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Since the year 2000 MIT started an initiative (called OpenCourseWare)that would publish all their courses in the web for everybody to see, enjoy and learn. They created a web site (http://ocw.mit.edu/) for this purpose where, nowadays, more than 1800 courses live. This initiative was started by a request from some of the faculty. Timidly at first, the faculty responded by allowing MIT to use, for publication, all the content of their courses: lecture notes, laboratory exercises, tests and quizzes and the answers to these, and videos for some courses. The courses posted in this site are the real courses, the same ones that are being offered in situs at the MIT campus.
I always thought that knowledge should be free for all people, and this initiative come close to this ideal. Million of people around the world are taking advantage of this web site: they are increasing their knowledge, they are understanding better the inner working of the World, they are using these materials as an example on how to prepare new courses and how to teach them. In essence MIT is having an extraordinary impact on global education, because to download the content of these courses you do not have to register, you do not have to pay a single penny, you do not have to belong to a elite school or institution (like MIT). These courses, however, do not allow you to get a diploma from MIT and you can not ask questions to the faculty creator of the course.
We all should thank MIT for this web site (who knows, maybe later they will lower their fees!) that allows all people in the World to learn just for the sake of learning, and allow educators to improve education.
Listen to the words of MIT President Susan Hockfield:"There is no limit to the power of the mind. We encourage you to use
OCW—learn from it and build on it. Find new ways not only to pursue
your personal academic interests, but to use the knowledge that you
gain—and that you create—to make our world a better place. In the
spirit of open sharing, we also encourage you to share your scholarship
with others, as hundreds of other universities are already doing
through their own OCWs."
Kudos for MIT.
Abe
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