerique" para ofrecer cursos online.

Esta acertada desición de Francia obedece a que las MOOCs están teniendo un fuerte desarrollo en Europa, por ejemplo al programa de la Unión Británica conocido como Future Learn, y recientemente el proyecto desarrollado por la Comisión de la Comunidad Europea llamado Open Education Europa.

Leer más en:

5 oct 2013

3 Razones del porque las MOOC sobreviran !



Hoy el tema de MOOC es tratado como la tendencia más fuerte e idónea para desarrollar la Educación en esta Tercera Revolución Industrial.

El fundador de Red Dog Learning, Mark Smithers, opinó sobre 3 razones por las cuales las plataformas MOOC serán el camino a seguir, siempre enfocandos sobre la Educación.

1. Cada vez más los estudiantes encuentran contenidos en Internet de casi cualquier índole que necesitan, esto provoca que los cursos vayan cada vez disminuyendo la tarifas de inscripción.

2. Sobre el modelo de negocio se esta en la etapa de prueba y ensayo, como es característica en los servicios en Internet, luego después de una etapa de maduración se irá decantando por un modelo definido.

3. Se comenzará a presentar un nuevo paradigma educativo respecto a los cursos presenciales y los soportados por MOOCs,donde lo más probable es que se signa usando los dos ambientes e interactuando entre ellos.


Para leer más sobre la nota en:

2 oct 2013

Experiencias Aprendidas sobre MOOCs


Anexo un excelente e-book denominado como Experiencias Aprendidas con MOOCs y Aprendizaje Open Online, realizado por el Php. George Veletsianos de Hybrid Pedagogy.

link del e-book:
http://hybrid-pedagogy.github.io/LearnerExperiencesInMOOCs/


Temario del estudio:

Chapter 1: How do learners experience open online learning?
George Veletsianos, PhD

Chapter 2: Searching for Extraterrestrials, One Video Lecture at a Time
Jennifer Ramirez

Chapter 3: MOOCs: Falling Short of What Online Learning Could Be
Michael Ota

Chapter 4: Culinary Creations from the Online Chef
Mary Bisheh

Chapter 5: MOOCs made me see the potential of online learning
Hui-chieh Chen

Chapter 6: Free, but monotonous and frustrating?
Afriannoor Miradinata

Chapter 7: Tales of a MOOC Dropout
Cindy Londeore

Chapter 8: What I Learned From And About MOOCs
Bahaa G. Ghobrial

Chapter 9: Learning about MOOCs by being in one
Mihyun Lim

Chapter 10: How I Learned to Stop Struggling and Translate the Web
Anne Valauri

Chapter 11: Becoming a DJ: Learning How to Mix Electronic Music via the Open Web
Michael Mendoza

23 sept 2013

Hay un nuevo despliegue mundial, La revolución MOOC...


Hay dos frases impresionantes dichas por el rector del M.I.T. Rafael Reif; "hay un nuevo despliegue mundial" y "todos tendrán que adaptarse"

Estas dos frases se refieren al impacto profundo de las plataformas MOOC dentro de los procesos educativos, de hecho algunos se atreven a opinar que es el cambio mas notorio de los últimos 500 años dentro de la temática de la Educación.

Para entender este cambio anexo un articulo del periodista del NYT Thomas Friedman, donde con muy pocas palabras explica muy bien la profundidad de este cambio educativo dentro de la sociedad.


Revolution Hits the Universities


By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: January 26, 2013



LORD knows there’s a lot of bad news in the world today to get you down, but there is one big thing happening that leaves me incredibly hopeful about the future, and that is the budding revolution in global online higher education. Nothing has more potential to lift more people out of poverty — by providing them an affordable education to get a job or improve in the job they have. Nothing has more potential to unlock a billion more brains to solve the world’s biggest problems. And nothing has more potential to enable us to reimagine higher education than the massive open online course, or MOOC, platforms that are being developed by the likes of Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and companies like Coursera and Udacity.

Last May I wrote about Coursera — co-founded by the Stanford computer scientists Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng — just after it opened. Two weeks ago, I went back out to Palo Alto to check in on them. When I visited last May, about 300,000 people were taking 38 courses taught by Stanford professors and a few other elite universities. Today, they have 2.4 million students, taking 214 courses from 33 universities, including eight international ones.

Anant Agarwal, the former director of M.I.T.’s artificial intelligence lab, is now president of edX, a nonprofit MOOC that M.I.T. and Harvard are jointly building. Agarwal told me that since May, some 155,000 students from around the world have taken edX’s first course: an M.I.T. intro class on circuits. “That is greater than the total number of M.I.T. alumni in its 150-year history,” he said.

Yes, only a small percentage complete all the work, and even they still tend to be from the middle and upper classes of their societies, but I am convinced that within five years these platforms will reach a much broader demographic. Imagine how this might change U.S. foreign aid. For relatively little money, the U.S. could rent space in an Egyptian village, install two dozen computers and high-speed satellite Internet access, hire a local teacher as a facilitator, and invite in any Egyptian who wanted to take online courses with the best professors in the world, subtitled in Arabic.

YOU just have to hear the stories told by the pioneers in this industry to appreciate its revolutionary potential. One of Koller’s favorites is about “Daniel,” a 17-year-old with autism who communicates mainly by computer. He took an online modern poetry class from Penn. He and his parents wrote that the combination of rigorous academic curriculum, which requires Daniel to stay on task, and the online learning system that does not strain his social skills, attention deficits or force him to look anyone in the eye, enable him to better manage his autism. Koller shared a letter from Daniel, in which he wrote: “Please tell Coursera and Penn my story. I am a 17-year-old boy emerging from autism. I can’t yet sit still in a classroom so [your course] was my first real course ever. During the course, I had to keep pace with the class, which is unheard-of in special ed. Now I know I can benefit from having to work hard and enjoy being in sync with the world.”

One member of the Coursera team who recently took a Coursera course on sustainability told me that it was so much more interesting than a similar course he had taken as an undergrad. The online course included students from all over the world, from different climates, incomes levels and geographies, and, as a result, “the discussions that happened in that course were so much more valuable and interesting than with people of similar geography and income level” in a typical American college.

Mitch Duneier, a Princeton sociology professor, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education in the fall about his experience teaching a class through Coursera: “A few months ago, just as the campus of Princeton University had grown nearly silent after commencement, 40,000 students from 113 countries arrived here via the Internet to take a free course in introductory sociology. ... My opening discussion of C. Wright Mills’s classic 1959 book, ‘The Sociological Imagination,’ was a close reading of the text, in which I reviewed a key chapter line by line. I asked students to follow along in their own copies, as I do in the lecture hall. When I give this lecture on the Princeton campus, I usually receive a few penetrating questions. In this case, however, within a few hours of posting the online version, the course forums came alive with hundreds of comments and questions. Several days later there were thousands. ... Within three weeks I had received more feedback on my sociological ideas than I had in a career of teaching, which significantly influenced each of my subsequent lectures and seminars.”

Agarwal of edX tells of a student in Cairo who was taking the circuits course and was having difficulty. In the class’s online forum, where students help each other with homework, he posted that he was dropping out. In response, other students in Cairo in the same class invited him to meet at a teahouse, where they offered to help him stay in the course. A 15-year-old student in Mongolia, who took the same class as part of a blended course and received a perfect score on the final exam, added Agarwal, is now applying to M.I.T. and the University of California, Berkeley.

As we look to the future of higher education, said the M.I.T. president, L. Rafael Reif, something that we now call a “degree” will be a concept “connected with bricks and mortar” — and traditional on-campus experiences that will increasingly leverage technology and the Internet to enhance classroom and laboratory work. Alongside that, though, said Reif, many universities will offer online courses to students anywhere in the world, in which they will earn “credentials” — certificates that testify that they have done the work and passed all the exams. The process of developing credible credentials that verify that the student has adequately mastered the subject — and did not cheat — and can be counted on by employers is still being perfected by all the MOOCs. But once it is, this phenomenon will really scale.

I can see a day soon where you’ll create your own college degree by taking the best online courses from the best professors from around the world — some computing from Stanford, some entrepreneurship from Wharton, some ethics from Brandeis, some literature from Edinburgh — paying only the nominal fee for the certificates of completion. It will change teaching, learning and the pathway to employment. “There is a new world unfolding,” said Reif, “and everyone will have to adapt.”

link del artículo:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/opinion/sunday/friedman-revolution-hits-the-universities.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&hp

22 sept 2013

Lista de 500 ebooks gratis !


Las plataformas MOOC dentro de sus complementos deberán de tener mucho contenido digital que pueda ser de apoyo, es por esto que es necesario ir recopilando material para su biblioteca digital.

Seguidamente se anexan mas de 500 titulos de textos en diversos formatos.

eBooks
  • Assortment of Classic Books for Kids – Read Online
  • 65 Modern Art Books by the Guggenheim Read Online
  • Baldwin, Frederick - Dear Monsieur Picasso – PDF
  • Boon, Marcus - In Praise of Copying – PDF
  • Chomsky, Noam and Edward Herman – Counter-Revolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact and Propaganda – Read Online
  • Chomsky, Noam - Deterring Democracy – Read Online
  • Chomsky, Noam – Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and U.S. Political Culture, Boston: South End Press, 1993. – Read Online
  • Chomsky, Noam – Year 501: The Conquest Continues – Read Online
  • Chomsky, Noam - Secrets, Lies and Democracy – Read Online
  • Brand, Stewart – The Whole Earth Catalog – Read Online
  • Doctorow, Cory - I, Robot – Kindle + Other Formats
  • Doctorow, Cory – With a Little Help – Kindle + Other Formats
  • Free Art Catalogs from The Metropolitan Museum of Art –Read Online
  • Carroll, Jean - Hunter: The Strange and Savage Life of Hunter S. Thompson – PDF – RTF
  • Kamenetz, Anya – The Edupunks’ Guide to a DIY Credential – Kindle + Other Formats
  • Lessig, Lawrence - The Future of Ideas – PDF
  • Lethem, Jonathan – The Empty Room – Read Online
  • Rucker, Rudy – The Ware Tetralogy – D0wnload
  • Scroggy, David – The Blade Runner Sketchbook: The Art of Syd Mead and Ridley Scott – Read Online
  • Wright, Erik Olin – Selected Writings – Read Online
  • The Beatles – Yellow Submarine – iPad