We are all present at the creation of a new phase of education–the massive online course. Berkeley has now joined with MIT and Harvard in offering such courses and the experiment is now much more than a curiosity. I do not have any idea how this innovation will change higher education, but I do not doubt that it will. I do not fear this change because it holds out the promise of educating many more people than could possibly ever been done within the old framework. But I also know that the role of a teacher will always be indispensable to a truly liberal education. We will all witness (and shape) this revolution.
Climate change continues to unfold, and in the case of Greenland, faster than we initially thought. The news report is interesting because it notes that similar melts have occurred in the past, evidence that tends to disconfirm the climate change hypothesis. Nonetheless, the rapidity of the change in ice melt can’t help but raise the possibility that something new is indeed happening. Beijing was also pummeled by its heaviest rains in 60 years.
Fears of a global recession were heightened by a downgrade in the outlook for the German economy which has seen its export market shrivel up in recent months. The news raises all sorts of new fears about the strength of the eurozone. Pressures on Spain seem to be unrelenting at this point, and the media is treating the Greek exit from the eurozone as a given. This is a slow-motion train wreck.
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