BitTorrent and Khan Academy To Distribute Education 139
drDugan writes "BitTorrent, Inc. announced this morning that they have launched a partnership with the Khan Academy to distribute open education videos. They launched with more than 2,000 videos, covering high school and college level curriculum, across science, math, history, finance and test prep. All of the videos are free to download and open licensed with Creative Commons."
FIRST! (Score:4, Insightful)
KHAAAAAAN!
Proof... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Human video projectors (Score:5, Insightful)
Because teaching itself both builds character and strengthen your knowledge in your field. Because that human "video projector" is a human, readily able to take questions at any given time during the lecture.
I'm not saying anything against video lectures. These things are great and it helps to open up and spread information around for the benefit of all. But they're not the same thing. They can be a substitute, but they're not for everybody. Some of use need those human video projectors to get through our education. Some of use need a mix of both.
Re:Human video projectors (Score:2, Insightful)
I think you are suggesting that we should do away with colleges and universities. If that's the case, then I'm going to have to disagree with you. I'm currently a college student and while I think it's overly expensive, I do think it is valuable nonetheless. What I get from college is more than just listening to lectures and doing homework. I get the opportunity to interact with highly intelligent people who specialize in the kind of work that I would someday like to do. I also get to interact with a wide variety of people who share the same interests that I do through student organizations. These opportunities would be lost, for the worse in my opinion, if college were to be completely eliminated.
Human interaction? You're interacting with humans right now. The internet is filled with people who are intelligent and open to conversation (and vice versa, as in college).
Your tuition for college essentially pays for an evaluation/validation of your knowledge (your degree) and a presentation of information (professor lectures + powerpoints) if you wanted to get down to it. Office hours are wholly dependent on institute police. I'm also a college student as well.
Re:Proof... (Score:4, Insightful)
that bittorrent can be used for legit purposes. Hopefully as a side benifit, this will make it harder for the MPAA crowd to villify these types of file sharing networks.
Though the threat to private Colleges and Universities that free learning poses could actually further fund and empower the MPAA.
Re:Human video projectors (Score:2, Insightful)
Have you tried explaining upper-level concepts to lower-level students? It is very hard, and requires you to really think about the relationships between things. I would argue it is actually a benefit to teach in the exact subject area you are researching, as it would help clarify concepts to yourself as you go along. And it does actually happen that a student asks a question that you've never considered before (either a completely new idea, or something you personally glossed over but the student caught), and thus both student and teacher learn simultaneously. I think its absolutely a good idea to have researchers come down from their towers and think about the foundations of their work. It's too easy to get wrapped up in upper-level concepts and forget what you set out to do and how it ties in with everything else.