Berkeley University lectures now on YouTube

Berkeley University, USA, has posted hundreds of hours of lectures on the internet, which means this previously inaccessible and highly valued content is now available globally, for free.

The ability of the internet to host content is, of course, now well established, so what does this mean for education from here on ?

The emphasis in learning has to change. Educational content now has to be a given, already provided, available when you want, where you want, how you want. As time passes, the body of content will build, mature and condense into a core of high value material.

What remains is how students are helped through educational content they find difficult to understand, and how their capabilities are assessed.

The best teachers, the ones we always remember from our youth, are those who always had the knack, talent & charisma to convey content. With the emphasis away from content re-invention, this should free up teachers from content preparation and allow them to do what they do best, the teaching.

Using a reputation based model is now becoming more prevalent for such things as mass publication, or spamming as we have known it up until now. Why should not education also benefit from the reputation of the teacher or mentor ? Under a reputation based model, it is in the teacher's best interests to grade students accurately, so that their students can then be compared like for like against students of other teachers.

Is this the way forward for education ? More efficient, and reputation based ? How quickly can politicians understand the potential and harness the new landscape to build and deliver effective education systems ?

Clearly, Berkeley will be in the vanguard of such developments.