Friday, August 24, 2012

Feather star: WUaS as a real university workplace, with real university problem solving, and real university mentoring, New, 'STEM Education' and 'Technologies'' wiki subjects, Thank you, thank you, thank you again, for your tax-deductible contribution to 501 c 3 WUaS, WUaS dovetailing with Quaker organizations like Haverford College, Swarthmore College, and AFSC


http://www.rossum.com/philip10/1/21_600.jpg

Claire!

Very nice to get your email. I think WUaS will gradually become a real university workplace, with real university problem solving, and real university mentoring, in Google + group video hangouts +, and Zoom.us, group video conferencing, - and all online. And, if all goes well, WUaS's MIT OCW-centric students will begin to engage the same real world workplaces that MIT graduates do, as well. While not the same at all as face-to-face education, WUaS's MIT-centricity, its symbolic focus (in academic subjects) and the possibility for sociality online, will help it develop over the decades in new, real ways, digitally mediated, and very different from other, great, on-the-ground universities and schools, especially because we'd like to be in all languages and countries. (Wikipedia is in 285 languages, by way of comparison). The words 'Free' and 'MIT' will hopefully help WUaS attract overachievers. Perhaps they will be students who have already applied to MIT and Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Cambridge, etc. - we'll see. I hope also that the student interns who WUaS begins to hire to be mentors, for example - in conjunction ideally with MIT professors, at first - will also have matriculated at such universities as those and these - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Courses#University_course_listings. Overachievers of great diversity, from all 3,000-8,000 languages and < 200 countries, with time, will eventually generate a MIT-centric, online, academic conversation, as well as an open, free, wiki, teaching and learning conversation that, I think, will be very real, and huge, as well. Free degrees are real in this world of big and expensive university. I find it interesting to observe social-scientifically how 'online' is becoming more and more, unfoldingly 'real' - in terms of work, in terms of problem -solving, and this is happening so quickly ... but WUaS's first  priority is our first, online, free, MIT OCW-centric, bachelor's degree class, matriculating in 2014, for possibly 2000 undergraduate students, in English.

I learn so much in aggregating wiki, subject pages ... here are two new ones I began today - 'STEM Education' : http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/STEM_Education_-_Science,_Technologies,_Engineering_and_Mathematics -  and 'Technologies' -  http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Technologies - and look how many MIT, technology courses there are on this last page particularly!!! :)

Startup WUaS still hasn't become financially operational, and this is ongoingly serious, but Wikipedia is a great, advertising-free, wiki precedent, and there are others like this. The WUaS Bookstore - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Bookstore_/_Computer_Store_(New_%26_Used)_at_WUaS - may be another avenue to cash flow, but fundraising is presently the main way, so thank you, thank you, thank you again, for your tax-deductible, financial contribution, and via PayPal (here: http://scottmacleod.com/worlduniversityandschool.htm) - and WUaS would so welcome other ideas or suggestions you have for this!

And WUaS is very glad about Wikidata (http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/03/30/the-wikipedia-data-revolution/), which is a backend / repository / structured database recently written with Wikipedia's 285 languages in mind, and well-funded by the Paul Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and other big grantors, which development team is based in Berlin. I've been in correspondance with 1 of the 3 core developers over 2 years or so, and with a Creative Commons' license, it's an extraordinary gift from the I.T. revolution.

While MIT-centric, and per your interests in Quakers, World University and School would like its service orientation to also dovetail with great Friendly / Quaker organizations, like Haverford College, Swarthmore College, and AFSC.

Let's talk soon and warm regards,
Scott



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Scott MacLeod
Founder & President



http://scottmacleod.com

--
World University and School
(like Wikipedia with MIT Open Course Ware)

http://worlduniversityandschool.blogspot.com/

http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University


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