"Future of Education" may have ancient roots?
Michael Williams
"Saving the World by Lunchtime" is taking me longer than I anticipated.
Something is building in educational technology that will unleash creative learning and innovations in our society, that our current education system has failed to capitalize on.
In 1965 a college student could expect to pay $243/yr tuition at State Colleges, educational rigor, cultural blending, religious tolerance, active scientific/academic discussions, Professors getting professional wages/health insurance/Tenure, freedom of speech, a safe campus, relativity little political indoctrination, and courses that provided middle-class skills & jobs. After 4 years of college, graduates could get married, start a family & purchase a home within 5 years.
?Today a college student could expect to pay ~$12,000/yr tuition at State Colleges, a passing grade with little effort, cultural separation, religious intolerance, divisive discussions, Professors getting Starbuck type wages/no health insurance/non-Tenure, Censored speech, safe spaces, absence of academic freedom, political indoctrination by Professors failing students with opposing ideologies, courses that don’t prepare students for middle-class skills & jobs. After 5-6 years of college, graduates should not expect to be in a position to get married, start a family & purchase a home within 15 years.
?Let’s move from a lecture-style Prussian educational model to a Mediterranean [Greek & Florence] Medici-style artist, science and maker residencies, Socratic discussion in law, philosophies & humanities. And not separate college-bound from Trade students.
?The innovative education mission should be an “exciting & adventurous” student experience, accelerated & 4-year programs leading to bachelor & masters, coursework & apprentice opportunities that align with the job market and student interest, with no tuition.
?Suggested opportunities:
?European’s fund colleges @ $6,500/student-yr & $1,500 tuition. USA funds at $16,500/student-yr & ~$12,000 Tuition/yr.
Currently States fund ~$9,000/student-yr & Fed fund ~$7,500/student to State colleges. The forward-thinking Governors and state legislators could start these programs with the help of philanthropy,?small businesses, corporations & manufacturing stakeholders without getting the Fed involved.?
Once forward-thinking leadership develops the student support network, academic coaches/mentors/ Professors & proves the Mediterranean learning model, which will calm the fearful & cautious "Learning by Doing" has a chance of taking root.
The federal support of $7,500/student-yr over 4 years = $30,000{spread over k12} could be used for warp around educational ecology to support existing public, homeschooling pods & private schools.?
?For the record, the suggestions in this letter are not “theoretical” or “creative ideas”. I have been developing the Mediterranean model, MOOC[course catalog ], mentoring & smart city projects since 2010. I do not need Political party involvement, but see the advantages for political leaders to reshape education and champion Educational innovations for the World.
Having nudged Harvard/MIT's MOOC "edX.org & Coursera platforms" by suggesting low-cost Bachelor's programs to over 200 million students.?
edX founder absolutely agreed with me on the future of education and added https://www.edx.org/bachelors 6 months later.
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Founder’s Backstory: Since 2010, as a homeless Educator living on $250/month, providing free education to around 36,000 students around the World.? OC Register Aug 2013 {see below}
Homeless by choice; educator to the world
LONG BEACH – Michael Williams peers out of the dense foliage that envelops one side of a busy, four-lane roadway.
The roar of passing cars is unrelenting, but Williams insists there’s a certain tranquility to this spot – a canopy of trees above, a soft bed of brown leaves below. It’s his home.
“I can look out, but if you look in, you can’t see anything,” says William, 55. “It’s fun, adventurous; a challenge.”
When Williams wakes up each morning he rolls up his sleeping bag and foam mat, moves them to a hidden spot, and walks or bikes to a Starbucks at the Long Beach Towne Center.
He orders a $1.95venticup of blond roast, sits down at his favorite table, and pulls out his laptop.
For the next 12-plus hours, until the coffee shop closes at midnight, Williams conducts his day’s work – not as a Starbucks barista, but as the founder and sole employee of an online learning platform called World Mentoring Academy.
Using Starbucks’ free WiFi connection, Williams culls hundreds of free online courses from brick-and-mortar colleges around the world and integrates them into a single interface.
The project has consumed his life since he began his “urban camping” experiment three years ago. He typically works seven days a week.
“I’m working on tools for the world to save itself,” Williams says over a cacophony of grinding blenders and whirring frothers.
“I know, it sounds like a mad scientist – he’s lost his marbles. But it became so overwhelming, this idea of education.”
Williams’ site, which is live at WorldMentoringAcademy.com , is one of the dozens of recent start-ups that allow the public to enroll for free in online college courses, commonly known as massive open online courses, or MOOCs.
Unlike industry pioneers like Coursera and Udacity that are backed by millions of venture-capital dollars, Williams is doing everything on his own.
He scours the Internet for free courses from prestigious schools like Stanford and UCLA, and from education nonprofits like the Khan Academy, and manually programs each course into his site.
His course list now tops 700. And with no marketing effort to date, about 900 users have registered for his site.
He’s not getting paid, he insists, nor does he aspire to make money off someone else’s source material.
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“I want to provide free education to the world,” Williams says, his hazel-brown eyes peeking out from behind black-rimmed reading glasses.
“I’m showing you can do that with literally no overhead.”
Hunched over a laptop, with a basic T-Mobile phone by his side, the gregarious Williams does not look homeless, or out of place at Starbucks.
His fingernails are trimmed, his salt-and-pepper stubble is cropped short, and his perfectly straight teeth have been recently whitened (with a home whitening kit, he explains, at his sister’s insistence). He wears a clean blue T-shirt, black shorts, and black flip-flops.
Most of his possessions are in storage in the Inland Empire. He carries only a medium-sized black backpack with three zippered compartments and a colorful 99￠ Only Store tote – holding his clothing, toiletries, and personal effects.
In a former life, the Cal State Long Beach graduate ran his own party-rental business out of his Bellflower home with his wife and son.
Williams’ son, Brendon, 26, lives in Brea and works in the tech industry. Williams and his wife divorced two decades ago. He lost his home to foreclosure during the 2007 housing crash.
Williams still owns much of his party-rental equipment but says he no longer feels passionate about his business, which includes dressing as a clown for children’s birthday parties.
“If I manage to save the world by lunchtime, maybe I’ll go back to it,” Williams said, only half-joking.
He lugs his equipment out of storage a few times a year to host parties for longtime customers. He says the typical $800 paycheck for hosting such an event can last three or four months.
His one steady source of income is $200 a month in food stamps. He has no qualms about accepting government assistance.
“I see the waste in government. I figure if I can take $200 from the government and provide free education to kids, then that $200 is the best money spent by the government.”
To build his online learning platform, Williams has all the resources he needs at his fingertips.
On a recent day, he had almost a dozen Internet browser tabs open – two email inboxes, a video lecture about open-source learning, a program to monitor his Web traffic, a live-streaming feed of National Public Radio, a Web version of Adobe Premiere editing software, and various searches for the most popular online courses taken for credit.
His education academy emphasizes courses that can be taken for college credit upon passing a standardized test. The most common of these tests, the College Level Examination Program, is administered by the company that creates the SAT. It offers 33 subject tests recognized to varying degrees by some 2,900 U.S. universities, including Chapman and Cal State Fullerton.
“I’ve checked out the site,” a young Starbucks barista tells Williams. “I think it’s quasi-revolutionary.”
During a recent walk from his camping spot to Starbucks, Williams slips on a parking lot curb and pops the toe band from one of his flip-flops.“They’re a dollar,” Williams says, shrugging.
An evangelical Christian, Williams has long been fascinated by the simplicity with which Jesus and his disciples lived. Like himself, they had no permanent home, he points out.
After the foreclosure of his home, Williams drifted for a few years – living with roommates in Lake Elsinore and spending 20 days in jail for driving without a license.
Three years ago, he found solace in urban camping. He spent his first 18 months in Temecula and Murrieta, then moved to Orange County seeking cooler weather. For about six months, he lived in various spots along Ball Road and Lincoln Avenue in Anaheim.
For the past year, he’s been living in northeastern Long Beach, splitting his time between spots near the Long Beach Towne Center and Lakewood Center.
He has one requirement for his camp spots: They must be within walking distance of a country music nightclub – his passion. He goes dancing at Long Beach’s Cowboy Country every Friday and Saturday night.
Williams says he’s close to both his son and a sister in Corona but insists he won’t stay with any family member or friend for more than two weeks out of the year.
“The main reason I would consider living out of the rain is for a girl I’m interested in,” he said. Their situation, he added, is complicated by his homelessness.
In an ideal world, Williams says he’d like World Mentoring Academy to take off like Wikipedia did – a free resource for all, where experts voluntarily contribute their knowledge and no one makes money off the enterprise.
He acknowledges it’s a difficult goal for a homeless man with no educator credentials and no capital. But he’s unfazed. College costs are spiraling out of control, he says, and no one has found a solution.
“Everyone is a zombie walking around – student debt at a trillion dollars, and it’s going to be worse down the line, and no one has fixed it,” Williams said. “Most people can’t visualize it. Destiny has a bigger plan for me.”
Story Photos:
Michael Williams, reflected on his laptop screen, has a conversation at a Long Beach Starbucks. He works 12-plus-hour days in the coffee shop developing an online education platform that offers hundreds of free, open-source university courses. He does this while living as a homeless man.
Michael Williams calls his homeless existence "urban camping." After spending as many as 14 hours a day on his laptop helping people achieve a free education, he returns to this inconspicuous, dirt-covered spot behind some trees and bushes to sleep every night. Of his life, he says, "It's fun, adventurous, a challenge."
Being homeless has its downside, Michael Williams acknowledges as he displays a backpack that has been chewed on by an animal, possibly a raccoon. He has to hide his personal belongings, and some of them have been stolen anyway, possibly by other homeless people.
By SCOTT MARTINDALE | Orange County Register August 22, 2013, at 10:10 p.m.