Special Blog Post

A World Where Grades Will be Left Behind

This was an article from the USA TODAY created by Mary Beth Marklein, a writer for USA TODAY. It was USA Today’s thirtieth anniversary, when she interviewed some of the best United States visionaries to talk about the world in the future. She interviews Sebastian Thrun in Palo Alto, California, a Google vice president and a University of Standford research professor. She stresses that he is known for his role in developing Google’s drive less car. Thrun started off by saying that within a mile of the University of Stanford there is an office building across the street of an Olive garden restaurant. He states, this is no ordinary office building; however, it is the development of an upcoming contender.

Thrun, explains that at this school learning will be free and available to anyone who wants it. Also, he states the lessons will look like the popular game Angry Birds. Thrun follows up by saying; you want learning to be as much fun as it is to play a video game. Next, Thrun told USA TODAY that one-day he was in a studio at his education company that he found called Udacity. This is a free online intelligence course that caught the attention of over 160,000 students. Also, it led Thrun to discontinue teaching in a traditional way of instructing classrooms at Stanford. Thrun talked about his famous saying that he told an audience in a conference in Munich, he said, "you can take the red pill and go back to your classroom and lecture your twenty students but I have taken the red pill and seen Wonderland".

He continues stating the unique way of teaching at Udacity. He says that there is a windowless room where the producers of the program make creative special effects and video cameras capture close shots of the instructor’s hand as they write material on a white board. Thrun explains that in the next room there is also staff creating games for the lessons. Next, he informed on how technology is taking over education. There were several statements that he said that were shocking. One was that Charter schools in Chicago and New York City has created a school built around playing games. I think that if teaching was done through gaming that students would be seriously engaged in games and learn the information at the same time. I know several of younger children that you will be shocked to see how good they play these high definition sports games on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Most of the kids learn the basic concept of the sport and learn the rules. I think the game play leads to the determination some of these eye-catching youth league sport players around the world.

He states that classes in 30 years will have increasingly challenging exercises, quizzes based on skill and concept, class sizes will vary, grades will be determined on mastering the concept, and instruction will be free. However, he says services might have a fee like certifications and exams. I believe that his statements about education thirty years are possible. I think we all enjoyed reading the part about education will be free. Also, I think this would have an affect on the number of people that will further their education after high school. I have numerous friends that exceeded in high school but didn’t attend college because they did not want to risk taking out student loans. I see a positive resolution from the points that he stated, of course their would be more educated Americans if we made learning interactive and fun.