I am keeping a close eye of many of the great new offerings in free online education. We've used Khan Academy, Academic Earth, looked at Coursera for down the road, and now I'm trying Udacity, particularly the Physics course. I'm only through unit one (working on the homework now) and it is awesome. I'm a child of the 80s, I use the term awesome in it's 80s form. I watched as this very enthusiastic physicist explained how to use math and science together in some really cool ways. I got it, in the sense of a light bulb went on for me. This is how I teach Z about the importance of math, throw him ahead a few years and show him how physics makes trig sound like fun.
The set up of Udacity is simple, enroll in the class and watch videos. Take some notes along the way and there are simple questions to answer with the click of a mouse, okay the answers may not be simple, but you won't spend twenty minutes trying to figure out the formatting. This course has made the technology part easy.
The enthusiasm of the instructor is perfect. Again, I'm only in unit one and there are seven, but this will appeal to Z when we start in a few weeks. The instructor is young and in the first video I couldn't help but thinking he needed to iron his shirt. Granted he was in Europe explaining physics and ironing probably wasn't a priority. Okay it may the first time I've actually thought someone needed to iron their shirt, I'm not a big fan of irons in general. Then he starts talking and he's engaging, I believe teens will relate to this guy. Then he started writing, guess what!, his handwriting isn't neat and perfect. I wanted to hug this guy seriously. I've spent hours over the last nine years reminding Z to have good handwriting and his Japanese is neater than his English. I've also reminded him about wrinkled shirts a few times. But here is an intelligent guy with less than precise handwriting and a wrinkled shirt, he is the perfect man to help teach Z physics, and to keep him enthused about the subject.
It didn't hurt the other class developer, computer guy, I don't know what his title is. Well it didn't hurt that he is holding a stuffed giraffe in his photo. Opulence, you know, and apparently a fan of giraffes. Who isn't, really?
Now I have homework. I have to find a sunny day, still waiting, and I need to do a little more study on vectors for myself. Otherwise, I'll be on to unit two hopefully next week.
