21st Century Perspectives on Teaching, Learning, and Technology

E-Learning: 21st Century Perspectives on Teaching, Learning, and Technology

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MOOCs & The Secret Garden

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Prologue For those who have been following trends in higher education, the term MOOCs (pronunciation: muk) is not foreign anymore but for some people it is still kind of clouded in mystery. A simple google search using ‘MOOC’ as a keyword turned up 2.4 million hits and when searched using the full acronym ‘Massive Open Online Courses’ it gave a massive 24 million hits! Mind-boggling indeed! If the number of hits can be used as a simple measure of popularity then perhaps we can surmise that MOOCs is a phenomenon that have a potential to disrupt the education world and will bring about significant impact on achieving “ Education for All ” movement of the United Nation. This article is my attempt to deciphering and demystifying MOOCs. Note that this is my personal view on MOOCs (not that of USM or CDAE) and I must say that I’m inclined towards supporting it because I liked its underlying philosophy. That said, I'm not a MOOCs cheerleader or its fan boy — I keep an open mind on this ev...
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The Toxic Culture of Education

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In the interview with the Times magazine in 2006, Bill Gates said, “In almost every area of human endeavour, the practice improves BUT that hasn't been the case for teaching" Why? Why haven’t we fix our education system? Are we going to do the same thing that didn’t work? Why are we still hesitant to take a bold step? What happened to all the strategic plan and education reform? what happened to all those research? Maybe we need to dismantle the whole structure of the system? The gist of Joshua's Talk in the video above: “In the mid-1800's, Horace Mann captured the potential impact of education on society. We have yet to realize the potential he saw, and in fact, we are missing the mark by a wider and wider margin. We have created a "Toxic Culture of Education" in our country that is damaging students, impacting our economy, and threatening our future. Since the passage of No Child Left Behind, we have embraced a culture of high-stakes testing and are perpet...
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Creating a World without Poverty

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" Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime .” This phrase is simply mean that having a good job is better than giving someone a handout. This is an inspiring story of Dr Muhammad Yunus ( read his biography ), the recipient of 2006 Nobel Peace Price for his creation, the Grameen Bank , to help the poor people in Bangladesh. Grameen Bank provides small loans through a micro-credit (small loans for self-employment) scheme to millions of poor families in Bangladesh to start and grow their own business. Since its establishment the Grameen Bank has helped almost half of them work their way out of poverty.The repayment rate was said to be more than 98%. " You cannot get a dollar without a dollar in your hand ", he said. Dr Muhammad believes the concept of Grameen can end world poverty: " There is no reason why poverty should be here. This is a rich country - 120 million energetic, hardworking, intelligent people. The...
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