MIT - The Temple of Education is going to make all course material freely on web.

[shailesh sonavadekar]

I was just going through leading indian newspaper day before yesterday. I was flabergasted , awed by that news. the news was
MIT is going to make all courseware , lecture notes , presentations etc. available freely on web .
In the era of greed , if somebody is giving away knowledge freely , that in U.S.A was not at all convincing to me. But , to great fortunes of people who are continuous learner & always after knowledge including me , there is nothing great opportunity like this. I have chehcked on the MIT's site. Here it is what in store for great knowledge seekers.
Great step in direction of next social upheaval. Great step in revolutionazing the education in the era of internet.
hats of to you , MIT - THE TEMPLE OF EDUCATION .

Shailesh.

[Tony Alicea]

The national news networks reported that on Friday or Thursday here in the USA.
"In the era of greed , if somebody is giving away knowledge freely , that in U.S.A was not at all convincing to me."
And who do you think invented and built the Internet and then gave it away? The USA is the most charitable nation in the world.
Of course we are capitalists and not communists; we know better

[Pete Pan]

It should be good for people to see what goes on there. It is an excelent school, but I would never send my kids there. I feel they need a school where they would become more well rounded (Standford is a good example). Technology is only part of the job, people skills count for a lot too.

[shailesh sonavadekar]

has my post been deleted here ? I have posted reply here . It seems it is deleted. ??? is there any reason???

[Marcus Green]

I don't think it is anything to do with charity. Just as the inventor of the WWW Tim Berners Lee (British by the way if we are into flag waving), was not thinking of "charity" but of the maximum benefit for the maximum number of people. It's about standards, if Tim had not made www an open standards we would still be arguing over protocols, lotus notes vs ms Blackbird etc etc. He knew he would continue to make a good living and was not driven by the desire to pile up the maximum amount of personal wealth. Of course the world needs wealth driven people, but it is should not be the final arbiter of value in the judgement of a life.
I'm gagging to see if there is some Java related content coming out of MIT and I will put in some heavy linking to it from my site.
Marcus

[Angela Poynton]

shailesh .. I think your post got lost when we had to revert to a backup of the forum when we had problems ... I'm sure there wasn't anything wrong with your post. It looks like any posts made on the 9th have been lost.

[Mark Herschberg]

Originally posted by Pete Pan:
It is an excelent school, but I would never send my kids there. I feel they need a school where they would become more well rounded (Standford is a good example). Technology is only part of the job, people skills count for a lot too.

I strongly disagree with your implied statement that MIT does not produce well rounded individuals. 25% of the classes taken by undergrads must be in humanities. Our school of management is one of the top in the country. Out economics program is also considered one of the best, if not the best. When I was an undergrad, our political science dept was ranked seventh in the country. Our urban studies in planning was also in the top ten. We also have a world class linguistics and philosophy department. MIT also has the largest sports program of any university, offering more varisty and JV teams than any other school in the country. Then there's clubs and social life, but that's hard to quantify.
Pete, did you go to MIT, Stanford, or both (or neither)?
--Mark
[e-mail]
PS I posted this a couple days ago, but it got lost whne the server went down, the W3C is located at MIT. I used to work down the hall from them.

[Pete Pan]

BS Rutgers (I was in the engineering school)
MS Georgia Tech
PhD Princeton
live in Boston now.
I hear the same things said about GT that you said about MIT (and I do NOT want to get in the argument about MIT vs GT, I will admit that MIT is better is almost all fields)
GT had a huge sports program. It had thousands of eningeers playing sports with mostly other engineers. They took 25% humanities, mostly with other engineers. The B school was the up and coming one when I was there, and you guess it, they specialized in "technical MBA's". How can you be well rounded it everyone you meet is into the same things that you are?
You will never meet a Dance major or a Film Major or an English Major (may be wrong about this one) at MIT. There might be a film class or two, but since no one in the class is magoring in the area, it is still treated like a 2nd level class. How many MIT people have ever said "I blew off that Calc III final because my film professor was showing the latest french flick".
At GT I think the ratio of Male to Female was 4-1 undergrad when I was there and the poor guys didn't know how to talk to a girl. I ended up working at a place that 50% of the people were from MIT (100+ engineers), and I would have to say that on average their social skills were below average. Great engineers, but no one wanted to talk to them, so a lot of their knowledge went to waste.

Originally posted by Mark Herschberg:
I strongly disagree with your implied statement that MIT does not produce well rounded individuals. 25% of the classes taken by undergrads must be in humanities. Our school of management is one of the top in the country. Out economics program is also considered one of the best, if not the best. When I was an undergrad, our political science dept was ranked seventh in the country. Our urban studies in planning was also in the top ten. We also have a world class linguistics and philosophy department. MIT also has the largest sports program of any university, offering more varisty and JV teams than any other school in the country. Then there's clubs and social life, but that's hard to quantify.
Pete, did you go to MIT, Stanford, or both (or neither)?
--Mark
[e-mail]
PS I posted this a couple days ago, but it got lost whne the server went down, the W3C is located at MIT. I used to work down the hall from them.

[Nathan Pruett]

Pete,
It is up to the person to be "well rounded"... not the school...
I also went to GT for a few semesters, and even though conditions were somewhat like you said... not everyone there was like that... I hung out with members of DramaTech and went to almost every weekly performance of the Improv group at Tech. There were weekly excursions with friends ( both people from GT and others ) to parks, clubs, malls, Little 5 Points, and other "non-technical" places... My friends and I also got together regularly to watch movies... and several of these were foreign films... ( However, all this "extracurricular activity" resulted in part with me not being able to continue going to GT... my grades suffered a bit, and my parents made me go to a smaller college near my home town... )
I understand when you say that you will never meet a Dance major, or a Film major, or an English major at these schools... that is why they are called technical schools... they teach mostly engineering... I also really doubt that you would find many mechanical engineers or programmers at art schools...
The main problem with your view is that you fail to see the individuals role in this... most people who would be interested in going to a technical school are not very outgoing... by no means is this a hard and fast rule, but generally this is true. Even if the guys that you spoke about having "below average social skills" went to another school... they would probably still "not know how to talk to a girl." Again, it's not the institution, it's the individual.
This is true about any college, institution, or university you can name... every "party school" will have some members who take their studies seriously, and every "technical school" will have some people interested in the arts or in social pursuits. This is because some "well rounded" individuals go there... Schools can push "making the student a well rounded person", but all in all this is a load of BS. ( And I'm not talking about a Bachelors of Science! ) You can't really "teach" someone to be interested in something they are not... you can just force them to take classes that they are not interested in. I think it would be better if schools offered more classes on an elective basis rather than being required... of course, several "intro" level classes would be required to introduce the student to topics they had not yet been exposed to, without forcing a student to take loads of classes that they will never use in their actual job. However, this technique nor the process currently used in colleges, will ever "make" anyone be a well rounded person... that is up to the student.
-Nate

[Mark Herschberg]

Originally posted by Pete Pan:
BS Rutgers (I was in the engineering school)
MS Georgia Tech
PhD Princeton
live in Boston now.

Ah, well, I see the first hand experience with MIT, and understand how someone so familiar with it can judge it so easily.

You will never meet a Dance major or a Film Major or an English Major (may be wrong about this one) at MIT. There might be a film class or two, but since no one in the class is magoring in the area, it is still treated like a 2nd level class. How many MIT people have ever said "I blew off that Calc III final because my film professor was showing the latest french flick".

Oh, you picked the wrong topics here. We don't have any dance majors, although I do know the one person to minor in dance at MIT (the program was only run briefly). I should mention that the MIT Ballroom Dance Team is actually the top in the US, holding more national titles than any other school, studio, or organization; we're also 3rd biggest in the country, with close to 100 members. In fact, the US Ballroom Champions (Standard) are MIT alumni. (I'm still on the team, hence my detailed knowledge).
The Media Lab does have a film program. I know two people in my fraternity who were film majors, and a couple of film minors. One ended up working for VH1. (Oh, and on the topic, we also have quite a few architects, although I don't know how strong the department is.)
I do know one English major, although I admit it's not common.
I don't know anyone who's blown off a final, but probably because we take studying seriously, for any and all majors.

At GT I think the o of Male to Female was 4-1 undergrad when I was there and the poor guys didn't know how to talk to a girl. I ended up working at a place that 50% of the people were from MIT (100+ engineers), and I would have to say that on average their social skills were below average.

Yeah, MIT is a little unusual in that our undergraduate ratio is 50%-50% (+/- 2%). One of the things I learned at MIT is not to jump to conclusions. You know about 50 people from MIT who are dorks, so you conclude MIT must be the cause. I would have to wonder if maybe it's your company that attracts the dorks, and simply that people with social skills, from any school, don't take jobs there. You didn't seem to account for these other factors. (I'm not really saying I think you, or your company, necessarily does this, I'm just trying to make a point.)
--Mark
[e-mail]
[This message has been edited by Mark Herschberg (edited April 11, 2001).]

[Pete Pan]

lets see, 6 years of grad school with MIT students (2 different schools). Working for 12+ years with 100+ MIT grads (2 different companies). Living in Boston.
Yes, I think that is that is 1st hand experience with MIT people, not the school, but the people and that is what I am talking about.
So a minor in film with other engineers minoring in film.
How many of the students met that one english major?
You make a good point. Everything that you mentioned about MIT seems to have a number associated with it. Everything I hear about MIT has a number associated with it.
What perscentage of the students were Engineering/Business/Science? Not a well rounded group?
Film study at MIT? Here are the two lowest level "film" classes from the "program of media arts" (maybe I looked in the wrong area)
Fundamentals of Computational Media Design
Introduction to Doing Research in MAS
I have nothing against the school personally. I never mentioned that people were dorks. I just mentioned that very few of the hundreds of graduates that I have met are well rounded. I just want my children to expereience more than just technology.

Originally posted by Mark Herschberg:
Yeah, MIT is a little unusual in that our undergraduate ratio is 50%-50% (+/- 2%). One of the things I learned at MIT is not to jump to conclusions. You know about 50 people from MIT who are dorks, so you conclude MIT must be the cause. I would have to wonder if maybe it's your company that attracts the dorks, and simply that people with social skills, from any school, don't take jobs there. You didn't seem to account for these other factors. (I'm not really saying I think you, or your company, necessarily does this, I'm just trying to make a point.)
--Mark
[e-mail]
[This message has been edited by Mark Herschberg (edited April 11, 2001).]

[Jim Baiter]

But you still can only get a *real* education out here at Berkeley .

[shailesh sonavadekar]

Mark , Great Alumunus of MIT , Dr. Pete , Alumunus of Georgia tech , Ph. D , Princeton , both great universities. Every university has pros & cons. My intention of starting this thread was not to create fight between various universities. This is not the forum to make personal battle ground. So , we should channelized our energy not for fighting.
Nathan , Jim , nice to hear from you guys also. So , people from Berkley are also there. Great. Lets not dampen the great spirit of javaranch. All you are great contributors. you come from great universities.
SOrry for starting the trouble.
Your Friendly Bartender
Shailesh