Special Blog Assignment

In honor of USA TODAY's 30th anniversary, they interviewed some of the greatest visionaries to talk about the world of tomorrow. Mary Beth Marklein wrote the article, "A World Where Grades Will be Left Behind," to discuss a particular version of education where it is free, and anyone can attend. In this type of learning, education is turned into a place of utter bliss. No one is late for school, failure isn't even a word used, and lesson plans mimic the fun you have while playing a video game. Sebastian Thrun, a research professor at Stanford and a Google Vice President, was one of the visionaries interviewed for this article. Thrun taught a free online artificial-intelligence course that consisted of more than 160,000 students. After teaching this course, he realized he could no longer teach in a traditional classroom, and he then founded an education company called Udacity.

Udacity is a free online based type of education that has various courses, and are taught by professors all throughout the world. Sebastian Thrun compares his journey from the classroom at Stanford to Udacity through two pills. He says, "I feel like there's a red pill and a blue pill, and you can take the blue pill and go back to your classroom and lecture your 20 students. But I've taken the red pill, and I've seen Wonderland." Technology has made so many leaps over the years that it has allowed us to personalize the way we teach from a computer. Thrun's friend, Sal Kahn is continuously inspiring more classrooms to "flip". Flipping a classroom consists of students watching videos at home, and then coming to the classroom during the day to do their homework. The goal in this process is to make school affordable so more students can attend. Thrun says that his schooling system won't consist of grades, and that students will work on a particular skill until they master it. Students won't be charged to be instructed, but they will be charged to take exams and certifications.

I agree with this type of educational system. I believe I'm in one very similar to it with EDM310. We have no grades, everything is online, no paper in or out, and there is no huge fee. I honestly think this article would have been a complete eye-opener to me if it wasn't for EDM310. Having no pens or paper in a class must be hard for some people to understand, but if they would stay open to the idea then they would have a whole new outlook. Technology is an amazing thing, and I firmly believe we should keep evolving with it.