Fact: dinosaurs are totally awesome.
These gigantic, feathered (yes! feathered) beasts actually walked our planet tens of millions of years ago. In fact, dinosaurs are still around today, but now we call them “birds.” Granted, the dinosaurs we’re familiar with aren’t exactly the same as the ones that roamed the Earth long ago, and Jurassic Park probably wouldn’t have been as good if it were about pigeons, but still! Dinosaurs actually aren’t extinct!
Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to spend some time working and learning with the amazing team of paleontologists, curriculum designers, teachers, assessment gurus, and administrators at the University of Alberta. Our goal: build the best massive online class ever and give it to the world for free. The course: DINO101.
For the next few months, I worked with the team at Alberta on some of the big picture planning and development that a course like this requires. In that time, I saw some amazing things come from our neighbors to the north. They filmed in amazing locations. They built fascinating build-your-own dinosaur games. In short, we were well on our way to making an amazing class.
When Udacity made the decision to focus on an online masters degree with Georgia Tech (and tech in general), we also decided not to host this class on our platform. And unfortunately, this means that you will not be able to take an amazing Udacity class on dinosaurs.
But don’t despair! Because you will be able to take an amazing Coursera class on dinosaurs. In fact, the University of Alberta and Coursera have recently announced that DINO101 will be launching to the world on September 4th.
I’m ecstatic to see the work done on this course wasn’t lost when we decided we weren’t going to host it on our platform. And I’m proud to know that Udacity was able to contribute to what I’m positive will be a great class. But mostly I’m just feeling a general optimism about the future of education.
I’m optimistic because this course, once released, will be the product of an immense effort from three organizations, all of which I deeply respect. And everyone involved in this project has been motivated by the exact same thing: dedication to the idea of making amazing classes and giving them to the world for free.
That’s even better than dinosaurs.
But dinosaurs are still really awesome. You should take the class… and check out all the amazing Udacity classes we do offer.
