The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
I've been trying to remember about learning new things before I had access to the Web. I'm not that old and I still remember time B.W. (Before the Web). Living up here I used to keep a running list of books that I was interested in so that whenever I hit Winnipeg or Saskatoon I would know what I wanted to buy. I remember being frustrated at day old newspapers and having to always wonder about what was going on in the world. Now I get information and I have opportunities for learning new things that I never even knew I needed in the past. A perfect example is at MIT's website. This famous university in the U.S. is doing everything it can to get hundreds of its courses online. Searching through their website you can find lectures, podcasts, videos, textbook readings, assignments, and entire course outlines listed. For free. You can take an entire course online at MIT and never pay a dime. While you will never get an MIT diploma this way, you can get all of the information on any topic you need. This is their reason behind what they are doing: they want everyone around the world to have the same opportunity to learn what people who live close to Boston do, and for societies to advance. Another example is Harvard University. While not offering as much information online as MIT, Harvard is going the next step, bringing information and their degrees out to people no matter where they live. In the next few years, Harvard will start offering a high school diploma online for kids around the world. What impact will this have on local economies and local opportunities for kids when, anywhere around the world, they can take their education from a place like Harvard? The ability to learn new things is directly at our fingertips. We can find message boards, blogs, online groups, podcasts and lectures, and even dozens of legitimate online degree offering institutions. This changes the playing field of education for people who live in places like we do. About 10 years ago, I was thinking of starting to do a master's degree of education. I had been teaching for a few years and I thought I was ready to go back to school. One time in Winnipeg I stopped in at the university and tried to discuss starting my courses. But there was a hitch: I wanted to stay in Snow Lake and learn from here. I was not about to quit my job to do this. The counselor that I spoke with quite literally laughed at me and told me that I had no choice. Several months later I went to the University of Alberta and spoke with them about my idea to take courses over the Internet. They were intrigued; the idea had never been tried before and so they let me do most of my classes online and go to Edmonton only in the summer. This was a change for them, something new, but they were willing to try. I can't speak for either the U of A or the U of M these days, but I hope that both of these places have opened their eyes to opportunities for rural Canadians. Living in the North can sometimes be a frustrating experience, but this is changing. We now get the best of both worlds. I can open my windows and hear nothing but the loons on a warm summer night, and still get information and courses from some of the finest institutions of learning in the world. Tech Notes runs Mondays.
