Is this the future of education?
For real writers and creators: Love to write, to speak, and/or to make films? Wish there was a class where you could work on your own ideas, your own projects, and learn advanced podcasting, film-making, writing/blogging, social networking? This class is for you. You design your project(s). You develop them however you want them to go. And you get feedback from your teacher on the quality of your writing and other multimedia (radio/podcasting, movie-making, blogging, social networking strategies). If you choose, you can learn to market your project for world attention. It will be yours to continue in coming years, when class is over.
Clay Burell is going to have fun next year and so are a bunch of his students. Some day [soon?] this might not even be an item of interest as it will be the norm. I can also see this model as a better model for online learning for many disciplines than what most courses offer. With less “teaching” and more guidance and feedback, it may even scale up better.
This just in:
Meanwhile, in an alternate universe, Mark Federman reports that Ryerson Polytechnic has charged a student with academic misconduct for creating a Chemistry study group on Facebook [AKA, that evil place where them youngsters hang out]:
In their minds, Ryerson administrators must maintain their control over students and the mode of learning, true to their 17th century pedagogical heritage. Metaphorically, this is Ryerson U’s president, Sheldon Levy, wearing a long, schoolmarm-ish dress, thwacking Avenir over the head with a yardstick in the one-room schoolhouse that is still, lamentably, Ry High.
Harold, is there a special meaning to “polytechnic” that I might not be getting? In the U.S., it tends to mean a school geared toward science and engineering — e.g., Virginia Tech is actually Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
Be that as it may, Levy’s ire seems to be directed at an online study group, which I assume engaged in activities much like those of face-to-face study groups: working problems, arguing interpretations, talking about the teachers, grousing about the pizza.
Will Levy’s Legions issue baby monitors so they can check on what happens in the F2F groups?
Sweet mother of pearl.
Ryerson is now a university, though it used to be a polytechnic, and if the administration continues with these actions Ryerson may revert to polytechnic or high school status sometime in the near future.