Focus on Educational Innovation
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These MIT panelists discuss their efforts to expand the educational horizons of learners from K to well beyond 12 with new technological tools and resources. Dick K.P. Yue describes the impact of MIT’s OpenCourseWare program, which is making all MIT’s courses freely available on the web. With 900 courses already published, the site receives an average of half a million visits a month, from every single continent on earth. Avid users include educators, self-learners and students from other universities boning up on a subject. Yue says that OCW is MIT’s way of taking a stand against a “movement that completely compartmentalizes information and access to knowledge.”
Shigeru Miyagawa’s Star Festival CD-ROM features a personal narrative of ethnic self-discovery intended to ignite the interest of racially diverse grade-school children. Miyagawa has visited classrooms where children deny or suppress sometimes painful family histories. After children watch his CD, which includes details from his own family biography, they are challenged to interview family members “and find out about their heritage as a way of building cultural identity.” He says that children can be transformed by “powerful emotions and narratives.”
In the face of pedagogical orthodoxy, Henry Jenkins argues for more (and better) video games. Close to one-third of incoming MIT freshman admitted playing video games during class. “We need to turn that around and get the teacher to play games with students to take advantage of the medium,” says Jenkins. One of Jenkins new initiatives is “Revolution,” a multi-player classroom computer game populated with characters from Colonial Williamsburg, who represent “different political factions, economic classes, genders…” Says Jenkins, games “allow you to drill more deeply into content.”
 Write a Review of Focus on Educational Innovation
 
MIT leadership conference, February 17, 2006
Reviewer: girijad83
from India
This MIT conference is authored and narrated by Charles Vest, Dick K.P. Yue, and Shigeru Miyagawa. They talk about the impacts of their work for working towards a better quality education at all levels.
They tell about how they have revised the campaign goal of 2 million dollars and all the alumni are keen on participation no matter what the financial figure is. He tells about how more than a dozen establishments inside MIT didn't exist before this program, including the Open CourseWare project which makes all the study material available online for free, the Microsoft iCampus project, the cognitive research institute, and the alliance between the university of Singapore and MIT. They appreciate the audience's role in their project.
It's an interesting podcast which tells us how the best technological educational institute in the world is trying to revolutionize the pedagogical system through their efforts, and it is narrated in a non-formal, friendly, kinship inviting tone.
The video and audio qualities are excellent.
- Published:
2002
- LearnOutLoud.com Product ID:
F015499
Technology
The Digital Age
Education & Professional
Teaching
Education & Professional
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