[Olpc-socal] [IAEP] Online Classes... Have you heard from Stanford Venture Lab?

[Zachary Charles Clifton]

I've only received the following on 9/22/12

Welcome edu-preneurs!

I am very excited to connect with you and work together to design new, effective learning environments!

The course officially starts on October 15 and will run for 10 weeks. During the course period, you will watch a series of short lecture videos, work on individual and team assignments, evaluate your peers’ individual and team assignments, and ultimately design and pitch a new learning environment as your final team project. Examples include learning management systems that do more or are better than existing tools, mobile learning models or e learning pedagogies, a technology that supports learning and assessment, new school system models, or a blended learning program. The strongest designs will trigger and facilitate active, constructive, real-world problem solving and collaborative learning, and will leverage the 21st century communication media.

During the first two weeks, you will focus on individual assignments and learning about and connecting with your classmates. There are already 6,000 students enrolled, and I expect more over the next weeks leading up to the course, so make your presence known in the discussion forum! It is very important to share about your background, skills, interests, philosophies, and experiences during the early course period because by the 3rd week, you will use these connections to form project teams. You will form your own teams—they are not assigned—so make sure people in the course know your project ideas and work style. You may only belong to one team at a time and you are encouraged to create or join a team that consists of classmates who share a similar interests or beliefs about education, but with a broad range of experience and skills (particularly any skills or experience you don’t possess that would help your work).

There are no quizzes multiple choice questions in this course. Learning here is not memorizing— it is creating, designing, negotiating, presenting, evaluating, and building the working relationships and being the active contributor that it takes to do all of this on a team. Instead of exams, you will be evaluated by your classmates on the level of quality and originality of your work, as well as on your level of active participation and contribution in the class. Your course “rank” is on a 0-5 scale. Completing only your individual assignment will not earn you enough points to complete this course. You need to earn a ranking of at least 3 out of 5 to have successfully completed this course. Your active engagement throughout the course will be crucial. I estimate that you will need to spend about 4 hours each week, though actual time needed may vary depending on individual experiences and team effectiveness.

Those highly ranked teams presenting excellent solutions will be featured on a Stanford website so the world beyond this course may learn about your work and perhaps help your team make its design a reality.

I am glad to see so many people from all over the world interested in this course, and in our shared vision of helping every student reach his or her full potential regardless of age, color, or nationality. We are here to cause a paradigm shift in education settings around the world.

Once again, welcome my fellow innovators! Let’s design a new learning environment. If we imagine it together, we can make it happen.

Thanks for your passion.

Sincerely,

Paul Kim 
Chief Technology Officer and Assistant Dean 
Graduate School of Education 
Stanford University

http://venture-lab.stanford.edu/education

P.S. If you know of someone who might be a good teammate for your project idea, don’t be shy to have her or him join!


On Oct 9, 2012, at 10:37 PM, Caryl Bigenho wrote:

> Hi...
> 
> Has anyone received any communication for the online class offered by the Stanford Venture lab? It is supposed to start on October 15 and I haven't heard anything yet. I know several of you signed up too, so I thought I would check to see if you have had any communications from them. Yama... you took it before, did they send out anything before the actual start date when you took it?
> 
> In contrast, the MOOC "Gentle Introduction Python" class has sent emails almost daily for the past week or so with instructions for signing up on the multiple sites they will using. It also starts on the 15th.
> 
> You can still sign up for these classes at:
> 
> https://venture-lab.stanford.edu/education
> 
> http://mechanicalmooc.org
> 
> Caryl (SweetXOGrannie for the classes)
> _______________________________________________
> IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
> IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

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