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Free-Ed.Net May, 2018.
The learning revolution is coming sooner and faster
than I imagined.
- Dave Heiserman
I've always been something of an
amateur prognosticator. Sometimes I've been proven
right, and a few time disastrously/embarrassingly
wrong. I was spot-on right about this one, though.
Back in the 1970s, when mainstream
technical book publishers were buying up just about
any manuscript I prepared (chemistry, experiments in
four dimension, robots, radio astronomy ...), I
proposed a book titled How to Teach Yourself
Anything You Need to Know. Not a single
publisher even wanted to look at an outline.
Considering there was no Internet, we relied upon
libraries and mail-order correspondence courses.
Forty years later, when I bought my
first domain name and launched my first website, I
could clearly see the potential for providing
educational material to a worldwide audience at low
(or no) cost to them. That little site, Free-Ed.Net,
was an instant success. There was no big brand-name,
deep-pocket competition from universities and
learning organizations supported by big-name
philanthropists. My little free-education site was
drawing over a half-million unique visitors each
month. Low cost learning at your fingertips (or
keyboard) was becoming a reality.
I had a wonderful time proving my
point -- for about eighteen months. Then the places
with huge resources (like MIT) got into the online
free education business, and my little site plunged
into relative anonymity. One person operating a site
from a spare bedroom versus places funded by the
Gates Foundation is a classic David & Goliath
scenario. At that point, Goliath took round one over
David.
The next wave is the biggie, though.
The time is coming--very soon, now--when personal
learning will be pursued as vigorously as personal
health and well-being is today. Personal
learning is becoming a serious part of our culture
today; and it will be much more evident by 2020.
So, as I've done in the past, I'm gearing up
Free-Ed.Net to portray a vision of what the most
popular learning resources will be like in a few
years.
Check back often ... more to come.
And check it out on Facebook.
Free-Ed.Net |
