What we’re learning from online education
A 3rd generation Ph.D who is passionate about education, Stanford professor Daphne Koller is excited to be making the college experience available to anyone through her startup, Coursera. With classes from 16 top colleges, Coursera is an innovative model for online learning. While top schools have been putting lectures online for years, Coursera’s platform supports the other vital aspect of the classroom: tests and assignments that reinforce learning.
Listen to Daphne Koller and her vision to bring the best education in the world for free online.
“We should spend less time at universities filling our students’ minds with content by lecturing at them, and more time igniting their creativity … by actually talking with them.”
2011 – a good year in education
New technology in classrooms, significant investments in education in Africa, and increased work towards gender equality in schooling. Those are three of the main themes mentioned when the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) summarizes the year 2011.
As we are leaving 2011 behind and looking forward to a new and bright 2012, UNESCO has summarized the year 2011 in education. In March, the UN agency published a report concluding that armed conflict is robbing 28 million children worldwide of an edcuation. But, there were also some happier news. In April, another report showed that Sub-Saharan African countries increased their real expenditure on education by 6% every year during the past 10 years. The year 2011 was also characterized by an increased understanding of the importance of broadband access and new technologies in order to bring quality education to all. At a meeting in June, UNESCO’s Director-General pointed out that “new technologies and broadband Internet access offer formidable opportunities for increasing access to education”. And, in December, the first UNESCO Mobile Learning Week was held, exploring the potential of mobile learning.
Read more here.
Source: UNESCO.
Written by Fanny Johansson
SIME non for profit days #sime #SIME11
Sharing Awareness, MKFC Stockholm College and MKFC Stockholm Folkhögskola team participated in seminars and workshops at SIME Stockholm together with thousands of others entrepreneurs, companies, NGO:s Non profits and for profits.
The opportunities in the digital arena keep developing and creating business, entertainment, political turmoil and unparalleled opportunities for the ones in the know. During two action-packed days SIME Stockholm will be your guide into new insights, concrete business opportunities, tools and the smartest brains from the international digital arena.
12-year old Puck – founder of Puckipedia – was one of the many draws at SIME 2011: “12 year old wiz kid on stage: I can see people in their 30s looking uncomfortable – including myself (picture and text from the SIME blog)!
Two days of learning
The seminars was about the latest news how ICT and business develop with international perspectives. The business experts pointed out the importance that NGO take more responsibility to learn more about the business part of financing NGO work. It’s important to have a plan how to cooperate with companies. Companies stressed that it’s important that the NGO:s have clear strategies, plans and not only to focus on to collect money but rather do the work there experts in – to make the world a better place.
It becomes more and more important for NGOs to be social online and to be up to date with what business and ICT development . This is important to do better and clearer marketing and be more visible.
Representatives from the business said that many leaders in businesses still don’t want to relearn and be active with their employees and customers online. They let this over to the communication department in their companies rather then make it as an integrated part of the way of companies work. In some extent we think this was true for the non profit discussions. Much emphasise was on using ICT to collect money and marketing for the NGOs but less on how to make the organization more effective with the use of ICT.
The founder for Skype told about the importance of creating a team with passion and different competences. To dare to be curious, search for solutions and dare to receive feedback from customers, which was something he thought was important to make the business better. Customers today want to have access and right to create solutions so the services can be better and more effective.
NY times, Al-Jazeera and BBC team told about the importance of communicate and integrate social media and ICT tools in their productions. To communicate through peoples interest in their subject or journalism, was something that opens the doors to broader journalism. The role of TV needs to be more adapted after the consumers needs. Most people today look at content on their “second screen”. It was a lot of humour in Al-Jazeera and at the same time there is news in it! Integrate humour with facts! It can also stimulate learning!
Games and learning
It was sessions about games for different age groups and different purposes. Many marketers was intreseted in Gamification to engage their audience, some thought this was just a buzz word and other thought it’s the future of commercials. Gaming is also interesting for learning, most games are not directed for learning but games as SIMS and World of Warcraft has a deep dimension of learning. There was also new examples of games directed to girls 8-15 years which is a quite new age group for online games, a company had built about a horse game similar to World of Warcraft that they called World of Horsecraft. In this game the players can interact with other players/girls who play all over the world ! The games has a fantastic potential in the globalization in education!
The days gave updates on what is going on in the ICT world. We see that we already are working on these fields. It was interesting to learn about what is going on in the business, NGO and their connections to ICT!
Read more about the conference on the SIME blog
Today we will reach 7 billion – follow the countdown!
Today, on October 31, the world’s population is projected to reach 7 billion. On the Worldometers website, you can follow the countdown live.
At the time of writing, we are 6,999,922,103 people in the world. But that is soon about to change – in 9 hours, the total population is forecast to hit a breathtaking 7 billion. Join the countdown here!
According to figures from the 2009 World Population Data Sheet, 97 percent of global growth will take place in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean over the coming 40 years. And, almost 90 percent of today’s 1.2 billion youth live in developing countries.
Worldometers also offers a large range of other interesting figures on health, environment, water, technology, and lots more.
Source: Worldometers and CNN.
Written by Fanny Johansson
The State Award for Public Information to the founder of ENO Programme
MKFC Stockholm College long time partner , the founder of the ENO Programme, Mika Vanhanen, received The State Award for Public Information today. It was given to him by the minister of education and science, Mr Jukka Gustafsson in the Government Banquet Hall in Helsinki, Finland.
The Committee for Public Information submits the annual shortlist for the State Award for Public Information. The State Award for Public Information is granted for printed or other information products intended for the public at large and published during the previous calendar year. The products may be books, radio or television, newspapers or periodicals. The Award can be conferred on an individual author, journalist, producer or a team. The Award can also be granted to a person for a distinguished life’s work in public information. The Ministry of Education instituted the State Award for Public Information in 1967. From 1968 to 1971 the recipients were proposed by a jury. In 1972 the jury was replaced by the Committee for Public Information. The award amount is decided on annually and this year it was 15 000 Euros.
The Committee for Public Information states: “Mika Vanhanen founded and coordinates Environment Online – ENO, a global web school and network that runs in 150 countries amd covers 7 000 schools. It involves hundreds of thousands of students, and the network is spreading.
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