The Open University has launched OpenLearn...seems to be in the same spirit as MIT's OpenCourseWare. Content is no longer the value point of education (it never really was...but we built our education models assuming this was the case). I'm hearing distance education departments in universities/colleges considering making their content available for free (not as elaborate a model as large universities have done, but very much in the same ideology). As I was browsing the course list I came across Play, Learning, and the Brain (it targets developmental education with children (at least based on many of the examples), but is still provides insight into how we learn).
Reviewing the course resources, I encountered this article: In Search of . . . Brain-Based Education: "While we know a considerable amount from psychological research that is pertinent to teaching and learning, we know much less about how the brain functions and learns. For nearly a century, the science of the mind (psychology) developed independently from the science of the brain (neuroscience). Psychologists were interested in our mental functions and capacities -- how we learn, remember, and think. Neuroscientists were interested in how the brain develops and functions. It was as if psychologists were interested only in our mental software and neuroscientists only in our neural hardware."
Posted by gsiemens at November 3, 2006 8:07 AM | TrackBack