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Comment by ivanyv | Hacker News Reader

That was very interesting.

I live in what you'd call a 3d world country (Mexico), and this stuff makes me think about why empires fall and others rise...

The rising stars get to watch how an empire falls ;-)

One of my dreams is to open a school that's much better than most of the schools in Mexico, using the good and bad examples of schools in countries like the US and the UK. My 2 cents to leave to the world.

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Your dreams are definitely worth pursuing!

And probably a lot easier in the modern day as more and more people get access to the web. I'm very interested in web learning and am trying to put something together for it too.

I've had a long conversation with someone that is very much into this and there are some challenges but it definitely is possible.

Already there are tons of lectures online in flash video format. It's amazing the stuff you can learn about but to actually make lesson material and tests work in an online environment is far from simple (cheating for instance!).

I imagined something along an entirely different approach. Putting videos online is just doing it the same way over a new medium. I am thinking of a way to take advantage of what the web has to offer.

We'll see how it goes.

Yes, I got that, sorry for not being clearer. The videos are a simple starting point, there is no interaction and so on, it's just like watching TV (only worse quality...).

The subject of the discussion was basically a complete virtual education from grade school level all the way up to university level. Interactive lectures, web based self-study units the works.

We realized that this is a very complex undertaking and that it would require fairly massive funds to be executed properly as well as an enormous amount of expertise.

It might be worth looking at http://www.khanacademy.org/ for an effort in web learning. At this point it's mostly short youtube videos (quite a few of them) concentrating on one concept spanning math, physics, economics and some others. You can also create an account and get a personal "map" to see how you are progressing (were you go from basic concepts, and then build from them). The guy in charge wants to have videos about every possible subject and have one such knowledge map for them. Eventually, I think he also wants to be able to have online tutors helping individual students in the future. I realize my explanation probably doesn't do it any justice so I instead refer you to http://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy (the video in there) which should give a better overview of it all. There is also a longer video somewhere that has even more details.

I just thought I would share, maybe someone here will like it or find it useful.

Ah my mistake - I think the ideal case is going to be a combination of both but at some level using technology will become a more viable alternative, especially for those that do not have access to teachers.

In that case, you should look more closely to elite schools in the US (I have no idea how Cambridge and Oxford changed in the UK). Most of the top 15-20 schools in the United States have succeeded in continuing to graduate competent students.

All of the elite universities in the UK are under sustained attack by the government in the name of "equality". Oxford and Cambridge in particular are under intense pressure to take substandard students from failing State comprehensive schools.

The Russell Group should take the plunge and break away from government control altogether.

That is a dream I share, as a disillusioned graduate student in the US. I'm sure a lot of people, students and junior faculty especially, have the same dream.

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