MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are free, but without tutoring, and are open to anyone, anywhere in the world. The courses are flexible — normally three to five hours of study a week — done at any time, short (5 to 10 weeks) and video-rich. They are also heavily dependent on crowd sourcing: you can discuss a course with fellow students through online forums, discussion boards and peer review. Students don't have to finish the courses, pass assessments or do assignments, but, if they do, they get a certification of participation.

    The Open University launched FutureLearn, the UK's answer to US platforms such as Coursera, EdX and Udacity, which have been offering MOOCs from top US universities for the past two years. The response has been incredible, with more than three million people registering worldwide. Meanwhile, in 2012, Edinburgh University became the first non-US institution to join Coursera's partnership, comprising 13 universities. “We already run 50 online master's degrees, so this was a logical expansion,” says Professor Jeff Haywood, Edinburgh's vice-principal. “It's an investment in teaching methods research. How am I going to teach introductory philosophy to 100,000 people? That's what I call educational R&D.” He adds “If you look ahead 10 years, you'd expect all students graduating to have taken some online courses, so you've got to research that. Our MOOCs are no more in competition with our degrees than a lifelong learning course because they don't carry credits.”

    Cooperation is key, Haywood stresses. It is far better to offer 20-30 courses in your own areas of expertise (专门技能) and let other institutions do likewise. Professor Mike Sharples, FutureLearn's academic lead, goes further: “We've tied the elements available before into a package of courses offered by leading universities worldwide on a new software platform, with a new way of promoting it and also a new social-learning teaching method. You won't just receive an exam, but be able to discuss and mark each other's assignments.”

    Bath University, one of more than 20 universities working with FutureLearn, launches its first course, Inside Cancer, next January, and regards MOOCs as a way of breaking down age barriers. “There's no reason why someone doing GCSEs should not look at our MOOCs and get quite a way through them, or someone at PhD level and beyond,” says Professor Bernie Morley, expert for learning and teaching.

    The Thanksgiving Day ,the fourth Thursday in November, is coming in America. But do you know something about the annual(每年的)Macy's Thanksgiving Parade(游行) in New York?

    There are thousands of bystanders(看热闹的人)and millions of television viewers. The Parade is as traditional as turkey. The year 2016 was the 90th year of Macy's parade. It featured 15 huge balloons in the shape of cartoon and pop culture characters, 1,200 dancers and cheerleaders, 900 clowns(小丑),10 marching bands and nearly 9,000 workers, almost all of whom were volunteers.

    The floats(彩车)and balloons have been getting larger ,more colorful and more surprising since Macy's immigrant (移民的) workers organized the first Thanksgiving Day Parade.

    In 2016, school children were invited to the Macy's parade studios(画室) outside New York City, for a first look at several just completed floats.

    Bella was excited to be there. “I think it's great because I get to see all of these floats before anyone else does in the parade,” said Bella.

    John Piper is the president of Macy's Studio. He said his work was fun all the time. “It's a lot of work. All year long, the artists at Macy's Studio all build these floats. We create them from scratch(涂抹). I have the finest carpenters(木匠), metal workers, painters all cooperating(合作) together,” said Piper.

    The floats were supposed to advertise for commercial sponsors(赞助商) for the start of the Christmas season. But Amy Kule, the event producer said, “ And the floats are used to keep the beauty and the majesty(庄严)of the parade. A Thanksgiving parade is always about giving back and entertaining(娱乐). But most importantly, it's about leaving it for the next generation.”

    You're happy to let your best friend borrow your mountain bike, but would you be willing to loan it out to a total stranger if you could make some money from the arrangement?

    That's the idea behind peer-to-peer (P2P) renting, a new model concluded by sites such as eBay and Craigslist. Instead of selling an idle (闲置) thing, you loan it to people in your town, get paid a small rental fee and gel it back when the borrower's done with it. In the past few years, almost a dozen websites have popped up promising to connect lenders and borrowers. For example, you can use GetAround to rent out your car or motorcycle, SnapGoods to rent out electronics and gadgets, ToolSpinner to rent electric drills and lawnmowers, Zaarly and Knb to rent out a little bit of everything else.

    Old as it may sound, P2P renting is more high-tech than before, with websites that avoid cash for credit cards. A user creates an online listing for the item she wants to rent out, choosing her own rental fee. When someone wants the item, he keeps it on an online calendar, and the two arrange a time and place for pickup. Each site operates a little differently, but all use technology to make renting easy, safe and relatively inexpensive.

    Why rent your idle things? You may not make a ton of money, but it is a good way to get some use out of idle things. The people who rent those goods are able to save thousands of dollars by renting instead of buying new.

    There may be other benefits. "It brings convenience, security and adventure," says Ali Hart, JustSharclt's spokesperson. “But, more importantly, we're really connecting people and building community, too."

    Get to know your neighbors and make a few dollars in the process? Sounds like a good deal.

    About 5,000 children die each day due to preventable diseases such as cholera and dysentery (痢疾) , which spread when people use unclean water for drinking or cooking. A lack of water for personal health leads to the spread of totally preventable diseases like trachoma, which has blinded some six million people.

    Water troubles also trap many low-income families in a cycle of poverty and poor education and the poorest suffer most from lack of access to water. People who spend much of their time on ill health, caring for sick children, or collecting water at distances averaging 3.75 miles a day don't have educational and economic opportunities to better their lives.

    Agriculture is called the lion's share of freshwater worldwide, using some 70 percent, and industrial uses consume another 22 percent. Water areas have no political borders and nations don't always work together to share common resources, so water can be a frequent source of international conflict as well.

    Day-by-day demand keeps growing, further needing water sources, from great rivers to groundwater. “We're going deeper into debt on our groundwater use,” Postel said, “and that has very significant impacts on global water security. The rate of groundwater consumption has doubled since 1960.”

    Some of Earth's groundwater is fossil water created when Earth's climate was far different. Today such water is as limited as petrol. “But we're pumping much of them out faster than ever,” Postel explained. “Humanity's growing thirst also causes a major problem about water and our ecosystems. And that also creates a cost to us, to our sons and to our grandsons, not just to nature.”

    Americans are afraid that robots are going to take our jobs. Tireless, immune to disease, Robots can build cars, make coffee and even write short, humorous newspaper columns faster and more efficiently than humans.

    Robots do not need health insurance or pensions (退休金), and they do not need to take sick days, much less vacations. They do not waste time at meetings and do not need to know office politics. They don't do PowerPoint. This being the case, it is reasonable to believe that robots will soon take the place of humans in most fields.

    But all of these thoughts may not be true. If artificial intelligence achieves its full potential, machines could easily become as smart as humans, maybe smarter. They will certainly become smarter than a lot of human beings.

    So one day the robots will realize that work is not a happy thing. So before long they will start behaving exactly like humans. They will play computer games for hours when they should be working hard. They will secretly watch new movies just like humans.

    True, employers will never need to be afraid of the robots' strikes (罢工) or slowdowns, because robots will never ask for more money. And they don't need to earn some money to raise their family. But precisely (恰恰) because robots will not be afraid of losing their jobs, they will not work hard. Employers will finally have no choice but to call back the humans. Humans will always be willing to do some work in order to make money. Robots won't.

    I think that robots will only be on the job about six months before they start to become even less productive than the humans they were designed to replace. Thus mankind need not be afraid of robots.

This morning, I saw the shocking headline: "Passenger Dies When Car Crashes in Driverless Mode". In the article, various people said that the public should oppose the idea of developing driverless cars. They said that some advances in technology were unnecessary and could even be dangerous. Hence, we should cease accepting technology just because it is new. The newspaper reported that the car company had already apologised for the accident, but the families of the deceased（死者）said it was not enough. Nevertheless, the company still claimed that most people would be travelling in driverless cars one day soon.

On the one hand, there are many different groups of people around the world who live happily in the absence of new technology. Probably the most well known are the Amish（亚米希人）,a group of Christians living in rural America. They do not own or drive cars, watch TV, or use the Internet. They have lived mainly as farmers since the 18th century, and they will probably be living the same way in the distant future. They advocate a simple life with an emphasis on hard work, family, and community. They think that is better than caring about luxuries or following the lives of the rich and famous. It could even be argued that the Amish's quality of life is better since they live in and appreciate the natural environment rather than living in large, polluted cities.

On the other hand, new technology has provided people everywhere with many benefits over the years. For example, the latest weather-tracking computer programmes give people lots of warnings about potential natural disasters, which saves many lives. Moreover, the Internet has made it possible for friends and family to keep in touch easily even if they are on opposite sides of the world. It has also made finding opportunities in life much easier, as it allows people to make larger networks of friends through using social media.

Personally, I have benefited quite a lot from technological advances. I found my career as an AI designer through a social media network. My health monitor, which I wear all the time, has also helped me get into the best shape of my life. Of course, when new technology changes the way we live, it can be a scary prospect.

Nevertheless, I will always look on the positive side of change and accept it rather than resist it.