Sunday, February 3, 2013

12 Year-old Pakistani Girl Shares Online Education Experience at Davos

Khadija Niazi, a 12-year old from Lahore, Pakistan, is taking online courses offered by a new wave of cyber-based educational platforms like Coursera and Udacity.  She was recently interviewed by New York Times columnist Tom Friedman at World Economic Forum 2013 at Davos, Switzerland.

 Khadija was the featured guest in a session on online education sponsored by Victor Pinchuk Foundation. She was joined on stage at WEF by Bill Gates, Larry Summer, Daphne Koller (Coursera co-founder), Rafael Reif (President of MIT), Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia founder), Peter Thiel and other dignitaries.

Coursera and Udacity offer massive open online courses (MOOCs) in a variety of subjects to large numbers of students from around the world. MOOC courses are often taught by professors who have been teaching for years at elite universities in the United States. Top academic institutions are in the forefront of online learning. For example, Harvard and M.I.T. have joined hands to introduce EdX, which offers free online courses from each university. About 753,000 students have enrolled, with India, Brazil, Pakistan and Russia among the top 10 countries from which people are participating, according to NY Times

Khadija attends a local school in Lahore. She was only 10 years old when she first took the Artificial Intelligence online course on Udacity. She managed to finish the course and, the following year, Khadijah completed Udacity’s Physics course with highest distinction. She now plans to take courses in Astrobiology.

Enabling virtual education is the high-speed broadband expansion led by PTCL which has propelled Pakistan to become the fourth fastest growing broadband market in the world and the second fastest in Asia, according to a recent industry report.

Source: OECD Global Education Digest 2009

The quickest and the most cost-effective way to broaden access to education at all levels is through online schools, colleges and universities. Sitting at home in Pakistan, self-motivated learners can watch classroom lectures at world's top universities including UC Berkeley, MIT and Stanford. More Pakistanis can pursue advanced degrees by enrolling and attending the country's Virtual University that offers instructions to thousands of enrolled students via its website, video streaming and Youtube and television channels.

The concept of virtual instruction is finding its way to K-12 education as well. Increasing number of Pakistanis are drawn to the Khan Academy channel on YouTube making Pakistanis among its top users. Virtual Education for All is a local Pakistani initiative extending the concept to primary level.

All of these technological developments and open courseware initiatives are good news for making education available and accessible to satisfy the growing needs in Pakistan and other emerging countries around the world seeking to develop knowledge-based economies of the 21st century.

Here's a video of Khadija's interview with Tom Friedman at Davos:



Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Pakistan's Youngest Computer Prodigy

Khan Academy Draws Pakistanis

Pakistan Virtual University Wins Top OCW Award 

Pakistan Rolls Out 50Mbps Broadband Service

More Pakistan Students Studying Abroad

Inquiry Based Learning in Pakistan

Mobile Internet in South Asia

Allama Iqbal Open University

Online Courses at Top International Universities

Pakistan Virtual University

Pasi Sahlberg on why Finland leads the world in education

Intellectual Wealth of Nations


23 comments:

Ahmed said...

Online learning leaps ahead with US partnership

Centers for Advanced Studies in Pakistan being connected with US university researchers

http://www.thenewstribe.com/2013/02/04/online-learning-in-pakistan-leaps-ahead-with-us-partnership/

Riaz Haq said...

Here's Pakistani response to Joel Brinkley Op Ed published in Chicago Tribune:

Proving its doomsayers wrong is among Pakistan's many overlooked strengths. Mr. Joel Brinkley, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, with his article, “Pakistan coming apart at the seams,” (Jan. 22, ChicagoTribune.com) joins the list of the misinformed and the plain wrong about Pakistan. This is unfortunate. It is even more unfortunate that he mistakes the coming of age of Pakistan's democracy, with its promise of political and economic stability, as a sign of failure. He cites numerous examples of the apparent dysfunction in Islamabad, as if Islamabad is only capital city in the world suffering from that disease.

This is not to deny that Pakistan faces numerous, and in some cases, unique, challenges. Mr. Brinkley attempts to list some of these also. What eludes him is the fact that Pakistan is meeting these challenges head on while constructing the edifice of a modern democratic state.

The Parliament, the most active in Pakistan’s history, is about to conclude its five-year term, paving the way for the first peaceful transfer of power in the country’s history. It cleansed Pakistan’s constitution of the debris of past non-representative regimes while also addressing longstanding constitutional and political issues threatening the federation. This Parliament has passed more legislation on human rights and women’s rights than all of Pakistan’s previous parliaments combined.

The economy continues to grow despite the burden of a full scale war against terrorism, the effects of some of the biggest natural disasters ever to hit Pakistan and the global economic slowdown. Pakistan expects a growth rate of around 4 percent in 2013 despite these challenges. The Pakistani stock market is among the most productive and profitable in the world. On most indicators of economic vigor, resilience and strength, Pakistan continues to perform well. Pakistan’s teledensity is one of the highest in the region. Users of broadband Internet and social media continue to grow exponentially, not only providing the masses entertainment, but empowerment.

Consumer spending remains robust. Many American companies have invested in Pakistan and are generating impressive profits.

The judiciary, long a rubber stamp of dictators, stands proud and independent, hauling the very intelligence agency Mr. Brinkley calls “mendacious” before it. And despite its perceived ‘mendacity’, the agency submitted itself to the court. This had never happened in Pakistan’s history before. Similarly, when a disagreement arose between the court and the government, the latter, in the true spirit of democracy and accommodation, accepted the court’s verdict. This speaks of a political maturity hitherto absent from Pakistan’s political discourse.

The social scene is no less impressive. Pakistan’s pop music industry is bigger than that of India. Pakistani students top international examinations. Pakistani sports teams, for both men and women, continue to record wins. In short, Pakistan is a vigorous, resilient nation, working hard to put a turbulent past behind and become a modern, democratic, and economically prospering country.

I challenge Mr. Brinkley to name one country with which he has bracketed Pakistan as a failed state that has these attributes. It is one thing to see a half-full glass as half-empty. It is quite another to see nothing in it. Sometimes, it seems, the real challenge Pakistan faces is not defeating terrorism, strengthening democracy, and generating economic growth, but convincing reporters to report impartially about it rather than seeking to regale public opinion with preconceived notions and worn out stereotypes.


Mayraj said...

I have meant to do an article on distance learning benefits for years for City mayors (before these new programs arrived-but I kept pushing it back on back burner). It is thrilling for me to see how more and more new providers are appearing. .I still plan to do an article and now I have more resources I can mention. Sometimes delay works out for the better!

Mayraj said...

But technology is taking away jobs. This conundrum needs to be solved.
> http://raceagainstthemachine.com/2011/12/06/labors-declining-share-in-the-computer-age/
> Labor’s Declining Share in the Computer Age

Riaz Haq said...

Mayraj: "But technology is taking away jobs...."

Not necessarily in education.

In fact, there's a teacher shortage in most the developing world.

And it's hard to attract the best and the brightest to become teachers in America.

I suggest that you read Salman Khan's "The One World Schoolhouse" in which he proposes changing the role of the teacher from delivering broadcast lectures in classrooms to coaching and mentoring students to solve problems AFTER they have heard the lecture via video BEFORE coming to the classroom. In other words, turn the current teaching model upside down to do the CLASSWORK at home ad HOMEWORK in the class.

http://books.google.com/books?id=xz-gkDYm4UUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=salman+khan+one+world+schoolhouse&hl=en&sa=X&ei=vw8QUby8IIOziwKXgoHICA&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=broadcast%20&f=false

Mayraj said...

Who will make sure kids do that in houses where parents work more than job to put food on the table today? He is out of touch with reality.
Even in wealthy household parents do not have time.

Riaz Haq said...

Mayraj: "Who will make sure kids do that in houses where parents work more than job to put food on the table today? He is out of touch with reality...."

Who makes sure now that they do their homework?

Anonymous said...

As if to create a bookend to the horrid Malala shooting, from which she is fortunately healing, Thomas Friedman interviewed a 12 year old Pakistani girl at Davos, on her experience as a successful MOOC student, having passed university Astrophysics through a Udacity course. She is poised and witty; no one seems to have told Khadija Niazi she shouldn’t take university courses in Middle School. Amazing what a fine mind will do with opportunity!

Riaz Haq said...

I have been told there are ways to get around the YouTube ban in Pakistan by using proxies to access videos....that's how many MOOC students in Pakistan taking courses at Udacity, Coursera, Khan Academy etc. have been able to continue taking classes.

They work by masking IP addresses.

Here's an example:

http://en.softonic.com/s/youtube-proxy-list

Riaz Haq said...

Here's ET on Acer beefing up presence in Pakistan:

LAHORE: Acer, a Taiwanese multinational hardware and electronics corporation have re-launched their presence in Pakistan, with a special focus on youth and government functionaries to capture the emerging information technology market.

In September 2012, The Express Tribune reported that the government planned to spend Rs4.6 billion on IT projects during the fiscal year 2012-13 with an emphasis on strengthening e-government, human resources and infrastructure development. Keeping the investment in mind, Acer is thinking of capitalising on it.

“After relocating our operations from the Middle East to Pakistan, Acer has formally started sales and marketing operations in the country with an initial office in Islamabad since January 2013,” said Amin Mortazavi, Vice President of Acer Middle East and Africa, at the re-launch ceremony. “We are here for a purpose, which we lacked previously.”

The emerging IT sector of Pakistan, especially in Punjab, has forced Acer to shift its operations to here. “We are revamping our setup and landscape with our distributors and channel partners. This, of course, will need investments, which we have planned for future expansions.”

Moreover, this will also aid masses in acquisition of Acer products, besides generating employment opportunities, Mortazavi said.
---------
“We will launch more tablets in 2013, at affordable prices, catering the needs of the region,” Mortazavi said.

50% of Pakistan’s population is under 30 years of age and their appetite for information is big, therefore Acer seeks to tap this market segment.

Acer is also eager to work closely with the provincial government, especially after the launch of youth programmes particularly in the shape of laptop distributions. Acer was hopeful to score the contract for the scheme, which they previously failed to secure. “We are eager for this, we want to deliver, but with due process, and we are working on this also.”

The business model, which Acer is adopting for Pakistan is quite interesting. The representatives failed to answer the initial investment figures Acer made for the re-launch.

The tech firm wanted to be transparent, growing step-by-step and proceeding to the next goal only after the first one matures. The company’s Islamabad office will, firstly, focus on commercial business and work for importing latest technology. Later, Acer will revamp its entire channel programme and then run a campaign to build a brand image.

“We are not in a position to tell the exact figures of the initial investment,” said Ali Nemati, General Manager of Acer for the Middle East, the person previously supervising Acer’s Pakistani operations from Dubai. “Once we achieve the first step of the business plan, in three months, then I will be able to tell the figures,” he said.

Acer claims that they still have a 30% market share in Pakistan, despite of their absence, but the officials said that the share is not the goal for them; it is just an indicator of growth for the brand. Acer’s partners and distributors look forward to increased support from the global firm, particularly in terms of customised training, certification, and sales lead generation.

“Our partners will be able to see immediate benefits as we focus on making the channel more profitable. The Pakistani IT market is constantly evolving and is of significant importance to Acer. We have made great progress in the last few years, and empowering our channel is instrumental for our continued success,” Nemati added.


http://tribune.com.pk/story/506411/acer-re-launches-brand-in-pakistan/

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an excerpt of a News Op Ed on online education by Dr. Ata-ur-Rehman Khan:

The national focal point of this distance learning initiative selected by the HEC is the Latif Ebrahim Jamal Science Information Centre located at the University of Karachi. Over 2,000 lectures from professors based in the US, UK, Europe and Australia have been delivered through this mechanism during the last three years.



A major advance in distance learning was the availability of MIT OpenCourseWare free of charge to the world. This provided over two thousand excellent undergraduate and postgraduate courses in various disciplines delivered by the MIT faculty. There are about 20 million website visits by students from 215 countries to benefit from these courses annually and an astonishing 100 million users have benefited from them so far.



We set up a mirror website of the MITCourseWare in Pakistan to facilitate downloading when I was chairman of the HEC. These Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are also being introduced by Stanford and other universities. One such initiative, ‘Udacity’, was initiated by a Stanford professor last year and attracted 160,000 students to register for the course on artificial intelligence.



The fastest growing distance learning initiative, ‘Coursera’, was started by two Stanford professors of computer science and has already enrolled more than two million students worldwide. Harvard University has also followed the same path, teaming up with MIT to start online courses under a programme termed ‘edX’. These will be available free for developing countries.



Apple-iTunesU also offers access to websites of the leading universities in the world including Cambridge, Oxford, Yale etc, where free video lectures are available. The Khan Academy based in California has been providing school and college level materials for many years, many of which are dubbed in Urdu by a group based in NED University, Karachi.



Recently a meta search engine has been developed at the International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences at Karachi University to quickly search through all these materials, and arrangements have been made to make these materials available to students and academics in Pakistan free of charge through internet and television.



The Latif Ebrahim Jamal Science Information Centre is the HEC designated national focal point for the video conferencing and distance learning programmes. The formal inauguration of educational TV is expected to occur within a couple of months. This will be a huge leap forward for education in Pakistan, and I am thrilled to be a part of this exciting initiative to help bring quality education to the doorsteps of some 100 million youngsters of Pakistan who are below the age of 19.


http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-9-161624-Education-at-the-doorstep

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a NY Times piece on online education companies using videos:

While companies like Udacity and Coursera — providers of giant online open courses — are just beginning to introduce courses with fees that count for academic credit, other online learning companies have carved out a lucrative niche in courses on design, photography and other creative pursuits. CreativeLive, Lynda.com and others have tapped into an audience of customers who are highly motivated to hone skills that might help enhance their careers. The online courses are usually less expensive than intensive in-person workshops on photography and other subjects, and can attract top-notch instructors with their promise of big national audiences.

Amanda Picone, a wedding photographer in Babylon, N.Y., bought the CreativeLive course on photographing people in lingerie, a genre known as boudoir photography, because she thought it would enhance her appeal to clients, some of whom want boudoir shots. Ms. Picone learned that asking subjects to lift their chins slightly while posing can result in more flattering portraits.

“They’ve all been incredibly helpful,” Ms. Picone said of the several CreativeLive courses she has bought.

Investors are noticing the profit potential in this niche of online learning. In January, some of the venture capital firms behind Facebook and other technology companies pumped $103 million into Lynda.com, a maker of online training videos for software and other technical tools used by creative professionals.

And two of Hollywood’s largest talent agencies, Creative Artists Agency and William Morris Endeavor, have invested small sums in CreativeLive that signal their interest in using the company’s service as a new outlet for their celebrity clients. CreativeLive has raised a total of $8 million since last year, most of it from the venture firm Greylock Partners.
---------
“We love the idea that this could grow into another platform of scale and financial weight and could be another piece of the offering to our clients,” said Michael Yanover, head of business development at Creative Artists.

CreativeLive has a twist that most of its rivals do not: courses are broadcast live over the Internet and shaped in real time by input from a small studio audience and the much larger group of people watching online. About 20,000 to 60,000 people on average tune in for the live broadcasts. One exception was the audience for a three-day course by the author Ramit Sethi called “Essentials for Creative Entrepreneurs,” which topped 150,000.

In some cases, instructors earn six-figure payments for teaching multiday courses. In total, CreativeLive has paid “millions” to its instructors, said Chase Jarvis, a commercial photographer who co-founded the company in 2010.

“Creativity is the new literacy,” Mr. Jarvis said.

The company’s live broadcasts are free, but CreativeLive charges $19 to $249 for replays of the courses; 3 to 10 percent of its live audience ends up buying the replays because they were unable to tune into the entire course live or want to study it more closely.

“They see it as furthering their career or life,” said Mika Salmi, a longtime Internet and media executive who used to run Viacom’s digital operations and joined CreativeLive as chief executive last year. “This is an investment in me.”

----

Digital-Tutors has more than 1,000 courses on the special effects and graphics tools used by filmmakers and game developers, available to subscribers who pay $45 a month. Coursera, too, has begun to beef up its arts and design offerings, including a course titled “Introduction to Programming for Digital Artists” taught by an instructor from the California Institute for the Arts.


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/business/creative-learning-pays-off-for-web-start-ups.html?hpw&_r=0

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an excerpt from TechCrunch on Raspberry Pi computer in developing nations:

Asked about the global sales distribution of the Pi, the Foundation provided TechCrunch with some “very rough”, internal estimates of Pi sales to developing/emerging nations — and the figures (listed below) suggest that the first million+ Pi sales have overwhelmingly been powered by wealthier nations.

The most Pi-populous country on the developing/emerging nations list (India) can lay claim to roughly 0.5%-0.6% of total global Pi sales to-date, according to this data. While, collectively, these listed nations make up between only 1.4% and 1.7% of total global Pi shipments. So more than 98% of the Pi pie has been sold to the world’s wealthiest countries thus far.
India 6000
Indonesia 1200
Lao P.Dem.R. 600
Malaysia 3400
Philippines 500
Pakistan 100
Sri Lanka 50
Thailand 2000
Vietnam 500
Egypt 150
South Africa 2000
Tunisia 200
Zimbabwe 50
Bolivia 100
Chile 400
Colombia 20
Peru 50

There are also, of course, scores of (apparently) Pi-less developing nations that do not make this list at all. One of which – the Kingdom of Bhutan — does actually have a princely one Pi sale to its name at present, according to the Foundation. “It’s a server for Khan Academy Lite in a school, whose 64GB SD card costs more than twice what the Pi cost,” the Foundation’s Liz Upton tells TechCrunch. “We’re working on getting more out there!”

It’s likely that some of the Pis shipped to developed countries have found their way to less wealthy nations – via charities and other ‘suitcase schemes’ such as the Cameroon school project mentioned above which took out 30 Pis. Or via individual buyers seeking to avoid high import tariffs that can push up the price of bulk commercial imports (such as in Brazil).

But even factoring in some extra spread, there’s no doubt the Pi is predominantly disrupting the living rooms and schools of the developed world. Which, it should be noted, was the original ambition of the Pi founders — specifically they wanted to get more U.K. kids coding, following a national slump in interest in computer science education....


http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/12/raspberry-pi-global-sales-spread/

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a Globe & Mail story on potential for MOOCs:

The world’s media recently reported how a new approach to online learning – called massive, open, online courses (MOOCs) – allowed a 12-year-old girl from Pakistan to study subjects like astrobiology from the worlds’ top universities. The story captured our attention, hinting at how education might open doors in ways unimaginable just a few years ago.

While the potential for change is dramatic in developing countries, new learning technologies have the power to revolutionize life for Canadians, as well.

A recent Statistics Canada survey suggests that as many as one third of Canadians have unmet learning needs. That is, because of family responsibilities, demands of work, or the challenges of location and time, many Canadians are unable to pursue the educational path they imagine for themselves.

---

MOOCs are certainly opening our eyes to the possibility of addressing these needs. They may also be the tail that wags the dog. The technology is evidence of dynamic forces at work to dramatically change higher learning.

Four factors are rapidly taking us beyond the tipping point for major change in postsecondary education: advances in understanding how people learn; transformative technologies; a shift in demand for new learning options; and rising costs for the current bricks and mortar model.

What is at play here is similar to the upheaval we’ve seen in the book, music and video industries. Technologies are driving dramatic new ways of enjoying these creative materials. The winners are almost everyone: There is massive access now to the very best works of art. But with the new forms of access come new forces of change, and pressure for the creators of these materials to rapidly adapt to new forms of content created in different ways and by almost anyone.

The analogy is imperfect, however. Education is not a product to be passively consumed. Just as people still want to attend a concert, go to a high-quality bookstore, or prefer to see a hockey game in person rather than on TV, there will still be a place for physical classrooms and the exciting face-to-face experiences of learning.

However, the factors mentioned above are pushing us to adopt more effective teaching methods like “flipped” classrooms, where students review material online, and spend valuable class time in discussion and analysis. They are pushing us to make more use of blended learning, which involves a varied mix of technologies outside and inside class time. And they are pushing us to offer more high quality fully online programs. All together these represent an approach often called flexible learning.

The challenge will be managing this profound change. Professors are not dispensers of information. They are guides through the growing vastness of information – provokers of critical thought and analysis, facilitators and mentors who can effectively channel discussion so that the learning becomes a personal and a shared effort.

For those who are passionate about education, the possibilities of change outweigh the anxieties. After leading UBC’s first MOOC on game theory, a course that attracted 130,000 learners, Prof. Kevin Leyton-Brown, an associate professor of computer science, enthused that he had four times as many Canadians in his course than he had taught in 10 years as professor.

--

We don’t know yet what the future holds, but I invite universities across our country to join with us to embrace the challenge to develop innovative learning opportunities. Together we can open worlds to 12-year-old Pakistani girls and boys. But we can also unleash a new level of creativity and potential for Canadians.


http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/technology-will-change-universities-as-it-changed-the-music-industry/article11310170/?service=mobile

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a piece discussing MOOCS with references to Pakistan:

While the opportunities, challenges and controversies surrounding MOOCs inside the classroom discussed yesterday are very real, there’s one part of the educational multiverse that views new, free, high-quality online courses as entirely upside: international universities (especially those in the third world).

Like their US counterparts, prestigious centers of higher education in places like Europe are looking at MOOCs through the lens of opportunity and competition. But for countries like Pakistan or Kenya, free content from institutions like Stanford, MIT and Harvard is being plugged into an online teaching backbone to deliver high-level learning in places remote and often impoverished.

These benefits were brought home to me during this week’s LINC conference where the leaders of virtual universities in Africa, Pakistan and Mexico introduced us to the missions of their institutions and the challenges they face trying to educate huge numbers with limited resources.
-----------
Limited teaching resources are particularly acute in places like Pakistan where three million new students enter the primary and secondary school systems each year, far faster than new teachers are coming out of the tertiary education system to provide support. Which is why leaders like Naveed Malik of the Virtual University of Pakistan have been recruited to bring some of the technology and techniques they have successfully implemented in Pakistani higher ed into primary and secondary school grades....


http://degreeoffreedom.org/moocs-and-the-global-classroom/


Riaz Haq said...

Here's Economist magazine on "The Attack of the MOOCs":

DOTCOM mania was slow in coming to higher education, but now it has the venerable industry firmly in its grip. Since the launch early last year of Udacity and Coursera, two Silicon Valley start-ups offering free education through MOOCs, massive open online courses, the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their foundations. University brands built in some cases over centuries have been forced to contemplate the possibility that information technology will rapidly make their existing business model obsolete. Meanwhile, the MOOCs have multiplied in number, resources and student recruitment—without yet having figured out a business model of their own.

Besides providing online courses to their own (generally fee-paying) students, universities have felt obliged to join the MOOC revolution to avoid being guillotined by it. Coursera has formed partnerships with 83 universities and colleges around the world, including many of America’s top-tier institutions.

EdX, a non-profit MOOC provider founded in May 2012 by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and backed with $60m of their money, is now a consortium of 28 institutions, the most recent joiner being the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. Led by the Open University, which pioneered distance-learning in the 1970s, FutureLearn, a consortium of 21 British, one Irish and one Australian university, plus other educational bodies, will start offering MOOCs later this year. But Oxford and Cambridge remain aloof, refusing to join what a senior Oxford figure fears may be a “lemming-like rush” into MOOCs.

On July 10th Coursera said it had raised another $43m in venture capital, on top of the $22m it banked last year. Although its enrolments have soared, and now exceed 4m students, this is a huge leap of faith by investors that the firm can develop a viable business model. The new money should allow Coursera to build on any advantage it has from being a first mover among a rapidly growing number of MOOC providers. “It is somewhat entertaining to watch the number of people jumping on board,” says Daphne Koller, a Stanford professor and co-founder of Coursera. She expects it to become one of a “very small number of dominant players”.

The industry has similar network economics to Amazon, eBay and Google, says Ms Koller, in that “content producers go to where most consumers are, and consumers go to where the most content is.” Simon Nelson, the chief executive of FutureLearn, disagrees. “Anyone who thinks the rules of engagement have already been written by the existing players is massively underestimating the potential of the technology,” he says.

Certainly, there is plenty of experimentation with business models taking place. The MOOCs themselves may be free, but those behind them think there will be plenty of revenue opportunities. Coursera has started charging to provide certificates for those who complete its courses and want proof, perhaps for a future employer. It is also starting to license course materials to universities that want to beef up their existing offering. However, it has abandoned for now attempts to help firms recruit employees from among Coursera’s students, because catering to the different needs of each employer was “not a scalable model”, says Ms Koller......


http://www.economist.com/news/business/21582001-army-new-online-courses-scaring-wits-out-traditional-universities-can-they?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/the_attack_of_the_moocs

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an AP story on Youtube ban in Pakistan:

ToffeeTV has hit an unexpected snag. The Internet startup depended on YouTube to promote "Hokey-Pokey," ''The Umm Nyum Nyum Song" and other language-teaching clips it produces for children, but the video-sharing website has been banned in Pakistan for nearly a year.

---

ToffeeTV has had to save its clips on its own servers and delay the rollout of its apps, says company co-founder Rabia Garib. "It threw us off our feet," she said. "We're off schedule by about eight months."

While the tech-savvy have ways to get around the ban, the vast majority of Pakistanis who try to view YouTube get this: "Surf Safely! ... The site you are trying to access contains content that is prohibited for viewership from within Pakistan."

The made-in-America trailer for "Innocence of Muslims," the movie of which has never reached cinemas, provoked uproar throughout the Muslim world, and several U.S. diplomatic missions were targeted. In Pakistan, clashes between police and protesters left 19 people dead.

YouTube as well as Facebook were initially blocked although the government soon exempted Facebook, saying it removed the offensive material. At the time, U.S. President Barack Obama's administration asked Google, YouTube's parent, to take down the video. But the company refused, saying the trailer didn't violate its content standards.

The only other countries that block YouTube are Tajikistan, China and Iran, according to Google's transparency report that tracks restrictions of its products. Another 56 countries have localized versions of YouTube that allow for tailoring content to local standards.

Pakistan, a nation of roughly 180 million, has a democratically elected government and a legal system inherited from its former British rulers. But that system also contains significant religious strictures, and disputes over religion frequently end in bloodshed. So at the time the YouTube ban was imposed, many saw it as a necessary calming measure.

Now an advocacy group called Bytes for All is petitioning the Lahore High Court to order an end to all Internet censorship.

Muzzling YouTube "could lead to the opening up of an entire Pandora's box of moral policing and dictatorial controls despite the democracy being in place," said Furhan Hussain of Bytes for All.

At the organization's Islamabad offices, activists say the YouTube case is just the latest example. Over the years the government has periodically banned Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, but the YouTube ban has lasted the longest.

It can be circumvented via VPNs, virtual private networks that mask the user's computer but are prone to viruses and slow the Internet connection.

These proxies are too cumbersome for his staff to deal with, says Jawwad Ahmed Farid, founder and CEO of Karachi-based Alchemy Technologies, which does risk-management training for financial professionals.

It posts short videos of its classes on YouTube to attract business, but uploads fewer of them following the ban, and the volume of Pakistani customers referred through YouTube has fallen, Farid said. "My team finds it very difficult to work with all the proxies in place. It certainly slows it down a bit," he said.

Sidra Qasim is co-CEO of HOMETOWN, a Lahore-based company that helps leather workers to market products such as shoes and belts online. It used YouTube to reach customers and also to teach the workers new techniques. "Now that training part is stopped totally," she said.


http://www.sfgate.com/business/technology/article/Free-YouTube-Pakistan-ban-faces-court-action-4816078.php

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a Christian Science Monitor report on Youtube ban's first anniversary in Pakistan:

YouTube has been banned in Pakistan for a year now, underscoring the rising influence of Islamist hardliners and intolerance for free speech in the country.

The ban came after YouTube refused Pakistan's demand that it remove “the Innocence of Muslims” clips, outtakes from an attempt at making an anti-Islamic film that enraged many Muslims, from its website.

Islamists, backed by different religious parties came out to protest in the thousands, and started riots across Pakistan, leaving at least 20 people dead. Protestors also attempted to attack the US Embassy in Islamabad. The government eventually blocked access to YouTube last September, appeasing the protestors. A year later, despite calls to end the ban from free speech activists and business interests, the ban remains.

“The Pakistani government has been blocking Internet content under the pretext of national interest, religion, and morality,” says Hassan Belal Zaidi at the independent Internet rights advocacy group Bytes For All, based in Islamabad. “But it is actually trying to block any parallel discourse on the Internet and curtail freedom of expression of minorities... both political and religious, which speak against their persecution that happens quite often in Pakistan, and are not covered by mainstream media."
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Youtube hasn’t been the only case of social media censorship in Pakistan. Facebook and Twitter have been banned for hosting what the government deemed blasphemous material. And websites promoting separatism in the restive province of Balochistan and those criticizing the powerful Pakistani Army are also regularly blocked.

It’s not a complete crackdown: Internet rights activists say many Pakistanis are getting around the ban in new and creative ways.The digital block can easily be circumvented, they say, by using proxies and virtual private networks.

“Software such as Hotspot Shield, Spotflux, or TOR Browser as well as a host of online proxy servers are being used to access YouTube in the country. Many Pakistan-specific mirror sites have also been set up to allow people here to access content on Youtube, directly and indirectly,” says Mr. Zaidi.

Though university students who cannot access proxies while on university servers are losing out, everyone from Internet experts to the former president’s son provide advice online on how to circumvent the ban.

“Anyone using iOS and looking to get around the YouTube ban I suggest downloading VPN One Click,” tweeted the former president's son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, chairman of the Pakistan People's Party, the party that was in power when the YouTube ban was enforced last year.

One possible silver lining, say some observers, is that the ban and problems associated with using proxies has prompted a rise in alternative local websites. One example is www.tune.pk, which now has more than 25,000 registered users. “We cannot beg someone to erase the videos we do not like, instead we made our own space,” reads a statement on the website run as a private enterprise out of Lahore, the cultural capital of Pakistan. The website says the site regularly monitors content and removes any material that it feels is not suitable for a Pakistani audience.

That self-censorship is not satisfying to activists. Bytes For All, the advocacy group, has filed a lawsuit against the government's YouTube ban in the Pakistani courts, saying it curtails the fundamental rights of Pakistanis. The group's lawyer says the case is slow going because the government is terrified of inflaming religious sentiments and the possibility of more violence.


http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2013/0919/Pakistan-s-YouTube-ban-1-year-later

Riaz Haq said...

Here's a Quartz story on Umar Anwar Jehangir, a Pakistani medical student at Davos 2014:

Davos is known for hosting the world’s business and political elite during the annual meeting of of the World Economic Forum, drawing a “who’s who” of CEOs and prime ministers with a median age of 53 years old.
+
Then there’s Umar Anwar Jahangir.
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The 21-year-old Pakistani medical student is this year’s youngest participant, according to a review of 2014 attendee list data. He’s here as part of a WEF group called Global Shapers, a network of young leaders globally contributing to their communities.
+
Jahangir interned at an ad agency when he was 13 and then began freelancing as a blogger and web designer, using the proceeds to pay for his schooling. In 2011, while studying at Bahria University Medical & Dental College in Karachi, he created Bahria Medics, a group of roughly 150 volunteer med students who organize blood collection, conduct health screenings, and distribute free drugs in Karachi. Jahangir also founded a job training company called Rumi Strategies and serves as its CEO.
+
The son of an administrator at the PTV television network, Jahangir thinks he’ll likely work in public health once he becomes a doctor. He’s already begun handing off responsibilities for Bahria Medics to other students so it will continue once he’s moved on from school.
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The trip to Switzerland is Jahangir’s first outside of Pakistan. “I’m hoping to get inspired,” he told Quartz.


http://qz.com/169825/the-youngest-davos-attendee/

Riaz Haq said...

The new trend of online educational assistance to students would soon become a viable alternative to academies which can be found in every nook and corner with a general perception to achieve good grades in examinations.

The idea of attending academies became popular a decade ago and even parents are also of the view that there was no concept of after-school tuition in their student life.

But now, a general perception has developed that a student, without attending academies, cannot get good marks.

Probably, this has been the reason for parents to blindly spend on their children's academies whether tutors are clearing the concepts or not that is usually not the concern but parents simply get satisfied from the fact that their child is getting "extra assistance for studies."

The other fact is that owing to mushrooming of academies, standards of teaching at schools have dropped with no efforts to fix them.

"All this has given rise to academy mafia which has plagued our society. We see tuition centres opening in every other street," Muhammad Iqbal, father of a student, said on Sunday.

He said such centres exploit both parents and students in the name of `quality education' while in reality, all this is a result of lack of `quality education' in schools and colleges.

Rahim Khan, guardian of a 9th class student, informed that the fast growing academy industry is a living proof that teachers are unable to deliver their concepts effectively.

What is even more painful is that many a time teachers deliberately do not clear concepts of their students so that they are left with no choice but to join their academies in the evening.

He termed this situation "very sad" and supported the trend of online education, which, he said, would be a viable alternative to throwing money to support a broken system.

"Our education sector is already bickering in pain. There is a dire need for institutes to come up with solutions to stop this exploitation," he opined.

The first alternative is Sabaq Foundation's website www.sabaq.pk which is an online video tutorial website with free video lectures for Pakistani students. The website provides tutorials for four main science subjects -- Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology for SSC, FSc and O Level students. The best thing about this website is that all tutorials have been prepared and sequenced following the exact syllabus of respective boards Cambridge, Federal, Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) and Balochistan.

Another example is that of Maktab.pk which is quite similar to Sabaq and provides lecture videos for four science subjects for FSc students.

So clearly, there are people who recognize the deficiencies of the current state of affairs and are working to resolve them.

When contacted, an education expert was of the view that non-profit initiatives

like these can be a game changer in society and once enough awareness is created about such free educational resources, students can

surely get rid of hassle and cost of after-school academies.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-6-296927-Online-help-for-studies-a-viable-alternative-to-academies

Riaz Haq said...

A 17-year-old Pakistani high school student's physics paper has surprised some older scientists

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/04/science/electric-honeycomb.html

This is an electric honeycomb. It’s what happens when certain kinds of electrically charged particles travel between a pointy electrode and a flat one, but bump into a puddle of oil along the way.

The polygonal pattern that emerges is what some physicists also call the rose-window instability, because it resembles the circular, stained-glass designs found in Gothic churches. It’s what happens as natural forces work to keep an electric charge moving in an interrupted circuit.


This visualization reveals fundamental principles about how electricity moves through fluids that engineers can use to develop technology for printing, heating or biomedicine. But it also reminds us that humans aren’t the only ones seeking stability in an unstable world. Even tiny, unconscious objects need balance. You can see similar patterns in wax honeycombs, fly’s eyes and soap bubbles.

Physicists knew of this phenomenon decades before Muhammad Shaheer Niazi, a 17-year-old high school student from Pakistan met the electric honeycomb. In 2016, as one of the first Pakistani participants in the International Young Physicists’ Tournament, he replicated the phenomenon and presented his work as any professional scientist would. But he also developed photographic evidence of charged ions creating the honeycomb, and published his work Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

But first: How does the honeycomb form?

Just about every electronic device in your home contains capacitors, which store electricity, a bit like a battery. Electricity travels from the top electrode, through the insulator, to the bottom, or ground electrode.

An electric honeycomb behaves like a capacitor. In this case, the top electrode is a needle that delivers high voltage to the air just a few centimeters above a thin layer of oil on the other flat, grounded surface electrode.

The high voltage strips molecules in the air of their electrons, and creates what’s called a corona discharge, pouring down these electrically charged particles, or ions, like water from a fountain, onto the surface of the oil. Just as lightning strives to strike the ground, these ions want to hit their ground electrode. But because oil is an inefficient conductor, they can’t get through it.

“We can say this is frustrated lightning,” said Alberto T. Pérez Izquierdo, a physicist at the University of Seville in Spain whose 1997 work on the subject inspired Mr. Niazi’s project.


The ions start accumulating on top of the oil until their force is too much. They sink down, forming a dimple in the oil that exposes the bottom electrode, allowing them to find their ground.

But now, the surface of the oil is no longer even. Within milliseconds, dozens of hexagonal shapes form in the layer that help maintain the equilibrium nature demands. The polygons keep the amount of energy flowing into and out of the system equal, and balance two forces — gravity, which keeps the oil’s surface horizontal, and the electric field pushing down on top of it.

To prove that the ions were moving, Mr. Niazi photographed images of the shadows formed by their wind as they exited the needle and recorded the heat presumed to come from the friction of their travel through the oil. Heat appeared to originate at the needle, and dissipate outward, increasing with time — even five minutes after the honeycomb formed.

The thermal images puzzled Dr. Pérez Izquierdo. Neither he nor others had previously explored temperature changes on the oil’s surface, and he would have expected a smaller and more even heating effect than Mr. Niazi observed. Determining the heat’s origin is an interesting question that requires more study, he said, while also praising Mr. Niazi’s experimental skill.

“I think it’s outstanding for so young a scientist to reproduce these results,” Dr. Pérez Izquierdo said.

Riaz Haq said...

#Online #education program launched in 14 #kpk districts of #Pakistan: #Peshawar, #Charsadda, #Swabi, #Nowshera, #Mardan, #Mansehra, #Abbottabad, #Swat, Dir, Chitral, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and Lakki Marwat at 150 schools 16,000 students. #PTI #ImranKhan
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/413797-online-education-programme-launched-in-14-kp-districts

Online education programme - tele-education - has been launched in 14 districts of the province under which the students of grades-4 and 5 would be taught English, mathematics and science subjects online.

For the purpose, 150 schools have been selected where 16,000 students would be imparted education. “Sixty percent of the students taking benefit of the programme are girls,” said Zulfiqar Ahmad, managing director of the Elementary and Secondary Education Foundation (ESEF).

The programme has been jointly launched by ESEF, DFID, Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) and Tele-education Organisation. It is being launched in Peshawar, Charsadda, Swabi, Nowshera, Mardan, Mansehra, Abbottabad, Swat, Dir, Chitral, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and Lakki Marwat.

The official said the computer labs would be established in the schools where the online classes would be arranged. Teachers sitting in Islamabad would deliver online lectures at the schools.

He said the programme had already been launched in some areas of Chitral, Dir and other districts and within a short span of time the interest of the students had increased.

The official said monthly monitoring of the programme is done and the students have shown enough improvement in the subjects they are taught online. He said the curriculum of government schools is taught in the online classes.

The official said in some schools of Chitral and Dir Lower, the project has already been completed and due to the successful results, it has been extended for another two years. The project continued for nine months in different schools in Chitral.

Riaz Haq said...

Wharton, Berkeley, NYU Offering Online M.B.A.s for the First Time
More elite business schools try virtual degrees to lure graduate students

https://www.wsj.com/articles/online-mba-wharton-berkeley-nyu-georgetown-11667343552


Starting next year, executive M.B.A. students at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania can earn the $223,500 degree from their living rooms.

After years of resistance, some of the country’s top business schools are starting virtual M.B.A. programs that require only a few days of in-person instruction. Wharton and Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business said they would include options for executive and part-time M.B.A. students to take most coursework online in 2023.


This fall, part-time M.B.A. students at New York University’s Stern School of Business and the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business were given an online option for most of their classes. All of the programs will charge online students the same tuition as those who attend in person, and those online students will get the same degree and credential as on-campus counterparts.

The move to give students flexible location options comes as demand for two-year, full-time traditional M.B.A. programs has been dropping amid a competitive job market and growing concern about the cost of college.

“The pandemic definitely accelerated this in every industry,” said Brian Bushee, who leads teaching and learning at Wharton and also teaches accounting. “I would be surprised in 10 or 20 years if there were schools that only did in-person and did nothing online.”

Between 2009 and 2020 the number of online M.B.A.s at accredited business schools in the U.S. more than doubled, and schools added more fully online M.B.A. degrees over the past two years during the pandemic, according to the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Recent announcements by Wharton and others mark a turning point for adoption of the degrees even at highly ranked campuses, school leaders say.

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At Stern, even the students who choose online courses are required to take nine in-person credits, which can be completed on nights or weekends, or by doing an intensive weeklong session.

Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, which announced its online M.B.A. in 2019, graduated its first online M.B.A. students in August. The degree, which costs $24,000, follows a completely separate curriculum and costs far less than the traditional M.B.A. program. Online M.B.A students watch live broadcasts of professors and talk in small groups or on a virtual online forum. A 2021 survey of students found that 35% received a promotion since enrolling.

Many schools are still reluctant to make a reduced-price online degree because they fear such a product might eat up demand for their traditional M.B.A. programs, said Paul Carlile, who leads online learning at Questrom.

Halley Kamerkar, 36 years old, finished her online Questrom coursework in August and said hearing from fellow M.B.A. candidates in South Africa, Ireland and Miami was valuable.

Ms. Kamerkar, of Salem, Mass., said she thought about graduate school for a long time, but a study guide she bought for the Graduate Management Admission Test gathered dust until she learned about Questrom’s program with its $24,000 price tag. Ms. Kamerkar works in the nonprofit sector and only recently paid back her undergraduate loans.

“I did not want to give up my full-time career to take a step back and pursue education,” she said.