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Udacity

Udacity was founded by three roboticists who believed that much of the educational value of their university classes could be offered online. And that is what Udacity is all about. It is about the democratization of education.

Stanford professor Sabastian Thrun put his artificial intelligence class online and received an overwhelming response from students. Over 160,000 students in more than 190 countries enrolled in their first class, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. That is what made him and Peter Norvig to carry it to the next level.

Thrun, after seeing the true power of education, gave up his tenured professor position to launch Udacity, a free online platform that will use technology to provide free and high-quality education to anyone and everyone. His mission is to educate the masses. He believes that university level education need not be expensive. It can retain its quality and yet be low-cost.

The online university that Udacity has the potential of becoming and hopes to teach about 200,000 students per class and that includes grading exams and quizzes. This is a huge gap from what a real classroom can ever accommodate. The first two classes will be starting from Feb 20^th. The classes will teach students from around the world to build a search engine or a robotic car. The service is for free. Anybody who has a computer and an Internet connection can enroll.

Thrun will co-teach the class on Building a Search Engine with David Evans, a computer science professor from the University of Virginia. The teachers are confident of teaching their students enough programming in seven weeks to be able for them to create a search engine such as Google.

The potential of this project is unlimited. It can revolutionize education through technology.