Great sale on GreatCourses!!

There's a good sale going on over at GreatCourses. It's one of my favorite resources for learning alone.

I think I'll check out Thinking Like an Economist: A Guide to Rational Decision Making first.

Why should you care about an education revolution?

So there’s all this talk going on about revolutions in education, explosions in online courses, edupunks, OpenCourseWare, edupreneurship and…yeah…Honestly though, aside from some very good books and forward-thinking leaders, is there any actual reason to pay attention? People could just be inciting fear to make a few bucks, couldn’t they?

Well, here are my reasons why everyone (students/workers, young/old) should care, and why I personally, am devoting even more attention to something I've been doing my entire life.

• You might not be able to afford to go to school-No, really. Our average student loan load is cracking $25K, and I'm not just talking Americans. We're seeing riots in England and the rest of Europe over tuition fees and the economy. Not every degree is worth the job it gets you to (I'm not just talking financially), and even if it is, you may not be able to get your hands on the money or the move or the time. 
• Fun-New approaches to learning are more fun. Online classes, dummies books, continuing education, private tutoring...whatever it is, you get more control over what you learn and when and how. It transforms the entire learning process.
• Education isn't a one-stop-shop-This includes high school on down. You just can't learn everything you need for life in school and the gap between the two is getting wider. I studied hospitals in undergrad. Business in grad school. I help hospitals with their business processes. I work in an industry that's constantly changing and I'm expected to innovate and solve the new problems that come up. Very little I learned in school nine years ago is still applicable. I'm guessing I'll be able to say the same about the MBA in a few years too. 
• It allows customization of your life-Maybe you're like me and like being able to make your own schedule. Maybe you have kids or are taking care of an aging parent or someone that can't live on their own and flexibility is key. Regardless, if you want to learn, you need wiggle room.
• Schools might not provide what you want, or even need-I studied international business in graduate school. I think language education should be a core part of any globally focused program. My university didn't offer those options as part of the degree and wasn't willing to work them in as electives, so I learned on my own. Sometimes you have to work on your own to create your target education.
• It can be a good way to deal with stress-My first job out of undergrad was so bad I was losing hair. I just wasn't cut out for advertising. I started taking cake decorating classes to give myself something positive to look forward to in the week. I didn't study entirely on my own, but a lot of the course was self-guided and I definitely didn't get any marketable paperwork in return. The happy spots in my week alone were worth it...not the mention the fact that I can now pipe roses on demand.  
• Jobs, they are a changin'-Think jobs being sent overseas just means that there are fewer jobs here? Nope. It also means the jobs that remain here will expect deeper thought and broader skill sets from their employees. 
• Schools might not know what's up-Some schools do a great job of staying in contact with what's going on on the "outside". Business and medical schools are especially good at this. Some other fields? You'll be lucky if anyone's set foot out of academia in the last 20 years. 
• It can be cheaper/more effective-You're likely not covering a dean's salary, classroom light bills, the perks of somebody's tenure package (I'll definitely be writing more on this later). 
• You'll learn about yourself-The farther away you get away from traditional, ed-in-a-box, the more opportunity (and necessity) there is to mold goals and learning processes to who you are. You'll begin to see yourself in the subject matter and vice versa.

There are more...a lot more. Changes in education come in so many different forms that the benefits really are going to boil down more personalization, added value and better alignment with personal goals. My hope is that one day, we'll get back from our education what we invest, and then some.

MIT Open Courseware

After running across it on Seth Godin's blog, I started reading DIY U. It should really be required reading for high school students...if not the whole book, at least a couple chapters. There are a lot of misconceptions about higher education being passed around.

 

The main reason I I ordered it is that I've spent the last nine years or so pretty deeply immersed in the world of self-directed education. I started with a class on interior decorating on www.universalclass.com. I'd finished my bachelors degree and was working full time. I'd always been interested in interior design and figured it was a good time to learn about it. The class was a great introduction to the history of textiles and furniture, color theory and room design. It also kicked off my appreciation and respect for non-traditional education.

 My MBA was partially online, I finished a distance certification in Spanish from the University of Wisconsin and I've been teaching myself Mandarin. The book mentions MIT's OpenCourseWare, which I've known about since it was released in 2001, but honestly had forgotten about. I started the Mandarin program about a year ago, and it's great...and not just because it's free. It's got a really solid mix of language instruction, cultural and historical notes. I need some structure to clean up some holes and this should go nicely along with the weekly discussion group through Meetup. 

Of all the things I do...

I've been kicking around ideas for this blog for a while now...thinking back on everything I've done since finishing undergrad...thinking back even farther than that, back to when I was young, with stacks of encyclopedias sitting next to my bed. 

I realized if there's anything I've been doing my whole life, it's teaching myself. I've been getting deep into the "edupunk" movement, headed up by Jim Groom, fueled by books like DIY U and manned by anyone frustrated with traditional education and those of us that just do it naturally. 

I'm really...feeling this. I've often wished I were born into a time pre-formal education where people just learned and experimented on their own.

I've been kicking around ideas of how I can contribute to this change and develop my own use of the process, because I genuinely believe in it.