The next four years

Cover of Bloomberg Businessweek portrayed what President Obama may look like after 4 more years in the White House. The image is very shocking. As a middle-aged man It made me feel fear about aging. 

PROBLEM OF AGING

But not everybody ages the same way. If you want to see the way you are going to look like as an old man you can find plenty of software in the Internet. I googled how to age faces. One link took me to a university in the united kingdom.  I dared to experiment with  professor Anant Agarwal's photo. After processing a photo one could think it has done its job. But not. After watching the results very carefully, It may appear results are based on just photo distortion.

MOOC NEXT FOUR YEARS

In the future, 2012 will be remembered as The Year of the MOOC. This year, in a way, Edx's development could be portrayed as a fibonacci serie. First, 6.002x was born. By september, Edx started with 6.002x. By October new courses were incorporated. We can say that its evolution is almost comparable to a fibonacci series. But it is true this pattern can not continue for ever.

MOOC IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

I am fearing MOOC will have a very little impact in developing countries. First, Internet is available at the house of a tiny fraction of the population. Second, university professor prove to have very little interest on studying MOOC courses. Third, Policy university makers are very disconected with what it is happening in the academic world. Last, if MOOC enterprises start charging money and testing in places like Pearson I think enrollment numbers will drop heavily. In the electrical engineering department we have managed to motivate some students to study MOOC courses. One of the reason why We have had some success is  because they see some of us (professors) becoming students.

I have not seen students enrolling in MOOC courses in the other places where I have had the opportunity to talk about MOOC. Here in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of El Salvador, by the end of the year 2012, more than two dozens of students and professor will hold one or more EdX diploma.