Canopy: World University: The Global, Virtual/Digital, Open, Free, Degree-Granting, Multilingual University & School

Here's our new wiki introduction for World University - worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University. Feel free to add to it.

Welcome to World University

The Global, Virtual/Digital, Open, Free, Degree-Granting, Multilingual University & School

where anyone can take or post (teach) classes

We're presently in the process of both envisioning and realizing a global, degree-granting (Ph.D., M.D., I.B., & Music School, etc.), free-to-students, open, virtual university and school, with great universities (e.g. Harvard, MIT, Ivy League Schools, Stanford, U.C. Berkeley, Oxford, T.U.M., Sorbonne, L.M.U., Juilliard, Cambridge, Cal Tech, etc.) as key players, using a Wikipedia model, and for everyone and especially the developing world - that anyone can edit, primarily by adding or taking courses.

In many ways, World University is already open. You can take classes, for example, through MIT's Open Course Ware by clicking on the courses to the left, and learn, for example, what is the equivalent of a Masters in Physics or in "Society, Technology and Science" at MIT right now. MIT's Open Course Ware's listing contains around 1800 courses, with many video lectures already posted. Or you can post a very fun class about Mozart, massage, painting, calculus, sculpture or your area of specialization. Also, create a page with what you know, what courses you'd like to teach or take, and what courses you've taken. Use the links to the left to begin adding a free course, by language, country, degree, or to take a course.

For the time being, World University might offer degrees over a 10 year horizon. So, for example, World University might offer four courses, at first, in each of these countries and in many languages, to be engaged possibly on One Laptop Per Child and video-capable, programmable iPhone-like devices. And people in these countries, of course, can add their own courses to this Wiki, with knowledge they would like to share. In terms of possible degree-granting, Harvard professors, for example, might also teach 4 courses at the undergraduate level, and 1 graduate level course, in the fall of 2009, for matriculated students and with at-large participation possible, simply by having a camera in their classroom, and another instructor in a virtual world. A video-capable, iPhone-like device would allow people who are illiterate to take and post courses to this wiki. But credit and degree-granting isn't yet pragmatic. If two paths emerge in World University, - degree and open course ware, - MIT Open Course Ware is our model for degree-granting academic course work.

While all countries (around 200, perhaps starting with the countries in GlobalVoicesOnline.org), and all languages, (possibly 3000, but starting with those languages in Wikipedia) will be part of this, we'd like to focus at first on the countries that MIT's One Laptop Per Child is also engaging - Rwanda, Ethiopia, Colombia, Haiti, Mexico, Peru, USA (Birmingham, Alabama), Uruguay, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Cambodia, & Papua New Guinea - as well as your interests.

Almost every aspect of learning that takes place in a classroom or learning situation now, is possible to engage interactively in virtual worlds like Second Life today, and these virtual world technologies will develop a lot in the next few years.

World University may extend thousands of years into the future, potentially generating a remarkable archive of courses over time.

This multilingual University is open to almost all possible courses, including Ph.D.-related ones, and those in Medicine, Music (both Western and Indian classical, with possible instrumental training), Veterinary Medicine, Law, Electrical Engineering, etc., as well as 'harmonizing' and therapeutic courses in fields like yoga, Watsu, and acupuncture.

People ultimately train their own bodyminds in whatever learning context, and World University may well facilitate this in new ways. World University furthers a familiar approach to knowledge generation where learning also occurs through various forms of dialogue and conversation, such as that which occurs in seminars and through libraries, books and journals. And World University will engage the far-reaching potentials of the Information Technology revolution to make learning and teaching - knowledge exchange, very widely construed - global and innovative in an ongoing way.

Envision learning, teaching and idea-exchange anew, building on the existing 'University.' Here are some tools to do so: a wiki, video, as well as interactive virtual worlds with group type chat, voice, and real time streaming video. :) Add your own.

worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University

Enjoy!