Searching for the value-added in schools
By Lee Davis • Oct 8th, 2007 • Category: E-learning, Teaching and learning, Web 2.0, YouTubeBerkeley University, in California, have recently launched a series of recorded lectures on their own YouTube channel. You can find the current catalogue here: Berkeley University on YouTube. It clearly mirrors MIT’s Opencourseware initiative, started in 2001.
It raises the question yet again of where the real value in school- and university-based education lies: in the teacher delivering the content or the collaborative working and investigation by students around it.
Clearly, Berkeley and MIT believe it is in the latter, otherwise they wouldn’t be distributing this content for free. It is the formal accreditation and recognition that surrounds it, which they then charge (huge sums) for.
The trend towards deconstructing territories of learning (a phrase I’ve borrowed from a colleague referring to the classroom rather than a geographical region) continues and I look forward to its development.
In the meantime, have a look at this lecture on atoms and heat: 
