Thrun engaged his audience with the heartwarming story about how an initial idea of offering his renowned Stanford classes for free to students online evolved into an education project touching hundreds of thousands of students across the world.
“I hoped for 500 students. We got 160,000,” Thrun said.
Thrun’s approach is more than “just” offering quality teaching for free. What he wanted to do was, in fact, to revolutionize higher educate itself, he said.
“Maybe we should rethink education,” he concluded. “If we can make education free and accessible for the world, we can achieve things we never thought possible.”
The first step on this journey was taken already today, right here at the DLD12. To the sound of massive applause, Thrun unveiled Udacity.com.
via DLD
If you cannot watch the video here is a summary from Felix Salmon.