Speaking is picking up again, enough so that I’m planning to add a speaking-schedule piece to this site sometime in the next few weeks.
In the meantime, if anyone is attending this week’s MOOCs for Development (MOOCS4D) conference at the University of Pennsylvania, I’ll be there for the first day (Thursday), taking part in their “Buzz Session” towards the end of the afternoon.
The focus of the conference is the potential of MOOCs for those “at the bottom of the pyramid.” Partners behind MOOCS4D include Coursera and Microsoft as well as slew of academic and development organizations, and speakers will include members of UNESCO (another sponsor), the World Health Organization (WHO), and tons of others involved with bringing the benefits of free, quality education to the planet.
I’m particularly excited to meet Stephen Downes, one of the folks behind the first MOOC (you can hear an interview with him here). And I’m just as excited to see any of you who plan to take part in this important event.
The reason I can’t stay both days is that I’ve also got to do a wrap-up session for an event taking place a couple of towns over from here this coming Friday: a conference on the future of higher education that is part of a 50th anniversary celebration for Tufts University’s Experimental College. This conference should be particularly intriguing since the organization will be using the moment to reflect upon not just on their own history, but also on the history of trying to predict the future of a higher education field that has stubbornly refused to follow predictable paths.
Getting back to MOOCs for development, that series I’ve been writing for edSurge will be wrapping next week with a look at the MOOC “market” in non-traditional learning environments – including those challenging areas that will be discussed at MOOCS4D. You can check out the already-published entries in the series (which talk about MOOCs for traditional college students and older learners) by going over to the In The News section (another part of the site that needs a bit of a facelift).
So little to do, so much time to do it in (strike that, reverse it).
Hope to meet some of you somewhere!
Jonathan
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