In my own point of view, I think they are mainly concerned with the idea of taking learners away from the traditional ways of learning through school based classes to a more new and amusing method which is through watching video. As learners can access and watch any lesson they need anytime and anywhere they want, in other words, if you did not get a certain point you can pause or rewind it and watch it one more time and if you not free today you can watch it some other time it will not go anywhere.
But I think the most distinctive and evident merit of such videos is that they can be watched from anywhere. A student in India can watch a video which a student in Egypt is watching at the very same moment,
In fact the basic benefit from these new methods of learning is briefly stated in their videos.the first video is on Tahrir Academy, it was stated that the academy is mainly an attempt to liberate learning in Egypt.
the second video is Salman Khan video on TED when he stated that he had a comment on his first video on Youtube from a parent of autism child who said that the video helped his son to learn.
these words implies certain facts which are that those videos help to improve new ways for learning which will help in building new generations and also will help learners with learning difficulties.
I believe that the academies can be of great benefit in teaching as teachers can use these videos to simplify their lessons or they can allow students to watch them more than once, beside that students can use videos to learn about what they need.
these videos can be very useful for shy learners who are afraid to ask.they also offer the opportunity to watch more than once for those who need repetition.
On the other hand comes the Moocs which are online courses, I think these are also useful as they help learners to join certain courses of their choice learn new subjects.
but when it comes to the influence on learners and professional development, i think as for learning the academies are more useful than the moocs. as they offer an ability to choose when and where to learn which makes you feel fine.
but on the contrary comes the concept of technology illiteracy which is widely clear in our societies and consequently that will affect the whole idea. Another demerit is that those videos are not going according the curriculum which will also represent a problem.
finally, we can conclude that both the academies and moocs are of great benefit but also with lacks.
Another important point is that teachers influence the characters of their learners during lecturing them which means that when the whole world uses the same source for learning that will ruin the concept of variation.
accept my sincere respect.
sultanmohamed86 