You can gain University degree-equivalent knowledge in any of thirteen different areas of study. You won’t pay any money. You can study at your own pace and when and wherever you choose.  Best of all, the textbooks that go with the courses are free and authored by university professors from around the world. The only thing you won’t get is a degree or certificate. But for an increasing number of learners around the world, that is OK.

Saylor is a 501(c) 3 non-profit institution whose mission is to give an alternative for those who are geographically or financially excluded from traditional higher education. Saylor now offers complete programs in thirteen areas of study, including Mathematics, Computer Science, Business Administration, Economics, History, and Psychology. Some of the courses within the areas of study are in various stages of completion, but most areas of study are well-developed. Completing any of these areas of study equates to earning a Bachelor degree in a university in the U.S.

According to Saylor,

We have developed a structured and intuitive format for content delivery and are working to find, develop, and organize the material a student needs to know to earn the equivalent of a degree in any of the top ten majors in the United States.

Although Saylor currently focuses on undergraduate college level areas of study, it intends on tackling primary, secondary, and post-graduate levels in the future. With this, home learners and unschoolers will likely have even more choices for quality learning. Perhaps Saylor and other open initiatives will encourage more parents globally to consider home learning or unschooling for their children instead of sending them to institutions. Like it or not, education is becoming increasingly democratized. Institutions and educators who cling to brick-and-mortar classrooms, printed curriculum material, and the associated bloated budgets (and fees) are going to find it increasingly difficult to attract the next generation of learners who enjoy free, high-quality learning on their own terms.

By Gina Clifford

Gina Clifford is the founder and publisher for SpottyBanana. She is a child-led, project-based learning advocate, an internet technologist, and a TEDx Organizer. Gina enjoys sharing learning resources, ideas, news, and voices that disrupt the status quo.

Game-based learning is so effective because the actual progress built into any game is the actual lessonóbe it the skill and dexterity needed to shot a precise arrow to the knee of your opponent in Skyrim, or the strategy and technique needed to maneuver an aircraft during a Federal Aviation Administration flight simulation to train new pilots. The truth is when individuals are actually engaged, for example with a game they enjoy, their minds experience the self-fulfilling gratification of coming to understand how to succeed regardless of the gameís entertainment or real life learning value. This is much more effective when you compare it to memorizing facts in cheap textbooks.

The benefits of delivering game-based learning to educate college students or train employees for a new job are huge when you consider the following stats:

• 72% of U.S. households play computer games or video games on a daily basis
• Approximately $25.1 billion was spent on video games, hardware and accessories in 2010
• 1 million+ subscribers spend approximately 23 hours a week playing World of Warcraft
• Surprisingly, 42% of all game players are women so there is (almost) equal motivation from both sexes

What do these statistics from the Entertainment Software Association tell us? That we live in a world where all ages, sexes and races are willing and motivated to learn specific skills if we engage their problem-solving skills via a well-designed game rather than the same old lecture in a classroom. For example, game-based learning is now being taught to train:

• Surgical students on proper laparoscopic techniques on virtual patients
• Pilots in training via flight simulators until they are ready to fly real aircraft
• New emergency responders to deal with callers under duress
• Fire fighters and police in simulated hazardous or dangerous, life-threatening settings

A well-designed game or simulation can train an individual and arm them with the proper techniques for their job in a safe settingói.e., pilots can be trained via flight simulators until they are prepared to take on a test pilot (or modified aircraft) and then move on to a Boeing with passengers.

Why is game-based learning so effective?

Weíve all been there, an employee training program, a college lecture, or a workplace safety meeting where we’re simply not engaged and not really paying attention to the techniques. During times like these, true and effective learning, which is acquiring the problem-solving skills and techniques necessary to respond under pressure in a variety of situations, is never effective. Games, on the other hand, simulate teach one the skills they need to use in the face of a real challenge. Games teach:

• Via interactive experiences that actively engage the learner in the learning process
• By drawing us in to the virtual environment that look and feel familiar and relevant
• By helping individuals see the connection between the learning experience and a present situation (e.g., be it by busting down walls with your Angry Birds slingshot or understanding how the skills you’re learning will translate into and improve your real-life job)
• Practical skills in a cost-effective and low-risk environment (e.g., safety training using simulated crane machinery)
• Learners to re-enact or practice a situation multiple times and exploring different actions and consequences  to truly understand how tragedy occurs (i.e., a patient death during a surgical simulation) and how to successfully overcome it next time
• Use the value of working toward a goal by challenging us to problem-solve, choose actions and face the consequences of our actions
• By allowing us to make mistakes in a risk-free setting by learning through practice and experimentation
• The practice of behaviors and problem-solving skills that translate from the game environment to real life

Compared to traditional, lecture approaches learning where students sit passively either in a classroom or training boardroom to learn the workplace procedures by memory without any real-life interaction; game-based learning lets individuals learn the facts by testing (via practice and failure) until we commit it, not only memory, but also understand the howís and whys of our success in a real-life situation.

by Brenda Ortega

Brenda Ortega works as both a substitute teacher, freelance writer and sometimes finds time to write her own blog The Educational Bar. She loves delving into the research side of writing, which mostly focuses on educational issues. She has written for a variety of material, giving tips for students on cutting university costs; to parents on saving money for your child’s education; and even hopes to help educate others with her learning enhancement-based topics.

As tablet style computers become more common, it is necessary for educators to determine how best to use them in the classroom setting. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the unique advantages tablet-based educational applications (apps) offer in teaching children effective literacy skills. By making effective use of these new and interactive techniques, instructors can better help develop a child’s reading skills while assisting them in learning how to study independently.

For early readers, applications may involve reading while listening to the tablet read aloud. This has the advantage of allowing the student to have the book read to them at their own speed and time, while the instructor can work with other students. Android based applications like the NOOK Kids Read to Me, available for the Nook Color and Nook Tablet, can allow the instructor to avoid reading to the class as a whole, which often results in some students falling behind due to the lack of an individualized setting.

Beyond the simple use of read-aloud functions, tablet apps can allow a student to interactively explore the book, touching various icons and characters, which then react in a number of ways. An example of this would be the Pocket Phonics app for the iPad, which reads the word aloud and then lets the child select the correct letters, which correspond to the phonetic spelling of the word. For this, both speech and literacy are enhanced, allowing the child to progress independently, without requiring constant supervision, essentially allowing early readers access to an online school platform while the teacher tends to other students.

Tablet apps also allow visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners to more effectively achieve literacy skills. By allowing the student to touch a word, bringing up its definition and audio pronunciation, while also letting the student physically trace the letters on the tablet screen, differing types of individual learning styles can be accommodated. This interactivity can also adjust itself for differing stages of student development. A child who is just learning the sounds of letters can touch and trace the on-screen letters, while a student who has graduated to more advanced reading skills can use the same app to bring up the definition of the entire word, as well as hearing its pronunciation.

For the teacher, this allows the use of tablets to assist students to independently learn, freeing the teacher to focus on the most important aspects of teaching. Rather than whole class activities, such as read aloud sessions, which often fail to assist all students equally, the instructor can now focus on those students who are most in need of help. In addition, the interactive nature of many reading instruction apps can be used to effectively match themselves to the students’ level of competency, avoiding potential discouragement that could strike a student who is faced with work beyond his or her current competency.

The growth of tablet based education has dramatically expanded the options available to educators. By making use of the wide variety of literacy training apps available to the various types of tablets, an educator can effectively create a classroom environment that encourages independent learning activity on the part of the students. This can allow the teacher to more productively work with those students who need it most, without neglecting the other students thus improving the overall class productivity.

By Elaine Hirsch

Elaine Hirsch is kind of a jack-of-all-interests, from education and history to medicine and video games. This makes it difficult to choose just one life path, so she is currently working as a writer for various education-related sites and writing about all these things instead.

Via: Online College Courses Blog

One of the greatest challenges for anyone in the business of inspiring, mentoring, or otherwise working with young people is to impart the love of learning. Education is often seen as a tool or a requirement, not as a freedom; a chore, as opposed to a luxury–rarely as a source of enjoyment.

Homeschoolers and independent learners are often viewed as self-starters, people who often reach beyond traditional sources and embrace the love of learning. For example, Anywho.com over the phone book, social media crowdsourcing instead of business reviews, software instead of textbooks. But no matter who you are, an educator, a student, an independent learner, or a mentor, learning to love learning is a never-ending journey.

Here are some ways to inspire learning and prepare for the challenges ahead:

Read the classics.

Before computers, YouTube, software, online tutorials, e-books, podcasts, blogs, or digital conferences there were the classics works in literature – great volumes written by great minds. The works of Mark Twain, Toni Morrison, Johann Wolfgang, Socrates, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, William Shakespeare, Homer, Ralph Ellison, Jane Austen—are just some of the authors an avid learner can read to experience the world through great writing.

Embrace technology.

Technology democratizes access to information and is becoming increasingly important for current and future generations as a standard information delivery mechanism. Renouncing technology or approaching it with reactionary distrust will prevent learners from reaping the benefits of remarkable learning possibilities. Online tools ranging from social media to e-books and online learning portals are powerful, mostly free, learning tools that brings the world’s knowledge to the learner with the click of a mouse or touch of a screen.

Learn from successful entrepreneurs.

Businessman and women are often derided as simply knowing how to generate wealth and little more. Speeches, autobiographies, and memoires of successful business entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs, Henry Ford, and J. Paul Getty offer extraordinary lessons. These and other iconic leaders found incredible success through applied knowledge. Find out how these leaders thought differently about learning and applying knowledge for a bit of inspiration.

Learning to love learning is about more than reading, technology, or business. It’s about embracing the full spectrum of educational tools and resources that the modern world has presented to us. Information overload is a real thing, but that doesn’t mean information and knowledge should be feared. Rather, they should be cultivated, celebrated, and, embraced.

By Samantha Peters

Samantha Peters is an avid blogger and manager of theeducationupdate.com, where she passionately writes her love for education and tech innovation news in the world of education.

Udacity Founders

Dr. Thrun recognized the power of technology to deliver his course content to over 160,000 students who signed up for his online artificial intelligence course at Stanford University. Dissatisfied with traditional lecture techniques at most higher education institutions, Dr. Thrun started Udacity. Learn more about Udacity or enroll in an upcoming course. Homeschoolers, the Introduction to Computer Science course might be fun–it lasts just seven weeks and assumes no previous computer programming experience.

Udacity

CodeAcademy is a new, free, online learning platform specifically for learning computer programming. It is so easy to get started with CodeAcademy, you might not realize that you’re learning as you begin using the site. The best asset CodeAcademy possesses is its ease of use. I challenge you to sit your 9 year-old down in front of CodeAcademy and let her rock it. She will. It is that easy to get started.

Check out Cloudhackz.com to learn more.

Cell phones were not available when I was growing up. The single rotary phone we did own hung inconspicuously on the wall near the kitchen. I never gave much thought to the phone other than to find out what the weather forecast was for the following day. Anyone else remember doing that as a child? We lived in the northeastern part of the U.S., and as kids, prayed for snow so that the school would close and we’d be free to ride our sleds, make snow men and have snow ball battles.

Now, I don’t even own a landline phone, and everyone in my family owns a phone, including my 9 year-old. But, does the 9 year-old really need a phone? Actually, we decided to give him a phone for safety reasons. Several times, he’s participated in very large performances and gotten lost in the crushing crowd without any way to contact us or find us. More recently, he wandered down a grocery isle by himself while shopping with me and was approached by a man who seemed to have questionable intentions. Luckily, my son ran away and found me. Yet another time, he found himself in the middle of a fight among several boys. Luckily, I happened upon the situation before it escalated further. But what if he wasn’t so lucky? What if I wasn’t nearby? Now, he can call 911.

Interestingly, even the cell basic phones these days have nice touch screens, fun games, and cool ring tones. So, my son’s cell phone, unlike the family phone that hung in my childhood kitchen, is cool. He even uses it to set reminders and alarms. He doesn’t really have anyone to call except his relatives, so he doesn’t use very many minutes. Also, he does not have internet access on his phone, so there is no expensive data plan.

For us, a few dollars per month is well worth the connectivity it brings to our family. What about you? Does your child have a cell phone?

There has been a bit of negative ranting about the new LEGO Friends line of LEGO kits, a LEGO line targeted squarely at girls. Many parents are ranting because these LEGO kits are girly. Pink and lavender dominate the colorscape in these kits. Themes are mostly light and domestic – think café and beauty salons. Mini-figures are more doll-like than LEGO-like.  LEGO has spent millions of dollars and years of research to decide that girls want pink and purple LEGO kits with doll-like figures?

As much as I dislike the idea of making ‘girl’ LEGO kits with stereotypical roles suited to the 1950′s, I informally polled women and children and found that many would actually like to have these kits.  Many young girls really gravitate to pink and beauty products. Do girls innately prefer this kind of stuff or have they been conditioned by media (TV, magazines, consumer products) to want them? I don’t know. I was really on the fence about these kits until I read a rant on Gizmodo by Jesus Diaz.

Jesus turns the argument upside down by taking a popular Friends kit and making a cool space ship. I think he may have hit upon exactly what LEGO was thinking when it decided to market to girly girls. Girly girls will initially be attracted by the pretty colors and doll-like figures but then discover that building stuff is fun. With a girly girl’s interest in building piqued, she goes on to expand beyond the Friends line to build other LEGO kits like LEGO City. Check out Jesus’s article and let me know what you think.

Gizmodo Girl-LEGO article

Happy New Year.

A new year is always an opportunity to look ahead with optimism.  Everyone can make a positive impact on our lives and world.  Whether or not we actually make (and follow-through on) new year’s resolutions, here are five bold learning ideas that challenge the status quo in ‘education’. Embrace all or just one of these ideas in the new year and embrace the natural curiosity within your children.

1.  Make Learning Fun. Is there something you enjoy doing so much that when you are doing it, you lose track of time? What if we could get kids to feel this way about learning? Every child I have ever polled has said they dislike school. Most would choose learning at home. Figure out what it is that our children really love to do (and don’t pass judgement). If your little boy enjoys comic books more than anything else on the planet, go with it. Beside the many learning opportunities that stem from comic books, children in charge of their own learning dig deeper naturally. They’ll learn about history, writing, telling a story, good vs. evil, artwork, reading, research, and so much more. Relax. Trust your child’s passion. Make Learning Fun.

2. Play with Toys. Kids almost never associate ‘school’ with toys or play. Toys are fun and school is a chore. Imagine changing that association children have with learning by allowing them to play with their toys as part of their learning landscape. Be careful not to overly structure the learning opportunities that come from incorporating toys into learning. Physics, story writing, stop-motion animation videos, math, and even history are presented in a fun, non-threatening, toy-based way. Make bar graphs out of toy cars, sorted by color. Build a Rube Goldberg device out of toys and household items. Launch tiny action figures in a home-made seltzer rocket. Recreate the scene of a favorite book using dolls, stuffed animals, and accessories. Use your imagination and bring those toys into the learning arena!

3. Ditch the Curriculum. Fact-based, memorization-focused, drill and kill, fill in the blank, multiple choice, and other worksheet-based curriculum materials are B-O-R-I-N-G. Even adults dislike this kind of learning. Trust your child to lead the way and the curriculum (if you can call it that) will develop naturally. For example, a field trip to a historic village left an impact on little Jennie. She learned that her last name is a word from the time of the Vikings. Is she descended from Vikings? Who are the Vikings? Where did they live? How might she learn more? Now, a curious child with a personal connection to history is on a mission. She is researching, reading, discussing, mapping, drawing, and writing about Vikings. Perhaps she learns about the Viking navigational methods and tools, learns to make some of the same navigational calculations, seeks information about weather factors that affected Viking navigation and the ocean currents and prevailing winds they harnessed. Did the Vikings navigate using the sun and stars? The possibilities for learning from a simple connection are endless. Expose children to many things. Find something they connect with personally. Give them support as they launch their own learning journey built around a quest for knowledge. Ditch the dusty old worksheet and bring learning to life!

4. Tolerance. Why is tolerance in this list? Of all the things we can learn, learning to understand and accept others who are different from us is the most innately human. Without tolerance, we continue to live in a world filled with hate and violence. Without tolerance, we spend too much time drawing lines, defending our ideas, and fighting over stuff. If we embrace tolerance, we have more time for building bridges, relationships, and friendship. Immigration, terrorism, religious extremism, and economic disparity are very real issues. Share tolerant perspectives with children so that they can build bridges, relationships, and friendships that will extinguish the hate that fuels these issues. Otherwise, we risk perpetuating hate, poverty, distrust, and war.

5. Share. There are so many ways kids can learn from sharing. Sharing toys, food, clothes, ideas, time and anything else of value not only enriches a child’s sense of self but also instills empathy. Lack of empathy has been linked to bullying in schools. Sharing a toy with another child at the playground might lead to a new friendship. Sharing an idea with other youth around the world through a TEDx youth event might inspire other kids to share their ideas. Help children learn that by sharing, they are influencing their world in a positive way.