1. Hidden Brain
As an #EdTech junkie, I’ve heard a lot about MOOCs over the last few years.
If you’ve followed anything related to online education— or Massive Open Online Courses — you know the back and forth:
Either they’re the future of education or they’re overhyped, they can reach unprecedented scale or their completion rates are abysmal, they can even the playing field or they will increase inequality as a poor substitute for college classrooms.
Most of what I’ve heard about MOOCs have been these 30,000-foot, big picture rhetoric.
Until I listened to the new episode of Hidden Brain.
With just one 20-minute episode, I learned more about one person’s experience with a MOOC than I’ve heard in three years.
The idea of MOOCs wasn’t a big part of the storyline, because this is a podcast about psychology, not technology and education. Instead it focused on what happened when one woman took a MOOC, and her life changed.
Kellie Gillespie, who is in her 40s and lives in London, took a Coursera class on compassion with Scott Plous of Wesleyan University.
It impacted her on a personal level, and Kellie told the story of how this class inspired her to help reunite a homeless man with his mother. She said she is now studying to be a psychotherapist and counselor.
After listening to this episode, it doesn’t necessarily impact any views I had on MOOCs and the future of education.
But it does reinforce my belief in the power of technology to make meaningful connections.
An idea started in Connecticut and distributed by a company in Mountain View connected and changed the lives of a woman and a homeless man in London. Maybe we take that for granted now, but that’s kind of mind-blowing if you think about it.
Then I learned the story on a podcast and wrote about it here, where you somehow discovered and are currently reading about it.
So let’s continue the cycle.
The podcast ended with a challenge.
What would you do if you had to spend one day beaming compassion into the world? It could be something small, like acknowledging a stranger. It could be something big: changing the direction of another person’s life.
Please try it, and tell us what you found.
We’ll share some of the stories you send us on the podcast. Find us on Facebook or send an email to hiddenbrain@npr.org.
Today, this inspired me to write a thank you card to someone who helped me this week. What will it do for you? Leave a response and let me know.
