I agree that “tests do serve a purpose in some cases, so do not completely overlook their potential”. Test is used to see if students acquire the knowledge and skills. For introductory courses which try to build knowledge system for students, test is useful to promote students to memorize and master basic concepts. Then students can apply the knowledge they acquired to solve real-world problems.

Thanks for sharing Tao’s blog. It is a good example of using blogs in natural science. This kind of blogs will benefit authors and the public, but may not useful to young learners.

I also have the same concern. Connected learning is a product of the digital age. Traditional education system (school) is a component of connected learning. An important question is how to take advantage of connected learning and benefit from connected learning.

With internet, almost everyone can access information and learn anything they want equally. But how to select proper information efficiently from a huge database, especially for beginners? When you try to learn html with YouTube, you will get millions of results. Which one is better/the best? The one with most views? Maybe not. According to my experience, some students waste a lot of time to get information or get wrong information without guidance.