What is a MOOC?
What is a MOOC? It’s a Massive Open Online Course, an online class that anyone can join. And it’s free. The amazing thing about MOOCs is that there are lots of options from top notch educators.
Sounds great, right? It is. Kind of. There are so many options for MOOCs. And to date too many of the courses are teaching in traditional ways, but just relying on the technology to transmit the traditional methods.
To learn more about MOOCs, here is a Ted Talk by one of the founders of Coursera:
3 great MOOCs for your kids
Engineering
MOOCs fascinate me. Haven’t tried one yet. While this is (supposedly) for high school kids I’d like to give it a try:
https://www.canvas.net/courses/exploring-engineering-1
You can read more about it here.
Career and Skills
For kids, I always want to promote giving them exposure to many things. It’s rare that even 12th graders heading to college have a true understanding of what they want to do. But it’s not too young to understand what the real world brings no matter what your field of interest is. This course talks about skills and careers and a new session starts next week.
https://www.coursera.org/course/career
Computer Science
Some middle schools have already added coding to their curriculum. If your kids’ school haven’t done so, just check this online class. This course has been created in partnership with Harvard. It will introduce your kids to computer science and programming: algorithms, different languages such as PHP, JavaScript, SQL, CSS… A great and fun introduction to the world of coding.
https://www.edx.org/course/harvardx/harvardx-cs50x-introduction-computer
Share your favorite MOOC below!
