A truly slick Prezi, and some greate adivce for entrepreneurs

The Prezi below not only demonstrates how sophisticated online presentations can be, it also contains useful advice for those considering starting their own business:

What would you do if money was no object?

Thought-provoking short lecture by Alan Watts (3m 9s) - particularly relevant given the increasing focus on student employability:

An avalanche is coming: look out Higher Education

‘Should we fail to radically change our approach to education, the same cohort we’re attempting to “protect” could find that their entire future is scuttled by our timidity.’
David Puttnam, MIT, 2012

A detailed and insightful look into the uncertain future of Higher Education - download the full report here:

http://www.ippr.org/publication/55/10432/an-avalanche-is-coming-higher-education-and-the-revolution-ahead

Truly awesome: Daphne Koller explains Coursera

There has been much discussion in recent months about the impact of MOOCs and online courses on the traditional model of Higher Education. Coursera, an online platform where you can take a range of online courses for free, has caused much hand-wringing about the future of the university in an increasingly online world.

But this TED talk by Coursera founder Daphne Koller should go a long way to calming the fears of all those who truly believe that education can make the world a better place. For anyone working in Higher Education, this short video is well worth 20 minutes of your time:

My 100th post! Another thought-provoking video...

Techtrees is 100 today! Not 100 years old of course, but 100 posts. I hope you have found the content that I've shared over the past year to be useful and thought-provoking.

On that note, I wanted to share another historical video made by Marshall McLuhan in 1966. Similar to the Asimov video in a previous post, this video illustrates how uncannily accurate some people have been in predicting the advent of networked learning:

Isaac Asimov's future of education - 1988

An amazing interview with sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov. Recorded in 1988, it's as if he had already glimpsed the future of technology in imagining an education system that would finally put the learner at the centre:

e-Learning and Digital Cultures

This excellent blog post by David Hopkins provides a useful summary of the activity in the short #edcmooc currently being run by Coursera and the University of Edinburgh. David also draws attention to the near-future of education and technology and provides a useful critique of 'utopian / dystopian' discourse (Hand and Sandwell, 2002) and provides links to some interesting videos: