Online Education

I'd like to share a couple of great discoveries from the realm of podcasting. Remember the scene in Good Will Hunting where he has the intellectual show-down with the Harvard grad student in the bar? He says something along the lines of being able to get the same education by reading books from the public library. Of course, it's not the same thing--grad students get lots of detailed feedback on their own ideas that you can't get any other way. Nothing is a substitute for the tutorial or seminar. But something that is happening is that a lot of universities are starting to podcast lectures. In the EFL profession, a lot of people are also starting to use podcasting as a means of challenging their students to express themselves more fluently, building and reinforcing communities of teachers, and getting their own ideas about education out there for feedback. Two podcasts I've been spending some time with lately have been EdgyTESOL, produced by two teachers at Kansai Gaidai University near my old stomping grounds in Osaka, and Carolyn Merchant's undergrad course on American Environmental History (ESPM 160), which she teaches at UC Berkeley. A great big "arigatougozaimasu" to all responsible.