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Didactum.org Invites Teachers to Sample Potentially Revolutionary Technology



A startup has opened its doors to teachers, allowing them to test a novel technology dubbed "potentially revolutionary" by Oxford University's Sad Business School.Didactum.org (http://didactum.org) allows teachers to publish and profit from online classes, while educating students worldwide for free. With just a mouse-pen and webcam, a teacher can walk students through hard-to-grasp concepts online just as effectively as on paper. When students view recorded classes, the teacher earns revenue from Didactum's sponsors. Today, the startup invited teachers to join its Teach the World initiative, a program designed to test the technology and its ability to produce a "globally knowledge complete video library" by 2013. Nii Moi Addo, a Chicago-based Didactum technologist, shared his thoughts in an online interview.



UAL:What is Teach the World and how is that related to Oxford


Nii Moi: Teach the World is one of our new initiatives; it allows us to meet our primary objective by giving away hundreds of free accounts to our system. We expect abrupt and exponential class submissions, which will jumpstart learning all over the world. We share the passion for education and knowledge management with Oxford and recently submitted our thinking to their 21st Century Challenge; we are pleased to have received distinction in their social and environmental impact category.



UAL:What is your 'primary objective'


Nii Moi: Democratizing access to education; for too long, parents and politicians have talked about education with unclear results. We sat down and decided to tackle the very obvious causes - poorly paid teachers, unmotivated students, evolving lifestyles and so on. What Didactum offers is a solution to each of these problems.



UAL:How does Didactum motivate a student


Nii Moi: At the heart of the learning problem is an interested student and Didactum is especially good at defining interest. When a student is distracted in a classroom we usually fail to ask 'what distracted the student' The answer to that question is interest... and in Didactum, interest is synonymous with distraction, since both are side-effects of creativity. Teach the World is the first part of the motivation equation where in the near future, teachers will be urging students to compliment classes with their increasingly creative online publications. This is a motivator for most students, whose lifestyles are already online.



UAL:How is Didactum different from Google's Knol


Nii Moi: For one thing, we operate in the video space while Wikipedia et al. operate in a mostly text space. The video space presents a different class of problem - motion, speech and handwriting recognition become relevant within that context. However, our critical distinction arises in our commitment to democratizing access to education. This sweeps well beyond aggregated encyclopedias.



UAL:How can teachers join the initiative


Nii Moi: We are asking teachers to help us with this huge undertaking. During this testing period, we will award teachers who sign up with a 1 year teaching pass to the platform. This is similar to One Laptop per Child's give one get one campaign, except this time the phrase is more like 'Teach One Teach All'. Our goal is to create a free and globally knowledge complete video library by the end of 2012. This test phase will help us understand the nature and impact of this library.



Teachers can register a free account at http://didactum.org today. For a limited time, registered members can also receive a one year teaching pass. The teaching pass allows members on the site to begin to record classes either by creating them with Didactum's teaching tools or with a camcorder. Interested teachers can email Didactum with contact @ didactum.org.



Source: Universal Admedia Limited






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