Information may be free, knowledge takes a bit more creativity

Knowledge may be power, if that means knowing how to do things, but holding information is ceasing to be so. George Siemens writes:

The Open University has launched OpenLearn...seems to be in the same spirit as MIT's OpenCourseWare. Content is no longer the value point of education (it never really was...but we built our education models assuming this was the case). I'm hearing distance education departments in universities/colleges considering making their content available for free (not as elaborate a model as large universities have done, but very much in the same ideology).

The BBC reports that the Open University aims to make 5000 hours of material available by April 2008 - not only for learners, but for educators to adapt and use for their own purposes.

Project director Andy Lane said: "We are encouraging learners to become self-reliant, but also to use online communities to support their learning."

The website will initially have some 900 hours of study in a variety of topics - from access to postgraduate level - using the Moodle "virtual learning environment".

Meanwhile over at Creating Passionate Users Kathy Sierra has a great graphic and post on the difference between what is taught and what people need to learn.

Kathy Writes:

Our educational institutions--at every level--need drastic changes or we're all screwed. The generation of students we're turning out today need skills nobody really cared about 50, 40, even 20 years ago. Where we used to prepare students for a "job for life", now we must prepare students to be jobless. We must prepare them to think fast, learn faster, and unlearn even faster ("yes, that drug was the appropriate way to treat the XYZ disease, but that was so last week. THIS week we now realize it'll kill you.")

The Waterfall Model of education is failing like never before. We need Agile Learning.

I keep coming up against references to Sir Ken Robinson's talk at the TED conference (Technology Education Design), and have just spent 20 minutes watching. Brilliant: stand up learning. Key point: creativity is as important as literacy. Although ... not kind. Did we need the jokes about Sir Ken's wife's cooking, and his son's girlfriend?