By Stefanie Olsen Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: February 7, 2007, 9:15 AM PST
SAN FRANCISCO--If you want to know what higher education will look like in a few years, you might ask Charles Reed, chancellor of the largest four-year university system in the United States.
As head of the California State University system--with 23 campuses, 46,000 employees and more than 400,000 students--Reed says he's worried about classroom space in the future because of, among other reasons, expanding enrollment.
Consequently, Reed said he envisions students becoming more like telecommuters. They might meet with faculty and peers one day a week on campus, and then use simulations, virtual worlds and downloaded information the rest of the week to complete coursework.
"It's not an either-or thing. We need the 'high touch,' but we need the high tech at the same time," Reed said Tuesday at Sun Microsystem's Worldwide Education and Research Conference here.
The three-day conference kicked off Tuesday to a packed hotel ballroom of roughly 400 attendees hailing from universities around the world. Sun devoted a large part of the day to selling educators on its open-source technology for classroom computing. Sun Chairman Scott McNealy himself promoted a range of Sun efforts, including Project Blackbox, which creates data centers packaged in stackable shipping containers, and Curriki.org, which focuses on creating free curriculum in the mold of Wikipedia. (Click below for complete article.)
http://news.com.com/Universities+register+for+virtual+future/2100-1032_3-6157088.html?tag=html.alert
2 comments:
Just a heads up to folks about what's happening over at Curriki. The site has been adding content and updating tools so that members can develop, publish, and access open source curricula. The new Curriki.org includes something called the Currikulum Builder - it's an editing tool that allows members to develop curriculum materials through a collaborative, wiki-based platform. Here's an interesting lesson that one educator created using the Currikulum Builder:
http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Coll_rmlucas/Stoichiometry
There's lots of great stuff and the more the community uses it, the
better it will be. If you haven't already, check it out.
www.curriki.org
Post a Comment