Open Online Public Education and the Future of Public Media
- "Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable, let's prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all."
- ~Douglas Adams
Open Integrated-media Education
- Open Education Expressed in Code, Law, Integrated Public Media and Human Spirit -
- How can we maximize and release the brilliance that is in every child, the creative energy and the fantastic desire to learn that all infants begin with, and lead them to be joyful life long learners who feel connected to each other and to society and want and are prepared to make a better world?
- And how can we measure whether we have succeeded?
Imagine, then, that you are building in integrated media a technology-assisted free and open online learning environment.
We know our public education system for all its aspiration fails to deliver to many of our children. We are still "A Nation at Risk." Bill Gates description of our public education as "obsolete" still holds.
The net is our opportunity to change the rhetorical frame of childrenâs upbringing not by forcing them but by attracting them to learning, and by attracting mothers and fathers, family and friends who would teach them to be smart and good if only they better knew how.
This is a medium we can truly reach out to, teach out into, constructing technologically assisted human learning environments. We have the capacity to fill it with stimuli and tests. We have capacity to reward good performance.
Teaching with Strategic Games
we would like to lead the development of a curriculum ultimately teaching law and logic but starting with simple strategic games. the idea is to catch the fire of learning in children's love of games, and engage them with increasing levels of challenge that develop critical, algorithmic and strategic thinking skills.
we propose to start with tic tac toe and other games of complete and certain information, lines and dots, connect 4, checkers, chess, then move to games of incomplete and uncertain information, prisoners dilemma, poker. we will code games, starting with scratch. we design the teaching in a media environment integrating real space, done in a style of celebration of electronic art and play
at a recent conference hosted by WGBH the possibility emerged of a combined effort of universities and public media, led by mit, harvard, wgbh, pbs, npr, to take up the mission and and meet the challenge of open public integrated media education. it will be our mission to make education the internet's best use.
our interests include development of (1) an integrated online and face-to-face teaching environment in which both teachers and students will learn and thrive; (2) an online curriculum sufficiently engaging to attract and hold and lead students on to higher education; (3) a positive research plan; (4) a positive business plan.
1. classrooms
2. curriculum
3. research