Jul 122012
 

I Put a Toe in the Online Education Waters
Here at Anthrobotic I’ve covered and advocated for the growing New Education Movement, and this was my first hands-on experience with a very basic form of the medium. Class #1: Complete – 5 more to go!

Some initial impressions:

THUMBS UP:
Good Multimedia Mix (video, reading, interactive search)
Real-Time Evaluation (activities included after each lesson)
Good Host (someone’s uncle Dan, not some annoying hipster)
Fat has been Trimmed (we don’t want fluff, we want information)
Class Forums (built-in ability to connect & share with other students)
Free (free)

THUMBS SORTA POINTING SIDEWAYS:
Umm… maybe Set Design and Page Layout (Google spent $0 of its billions on those)

So yeah, at this point no thumbs down. And I get that the aesthetic of the page and the set shouldn’t distract from the content, but some students might not be able to ignore the Geocities layout and faded high school gym curtains.

Recommended
Being fairly internet dorky, 95% of class 1’s six lessons reviewed and codified stuff I already knew, but I think the average internet citizen would get a lot out of it, and certainly from subsequent lessons – well worth a few hours of study.

I’m looking forward to finding out what I didn’t know that I didn’t know and putting some new skills to work creating richer and more enjoyable smartass technology commentary.

It’s like this:

Free is a good price for that.

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Want In?

Registration is open until July 16th, don’t sleep!
Go here: Power Searching with Google

Also – thanks, Google!

THIS STUFF IS RELATED:
Top 5 for the Fifth: American Technological Prowess (Do We Still Got the Juice?)
TERMINAL ANACHRONISM: The Polling Place & Voting Booth (vulnerable)
Robot Treasure Discovered Online: an Interview with the Creator of Cyberneticzoo.com
Google: Bettering Humanity for Fun and Profit?
Put Your Consciousness Online – LifeNaut Says You Can Begin Building a Mindfile Like, Now.