I love this on so many levels.
MIT has launched an initiative with Khan Academy to have MIT students produce videos on a variety of science and engineering topics for the purpose of teaching K-12 students. I just don’t see a downside to it. Let me go over why this is a fabulous idea.
- The highest form of mastery of a topic is to teach it. Making these videos will help the MIT students master these ideas.
- The MIT students will be able to better relate to the K-12 generation since they were recently in that category themselves.
- It’s free on YouTube.
- There is a mechanism built in where the K-12 students can communicate their questions to the MIT student teachers so it’s not just a video.
- I have been theorizing that in order for online learning to take off, there will need to be vastly more content available. This shows how even students can teach.
- This is peer to peer learning (just about) which is a disaggregated learning model. There will be a lot more of this.
Overall MIT has been really on a tear lately. I’m impressed.
Bonus questions: How many students will graduate from MIT, decide they like teaching, and create the next Khan Academy? Could MIT might be sowing the seeds of their own disruption?