What is a MOOC?
MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Courses, one of the latest trends in the world of eLearning. What does that mean? Basically the following:
- Massive: both the platform (and the contents) are designed in order to scale from few users to several thousands, all accessing at the same time.
- Open: free for all, just tune in and get your class without paying any fee!
- Online: it lives over the Internet!
- Courseware: the contents are materials specifically designed in order to be delivered in an online class.
Now, do you see any flaws in this?
Unfortunately I see some, especially regarding the third dot: what if the connection does not exist?
Many educational institution over the Italian territory still do not have a proper Internet connection and this makes the availability of web tools completely useless since they cannot be accessed from the place where education is created. Is there a way to solve this? Clearly, providing a decent Internet access to the people that truly need it should be at the top of the government’s to-do list but what should we do in the meanwhile?
With this post I would like to introduce BOOC, which is the Box for Open, Offline, Courseware distribution.
From the name it may be possible to understand what this is all about but both the hardware and the software will be illustrated as soon as possible on this platform. Stay tuned!