Our Motto: "TOGETHER WE KNOW EVERYTHING"

Introductory Citations

I am against education that is only available to the top 1% of all students. I am against tens of thousands of dollars of tuition expenses. I am against the imbalance that the present system brings to the world. I want to empower the 99%. I want to democratize education. Education should be free. Accessible for all, everywhere, and any time. Help me spread the word. I can't do this alone.

- Sebastian Thrun [1]

"At the close of the first decade of the 21st century, some of the most creative, innovative, and dynamic knowledge around the globe is being produced and disseminated outside mainstream universities. Academic researchers and research council bureaucrats need to take heed. Now that “knowledge production”, “knowledge transfer”, and “knowledge dissemination” have become core commodities of the increasingly competitive global knowledge market economy, how will universities and their research centers keep up?"

- Jennifer Gidley [2]

and a warning from Robert Cringely:

we've reached the point in our (disparate) cultural adaptation to computing and communication technology that the younger technical generations are so empowered they are impatient and ready to jettison institutions most of the rest of us tend to think of as essential, central, even immortal. They are ready to dump our schools. [3]

Openness in Education

The three key aspects of Open Education are: 1) Open Content; 2) Open Instruction; 3) Open Assessment

EDUCAUSE defines the range of openness to include:

• Open standards and interoperability
• Open and community source software development
• Open access to research data
• Open scholarly communications
• Open access to, and open derivative use of, content

If education is to be transformed, these seven aspects need to be tackled concurrently [4]:

The Seven C’s of Education.

• Curricula: How the content is chosen, validated, organized, and presented.

• Content: The material supporting any learning objective. Ironically, content used to be considered the most important part of an educational model – thus the proliferation of tests. But in the age of Internet, content has gone to being the least important.

• Coaching: The individual attention helping each student overcome their individual weaknesses, answer specific questions, and leverage their individual strengths, as well as provide motivation.

• Customization: The ability to identify and meet individual needs.

• Community: A group of peers that both make learning more effective and engaging.

• Credit: Proof and documentation that a level of competency has been reached (which also provides motivation).

• day Care: The ability to house students for a specific time.

Introduction

This section is about learning, knowledge exchange and management, education, epistemology (ways of knowing) and related developments.

The P2P Foundation supports the Cape Town Declaration on Open Education.

Please read, to understand what we oppose: Zak Stein on the Education Commodity Proposition

How Peer to Peer Dynamics change the world of learning

PART ONE: ANALYSIS
Learners can route around educational institutions	This is the very first and important consequences, i.e. people are increasingly learning from each other, and are no longer limited by formal offers. Hence, universities are losing their monopoly of higher learning, as learners can look at each other, but also to both private and non-profit initiatives.
The impact of open accreditation	Learning is one thing, recognition another. In a social world, where community specific experiences and recognition cannot necessarily be easily translated, learners will increasingly look to new forms of accredition, inclusive peer accreditation. Hence, universities will not only lose their monopoly of higher learning, but also their monopoly of accredition.
The crisis of value	The market is a mechanism for the allocation of resources towards rival goods, where there is a tension between supply and demand. Yet, as learning is democratized, it paradoxically leads to a, in market terms, an oversupply of learned people, hence to its inevitable evaluation. In addition, the increasing ease to create use value through networks and online platforms, coupled with difficulties in monetization, creates a dysfunctional equilibrium between social innovation by increasingly autonomous civil society, and the market which benefits from it. This means that universities are co-producing the precarious workforce.
The dark side of learner autonomy	Paradoxically, the emancipator of peer learning networks, in its initial stages, penalizes even more those that have difficulties connecting, or who lack the cognitive skills for online participation. Hence the necessity to consider universal broadband as a human right, but also the necessatity for insuring broad network literacies in all layers of the population.
The dark side of neoliberalism	Since the 80’s, the ‘efficiency’ paradigm, the privatization of research results, and the stress on preparing students for ‘useful’ jobs that fit within the existing economic system, have led to a weakening of deep and humanistic education, as well as increasing inequality of access. The neoliberal meltdown of 2008 has exacerbated the crisis of higher education, which is becoming more costly and multi-tiered, thereby hierarchising or excluding the broader mass of students. This risks creating a tiered system, in which the privileged can enjoy face to face education in prestigious institutions, while others are forced to rely on online and more routine learning equivalents.

PART TWO: SOLUTIONS
The new transforms but does not always need to replace the old	It is of course very true that digitalization creates many new possibilities to ‘liberate’ education from limitations of time and space, and can increase access to learning. It is also true that online education has it own form of sociality. However, high tech requires high touch. A virtualization of education REQUIRES the continued existence of physical locations for intense face to face and human contact. One should especially be weary of a digital discourse that really is an argument for a total functionalization and commercialization of education.
We need educational commons	There should not be universal standardization of courses, but rather subject domains will and should become knowledge commons, offering a wide variety of material for teachers and students to use. Virtualization cannot be an excuse for uniformisation and commodification of education.
Education becomes constructive	The greatest advance offered by the new technological affordances is not distance learning or the translation of the industrial model of teaching in the virtual sphere, but rather that it offers new possibilities for the co-creation of value. It offers the opportunity to create an education which is directly productive in social value, rather than as an activity divorced and separate from real life. Students can become peer producers of social innovation, interlinked with passionate and professional communities, working on common projects for the advancement of humankind.
Education becomes combinatory	The emergence of peer to peer learning does not mean that it replaces all other forms of learning, but rather that it creates more pluralistic possibilities. Learning alone, learning from experts and learning from and through each other become different modalities to be combined.
Education is open = the future of education is open	P2P learning does not mean the future of education is written and that we can predict what it will become, or that ‘universities will disappear’. Rather it means that we have more possibilities to co-create that future of education.

This most remarkable video says it all!!

• George Siemens: Openness in Education should have firm principles!

1. Miles Berry: What Would an Open Source Education Look Like?
2. For a good introduction see John Heron on facilitation and the revolution in learning
3. We need Open Access to the means of instruction. David Wiley.
4. Terry Anderson on the Three Levels of Aggregation of Learners; See the full essay on Networked modes of learning
5. Tera Vaden et al. on the Three Metaphors of Learning; See the book: Wikiworld
6. The Learn Nodes concept of Judy Breck may well represent the future of informal learning
7. Three Generations of Education. Derek W. Keats and J. Philipp Schmidt [5]

Also:

1. Read also this essay on the Teaching to Learning Paradigm Shift by Robert B. Barr and John Tagg.
2. Here's an extraordinary mind-blowing scenario map, with linked resources on the Forces Affecting the Furure of Education
3. Check out the pioneering work of Alfie Kohn on democratic learning communities.

Key Topics: Open Accreditation ; Open Education, Open Education Commons ; Open Educational Resources, Open Courseware Initiatives, Open Textbooks

Follow the most recent trends through this Delicious P2P Learning tag.

Key P2P Learning Theories

• What Skills Do We Need Today?

1. George Siemens, and his Connectivist learning theory, is one of the scholars most intensely constructing what I would call a 'peer to peer learning theory'.
2. David Cormier on Rhizomatic Education
3. Terry Anderson (and Jon Dron): Three Social Sources of Learning: maps out three different types of “many” in social learning environments[6]
4. Josef Jacotot's Pedagogy of Equality: Nina Powers presents ‘On Ignorant Schoolmasters’, Jacques Rancière, published as Chapter 1 of Jacques Rancière, Education, Truth, Emancipation, by Charles Bingham and Gert Biesta (London, Continuum: 2010), pp. 1-24.

Key P2P Educational Initiatives

Commons-oriented:

• School of Commoning
• University of the Commons‎‎
• School of the Commons - Catalonia

P2P-oriented:

• Peer 2 Peer University

"Free"-oriented:

• San Francisco Free University‎
• San Francisco Free School‎

Five examples of extension-style schooling:

1. Unclasses
2. University of the People
3. Skillsharing
4. Supercool School
5. School of Everything

See here for more Informal Learning Projects

Alternative Credentialing Providers

1. Mozilla’s Open Badges
2. MOOC Certificates
3. Degreed
4. Skills Tags
5. Learning Jar
6. Smarterer

Open Education Business Models

• Economic Models Around Free Educational Materials‎ [7]
• Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources. Stephen Downes [8]

Some Quotations

Full list at Quotes on the Role of Openness, P2P and Commons in Education and Learning

Short Citations

"digital technologies are now providing educators and students with tools of study, as opposed to tools of instruction" [9]

"when everyone has free and open access to the means of instruction, we can expect to see large scale experimentation and innovation." - David Wiley [10]

"Data, and the tools to access and analyze large data sets across professions/industries is already having a huge impact and changing the way decisions are made and industries are developing. I see this increasing tenfold over the next few years particularly as deep learning and advancements in AI continue to progress." - Michelle Robbins [11]

Long Citations

"...work in piecemeal ways to decentralize the process of learning and enrich it through contact with many places and people all over the city: workshops, teachers at home or walking through the city, professionals willing to take on the young as helpers, older children teaching younger children, museums, youth groups travelling, scholarly seminars, industrial workshops, old people, and so on. Conceive of all these situations as forming the backbone of the learning process; survey all these situations, describe them, and publish them as the city's "curriculum"; then let students, children, their families and neighborhoods weave together for themselves the situations that comprise their "school" paying as they go with standard vouchers, raised by community tax. Build new educational facilities in a way which extends and enriches this network."

- Christopher Alexander [12]

Zak Stein on Education in a Time Between Worlds

"Thus far education itself has not been a focus of metahistorical analysis, although the role of education has not been neglected entirely either.[17] I believe that educational systems and practices can be reformed in light of patterns revealed through metahistorical analysis. These insights into how education makes history must be held alongside and interwoven with insights from psychology, anthropology, and all the other various fields comprising the interdisciplinary field of education. There have been historical moments in which education and educational thinking have fundamentally implicated world historical transformations. Education becomes a radically transformative enterprise during times spent “between worlds,” when cultural and social patterns are fundamentally changing."

- Zak Stein [13]

Value lies in what cannot scale

"Content is no longer a value point. Teaching and accreditation still are, but to a lessor degree than only a decade ago. Individual assessment, teaching, one-on-one consultation and mentorship – those factors that can’t be scaled – serve as the foundation and premise of tomorrow’s education model. Learning analytics serve to give educators information on what’s working and what’s not working. For this reason, analytics tools must be open, embodying the principles of open source movements or the hacker way: iterative, hands on, democratic, open, and transformative." [14]

The “Emergent, Cyclical, Double-Helix Model of Adult BioPsychoSocial Systems Development”.

“I am not saying in this conception of adult behaviour that one style of being, one form of human existence is inevitably and in all circumstances superior to or better than another form of human existence, another style of being.

What I am saying is that when one form of being is more congruent with the realities of existence, then it is the better form of living, for those realities. And what I am saying is that when one form of existence ceases to be functional for the realities of existence then some other form, either higher or lower in the hierarchy, is the better style of living.

I do suggest, however, and this I deeply believe is so, that for the overall welfare of total man’s existence in the world, over the long run of time, higher levels are better than lower levels, and that the prime good of any society’s governing figures should be to promote human movement up the levels of human existence.”

- Dr Clare W Graves [15]

Education is a reciprocal process

"There is nothing inherently wrong with paying someone for a service they provide to you. Indeed, one of the absurdities of the present educational set up is precisely that students have so little say in the educational services they pay for. There was a time when some universities were operated as student-run educational co-operatives in which students subjected the professors that they were going to hire to scrupulous cross examination before approving their positions as educational service providers to the student body. This was the case at the University of Bologna until quite recently.

So, one angle of approach is for students to have far more control over the selection of faculty, over the design and evaluation of courses, and of the running of the university itself – in partnership with the teachers themselves and other community stakeholders.

Education is a classic relational good, that is, a good that is co-produced by the provider and the recipient of the service together. Education doesn't happen unless both parties are fully engaged in the exchange of knowledge relations, and it is optimally produced when the educational relationship is one of reciprocity and equality. This is the reason why authentic education is not a commodity – it is an exchange of human relations and revolves around the question of the nature of knowledge production.

The creation of equality, of reciprocal educational relationships, and the provision of control rights to students is the heart of how educational institutions need to be reformed. Unless this happens, everything else is a sideshow and a distraction."

- John Restakis (email, December 2013)

The Erosion of the Educational Commons

"The erosion of the education commons is creating a frightening political erosion. Since the ancient Greeks, education has been an integral part of leisure (schole); it is a public good, and its primary objective historically has been the forging of character and the ability to be a good citizen. Again, Jefferson captured that best, along with John Stuart Mill and Cardinal Newman. But that perspective is anathema for neo-liberals, for whom schooling is for preparing people for the job market, for developing ‘human capital’. In their framework, all education that does not increase employability, competitiveness and economic advantage is dispensable. Consequently, there has been an erosion of the arts, civics, philosophy, ethics and history. Music teaching in state schools is disappearing. The education commons as the teaching and preservation of vernacular and non-standard thinking has shrunk. This has weakened the ability of citizens to participate in and comprehend political discourse, leading to seduction by simplistic platitudes and appeals to emotion, rather than reason and evidence.. Commentators have paid insufficient attention to loss of the education commons as a cause of the growth of populism and thinly-veiled neo-fascism stalking modern politics, epitomised by Donald Trump and Boris Johnson."

- Guy Standing [16]

Cornell West on the difference between schooling and education

"In our culture’s conception, the crimes of the West have become so central that it’s hard to keep track of the best of the West. We must be vigilant and draw the distinction between Western civilization and philosophy on the one hand, and Western crimes on the other. The crimes spring from certain philosophies and certain aspects of the civilization, not all of them.

The Western canon is, more than anything, a conversation among great thinkers over generations that grows richer the more we add our own voices and the excellence of voices from Africa, Asia, Latin America and everywhere else in the world. We should never cancel voices in this conversation, whether that voice is Homer or students at Howard University. For this is no ordinary discussion.

The Western canon is an extended dialogue among the crème de la crème of our civilization about the most fundamental questions. It is about asking “What kind of creatures are we?” no matter what context we find ourselves in. It is about living more intensely, more critically, more compassionately. It is about learning to attend to the things that matter and turning our attention away from what is superficial.

Howard University is not removing its classics department in isolation. This is the result of a massive failure across the nation in “schooling,” which is now nothing more than the acquisition of skills, the acquisition of labels and the acquisition of jargon. Schooling is not education. Education draws out the uniqueness of people to be all that they can be in the light of their irreducible singularity. It is the maturation and cultivation of spiritually intact and morally equipped human beings.

The removal of the classics is a sign that we, as a culture, have embraced from the youngest age utilitarian schooling at the expense of soul-forming education. To end this spiritual catastrophe, we must restore true education, mobilizing all of the intellectual and moral resources we can to create human beings of courage, vision and civic virtue."

- Cornell West [17]

More Citations about Peer to Peer Learning

Read here about:

1. Why schools need to open up to peer-based learning models
2. About the Learning 2.0 approach
3. How Education is diverging from schooling
4. What is the power of peer teaching
5. Who are the new knowledge leaders
6. How we are evolving from learning "just in case" to "learning on demand"
7. Teachers are world-changers

Key Resources

Key Articles

As a starter:

* Education Must Make History Again. By Zachary Stein. Perspectiva. January 2022. [18]

“Times between worlds—liminal epochs—always involve profound educational crises, which can rapidly cascade into total civilizational breakdowns. The ideal response has been to ‘reboot’ the social structure using an updated educational operating system. The best example from recent history — the last time this happened at scale — is the story I tell in this essay.”

1. Education and the Concept of Commons. By Morten Timmermann Korsgaard. [19]
2. Stephen Downes: An introduction to connective knowledge; The Threefold Opening of Education
3. Stephen Downes.Free Learning. Essays on Open Educational Resources and Copyright. [20]. Collection of materials on the p2p values embedded in open education. Also contains important republished mini-essays such as: Copyright, Ethics and Theft‎
4. Key essay by Yochai Benkler: Common Wisdom: Peer Production of Educational Materials [21]
5. Ilkka Tuomi: Learning in the Age of Networked Intelligence
6. George Siemens: Learning and Knowing in Networks: Changing roles for Educators and Designers; towards Networked-Directed Learning
7. From Expert led to peer driven social learning : 6 p2p learning trends summarized by Nancy White and Josien Kapma
8. Henry Jenkins: Learning by Remixing
9. JOHN WILLINSKY. The Educational Implications of Networks
10. Dave Cormier: The Community as Curriculum
11. David Wiley and Erin K. Edwards. Online self-organizing social systems: The Decentralized Future of Online Learning. [22]
12. Mooc's as the Lego Bricks of Education. Margauz Pelen.

Food for Thought

A bit of history to start:

• Peer to Peer Origins of the European University: Interesting historical recall of the origins of the European university system, in 12th cy. Bologna, when the students were in charge.

Kai Hammermeister:

1. The Structure and Silence of the Cognitariat, Christopher Newfield (3 types of knowledge workers, 3 types of sharply unequal education)
2. Miles Berry: What Does an Open Source Approach to Education Look Like
3. George Siemens: The New Forms of Connectivist Education
4. Is Compulsory Education needed in a Gift Economy
5. Towards a Place for Study in a World of Instruction
6. In Transcending the Individual Human Mind through Collaborative Design, Ernesto Arias et al. explain why peer to peer learning design is essential in complex societies.
7. 10 Reasons why schools should use free software
8. Assessment 2.0: modernizing assessment
9. Commons-based Peer Production and Education. J. Philipp Schmidt (P2PU.org). Short essay for the Free Culture Research Workshop. Harvard University, 23 October 2009, which touches on the issue of Reputation and Open Accreditation [23]

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How-to

1. Overview of recent technological developments (Web 2.0) and how these participatory technologies could be used for teaching and learning, by Bryan Alexander, EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 41, no. 2 (March/April 2006): 32–44 [24].
2. 'Coming of Age' [25] is an introduction to teachers on how they can use the 'new World Wide Web'.
3. Article by Ulises Mejias A Nomad's Guide to Learning and Social Software
4. Teaching and Learning with the Net Generation
5. Using Wiki's in Education
6. CC Learn, using Creative Commons licensing for education
7. Finding Open Educational Resources. By Esther Wojcicki.
8. Guide for Participating in the International Open Education Commons. The UNESCO OER Toolkit is an initiative of the Information Society Division of UNESCO’s Communication and Information Sector. The drafting of this toolkit was facilitated by Philipp Schmidt of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa.
9. Howard Rheingold's Experiments with Peeragogical Learning

Reports:

1. Report of the discussion on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) for Open Educational Resources, compiled by International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP)
2. FOSS in School Education
3. FOSS: Education Primer, written by Tan Wooi Tong
4. The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age. By Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg. John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Reports on Digital Media and Learning. This report is available in a free digital edition on the MIT Press website at http://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262513593.

Status Reports:

1. The State of the OpenCourse ware movement, 2010: NYT review

Policy

1. Mark Taylor: End the University as We Know It: 6-point program to reform higher education critique

Digital Media Literacy

1. The New Media Literacies project has a list of the new skills that children need to know to cope with the participatory media, at http://www.projectnml.org/node/308. Here's a summary of those New Media Literacy Skills.
2. David Warlick maintains the very similar Redefining Literacies for the 21st Century pages.
3. Participatory Media Literacy: wiki-based curriculum combines texts that address the social, political, economic, cultural aspects of participatory media with practical instructions in the use of each medium.

More Articles

1. Thesis available online: Migrating to Open Source Learning Management Systems

[26]

1. Henry Jenkins has a report on how education should be adapted to the requirements of a participatory culture and digital media, see Media Education in the 21st Century
2. Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0 is a three-part overview of educational tools. It discusses amongst other topics, Online Gradebooks, Study Organizers. Part 3 covers Educational Blogging and Educational Podcasting.
3. Recommendations as to the use of Creative Commons in schools by students, at http://innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=251. By Howard Pitler.
4. Open Source Software for Education: introduction by Shaheen E. Lakhan and Kavita Jhunjhunwala.
5. Home Schooling Goes Mainstream: status in 2008 [27]
6. Amazing stories of openness in education: cases, testimonials

Key Blogs

Blogs that monitor P2P-like developments in the world of learning and education are:

1. The Connectivism blog [28], a new educational theory for the peer to peer age
2. Ewan McIntosh understands the learning needs of the digital natives
3. Open Content and Education blog [29], freeing educational content
4. Flosse Posse [30] monitors the use of free and open software in the educational field
5. OL Daily by Stephen Downes [31], monitors how online can help in the creation of a more open and participatory learning environment.
6. eLearn Space blog [32], for discussion of eLearning developments
7. [33] monitors learning theories and epistemology from a deeper historial and philosophical background, as it related to e-learning, warning for digital myth-making.
8. Global Mentoring blog [34], bringing peers together for learning
9. Will Richardson's Learning with the Read-Write Web
10. The New Media Literacies blog, helping teachers to help children getting familiar with new media
11. Open Courseware blog
12. Open Education News
13. Chris Lott's Ruminate

Stephen Downes recommends the following blogs as 'best of breed'. And here are 25 edublogs you don't want to miss

For directories of educational blogs, see

1. Schoolblogs
2. Edublogs
3. Top 100 Education blogs
4. The Edublog Awards of 2007
5. The top 50 educational blogs by engagement, i.e. number of comments, links, etc...
6. Links to School Bloggers: very extensive
7. 100 recommended education blogs

Key Books

• Education in a Time Between Worlds: Essays on the Future of Schools, Technology, and Society. By Zak Stein. [35]: "seeks to reframe this historical moment as an opportunity to create a global society of educational abundance. Educational systems must be transformed beyond recognition if humanity is to survive the planetary crises currently underway."

• Education in the Creative Economy: Knowledge and Learning in the Age of Innovation. Edited by Daniel Araya & Michael A. Peters. Peter Lang, 2010. Collection of essays with a sizeable number of essays concentrating on p2p thematics.

1. Knowing Knowledge. By George Siemens. An exploration of participative learning.
2. Everything is Miscellaneous. By David Weinberger. How we are changing the way we organize knowledge.
3. The Edu-factory Collective (eds) (2009) Toward a Global Autonomous University. Cognitive Labor, The Production of Knowledge, and Exodus from the Education Factory. New York: Autonomedia, 2009 [36]
4. Wikiworld: Political Economy of Digital Literacy, and the Road from Social to Socialist Media. Juha Suoranta - Tere Vadén. [37]
5. The New Social Learning. by Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner: "quite simply, a must-read if you are in either responsible for learning in, or running, a business. In short, eloquent, and yet highly readable chapters, they cover both the natural ways we learn, and how the new technologies both support and enhance these capabilities." [38]

• Peeragogy Handbook, a Resource for Self-organizing Self-learners. Howard Rheingold and Peeragogy Team. [39]

See also:

1. Learning Networks. Linda Harasim et al.
2. Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge. Editors Toru Iiyoshi and M. S. Vijay Kumar. MIT Press, 2008
3. The Tower and The Cloud. Higher Education in the Era of Cloud Computer. Richard Katz, editor. Educause, 2008. URL of online edition at http://www.educause.edu/thetowerandthecloud/133998
4. DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education. Amy Kamenetz. Chelsea Green, 2010 [40]
5. Alfie Kohn's work on democratic learning communities and intrinsic learning motivation is foundational, see booklist at http://www.alfiekohn.org/books.htm
6. Howard Rheingold recommends Will Richardson’s excellent book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms
7. The Future of Higher Education. By Parker Rossman. A 3-volune online book.
8. Giving Knowledge Away for Free, OECD report about open educational resources
9. Coming of Age: Terry Freedman on using the Web 2.0 in the classroom

Reports:

1. OLCOS 2012 Roadmap on Open Education Resources: excellent introduction and overview for European audience

Key Conferences

1. Educational Technology Conferences: Clayton R. Wright compiles the most comprehensive list of educational technology conferences.

See in particular:

1. The Drumbeat Festival 2010 on "learning, freedom and the web" will feature many new informal learning initiatives (Barcelona, November 4-5, 2010)
2. Future of Learning in a Networked World
3. K12 Online

Key Courses

To read: George Siemens' Reflections on Open Courses

Introduction:

• Teemu: Composing_free_and_open_online_educational_resources

• Leigh and Bron: Designing_for_flexible_learning_practice

• Bron: Evaluation_of_eLearning_for_Best_Practice

Directory: Open Education curricula for 2012

1. David Wiley: Introduction to Openness in Education [41] [42]
2. Alec Couros: Social Media and Open Education [43]
3. Dave Cormier, George Siemens and Stephen Downes: Massive Open Online Course in Change in Education, Learning, and Technology
4. Stephen Downes and George Siemens: Connectivism and Connective Knowledge [44]
5. George Siemens: How Technology is Influencing Various Knowledge Domains
6. George Siemens: Introduction to Learning and Knowledge Analytics [45]

• See: Open Courses for Open Education

Key Initiatives

Recommended organizations:

1. People’s Open Access Education Initiative
2. P2PU Peer2Peer University
3. Open Study [46]
4. World University [47]
5. School of Everything [48]
6. Wikiversity [49]
7. Rheingold U [50] and Social Media Classroom

See also:

Skillsharing:

1. http://better.at/about
2. http://www.skillshare.com/learn

Q & A sites:

1. http://stackexchange.com/
2. http://www.quora.com/

Video learning:

1. YouTube EDU [51]
2. Khan Academy [52]
3. Apple's iTunes U [53]

Courses:

1. Introduction to Mind Amplifiers, Howard Rheingold

Stephen Downes recommends:

1. Best educational use of a virtual world: Media Grid Immersive Education
2. Best educational use of a social networking service: OU Course Profiles on Facebook
3. Best educational wiki: WikiEducator
4. Best educational use of video / visual: Civilization III and World History
5. Best educational use of audio: iTunes University
6. Best teacher blog: The Open Classroom
7. Best resource sharing blog: Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day

Read the reasons for the recommendations here at http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2007/12/not-edublog-award-winners.html

Key Journals

1. Journal of Virtual Worlds and Education: an academic peer-reviewed journal that will present the best writing and thinking available about Virtual Worlds and their applications and implications for the field of education

Key Free Learning Depositories

• ZaidtLearn list of OCW and OER courses [54]

Key Podcasts and Webcasts

Audio

1. David Wiley on the Open Education Movement
2. Doc Searls on Free and Open Source in Education
3. Exploring Wikis in Education
4. Stephen Downes on Connective Knowledge
5. A Vision of Students Today: a must watch!!

Video

We recommend: Astra Taylor on the Experience of Unschooling: personal experiences of growing up home-schooled without a curriculum or schedule

URL = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwIyy1Fi-4Q

Some of the comments are taken from the excellent list of Alec Courosa at http://educationaltechnology.ca/couros/1480

Professional:

Good overview for beginners: Pia Waugh on Open Source Futures in Education

Also:

1. Richard Baraniuk of Connexions on Open Source Learning and Textbooks
2. Sir Ken Robinson on Do Schools Kill Creativity?, an excellent, humor filled 20 minute talk. Transcripts English and Dutch available too.

For Students:

1. Did You Know 3.0 - Widely viewed video by Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod that gives light to the changes imminent in our emerging knowledge-based society. This is an excellent video for framing and introducing the the new reality to students, teachers, faculty, and administrators.

See also:

1. An Anthropological Introduction to Youtube - Professor Michael Wesch’s presentation to the Library of Congress, June 23rd, 2008. The video is over 55 minutes long but is informative and engaging throughout.
2. A Vision of Students Today - Another excellent video by Michael Wesch and his group that summarizes some of the most important characteristics of students today.
3. A Portal To Media Literacy - This is an excellent presentation by Michael Wesch held at the University of Manitoba. “During his presentation, the Kansas State University professor breaks down his attempts to integrate Facebook, Netvibes, Diigo, Google Apps, Jott, Twitter, and other emerging technologies to create an education portal of the future.”

Directories:

1. Top educational video sites

Key Policy Statements

1. The Capetown Open Education Declaration [55]; Critique by Stephen Downes; Response by David Wiley
2. Make Textbooks Affordable

Key Reports

1. Demos: Their Space: Education for a digital generation, 2010

Key Tags

1. Diigo mbauwens tag: P2P-Learning
2. Diigo mbauwens tag: P2P-Epistemology

Key Tools

1. Free Software for Schools: a catalogue of open source computer programs for teaching and learning.
2. A Free Learning Tool for Every Learning Problem? See the ZaidLearn Directory.
3. Directory of Learning Tools: over 2,600 tools for learning, compiled by Jane Hart.
4. A wiki on Gaming in Education, by John Evans

To Create Online Courses

Free-to-use software for creating online courses is now available. It was developed, and is being further developed, on the open source model by a worldwide network of educators and software designers. [56]

See the Listing of Open Source CMS E-Learning Packages [57] or Open Source Learning Management Systems [58]

1. Curriki: a global education and learning community devoted to creating free, open-source curricula.
2. Moodle: a free, open source, and highly flexible course management system that allows educators to create their own online courses

Also the following related directories:

1. More course authoring tools in this directory.
2. Course and Learning Management Systems
3. Learning games and simulation tools
4. Mobile learning authoring tools

Here is a Study Pack Creator

Most Important Collaborative Learning Technologies

1. Charting Tools
2. Collaborative Writing Tools
3. Screensharing
4. Web Presentation Tools
5. Whiteboarding

More Mini-Guides from Robin Good:

1. Instant Messaging Tools
2. Online Video Publishing

The Read/Write blog has an overview on the use of blogging and podcasting in education and on Elgg, a social network for education. Here's how-to advice on Podcasting for Educators.

12 Screencasting tools to make your own video tutorials

Here is a provisional list of courses related to social technology, which are being updated through this link in Delicious

Teaching Collaboration

1. The Social Media Classroom (we’ll call it SMC) includes a free and open-source (Drupal-based) web service that provides teachers and learners with an integrated set of social media that each course can use for its own purposes—integrated forum, blog, comment, wiki, chat, social bookmarking, RSS, microblogging, widgets , and video commenting are the first set of tools. The Classroom also includes curricular material: syllabi, lesson plans, resource repositories, screencasts and videos. The Collaboratory (or Colab), is what we call just the web service part of it. Educators are encouraged to use the Colab and SMB materials freely, and we host your Colab communities if you don’t want to install your own.
2. Social Media for Educational Networking: list of networks
3. Eduforge is an open access environment designed for the sharing of ideas, research outcomes, open content and open source software for education.
4. The OER Commons is an open learning network where teachers share learning materials.
5. The Net Pedagogy Portal is a resource whose purpose is to increase understanding, knowledge, and awareness of the changing landscape of teaching and learning online.
6. The Bazaar is a community portal for people who want to use, exchange and share Open Source Software and resources to support learning.
7. 25 Tools every Learning Professional should have in their Toolbox [59]
8. Directory of Social Networks for Learning Professionals: compiled by Janet Hart.
9. Cool Collaborative Tools for School
10. Appropedia (sustainability and appropriate technology wiki) is used as an education platform, introducing students to online collaboration in knowledge sharing. See educational tools on the Appropedia blog.

Also:

1. Gradebook Tools

Teaching and Learning Resources

1. Indispensable ICT Tools for teachers
2. If you want free access to online learning resources, check out this Massive Directory of Learning Resources available in Open Access
3. The Free Curricula Center assists in producing and distributing university level curricula that can be copied freely and modified cooperatively. The Global Text Project and Wikiversity aim to provide free and open textbooks to students worldwide. OER Recommender links you to open education resources related to web pages you are browsing
4. Here are more sites that offer free learning materials and online courses under Creative Commons: ADUni.org, on Computer Science; Berklee Shares, provides a library of free music lessons in audio, video, and print-ready formats; Creative Commons Education; Internet Archive Open Educational Resources; MIT OpenCourseWare: Video and Audio; MSRI Math Lectures; Ourmedia Learning Center, tutorials and guides for a wide range of user-generated media activities; University Channel,collection of public affairs lectures.
5. Specifically for high school: National Repository of Online Courses; Hippocampus
6. This Massive Resource List for Autodidacts offers a one page summary of free online education resources, such as those of MIT, plenty of free video tutorials, and the like. You can also use the Open CourseWare Finder
7. Robin Good of Master New Media has compiled a list of freely available Video Tutorials, mostly of a technical nature, for those wanting to learn production and usage of social media.
8. Here is a list of free podcasts and webcasts provided by U.S. universities.
9. Infed is a key resource on informal education, including peer to peer mentoring
10. Open Source CMS and LCMS: links to open source Course Management Systems (CMS) and Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS) aimed at the Higher Education market. Example: Online Teaching and Learning
11. Moodle Learning Management System, specially designed to help educators create localized online courses with opportunities for rich interaction between educators and students from all over the world
12. 100 Free Online Lectures, for teachers, contains many good videos
13. Partial List of Online University Lecture Sites

Student Sharing

Sindya Bhanoo: Top 10 recommended web tools for college students

See: Social Studying ; Notes Sharing

Also:

1. Notemesh allows student to share lecture notes per class.
2. Pick A Prof is a really disruptive service to the old model of education. It allows students to find the grading histories of professors, and allows student to rate professors. See also: Rate My Professors
3. StudyCurve helps middle school students find experts and study buddies
4. The College FreeWay: a network for sharing notes, outlines, essays, problem sets, study guides and more. Users can search by university, course or type of document needed.
5. Find student assessments of colleges and universities: StudentAdvisor —Unigo — Yollege — College Prowler
6. Cramster: an online study community offering homework help to college students

This Is Me: = workbook to help students discover and construct their Digital Identity

Resources at Shambles.net

1. Guide to free software and Linux resources for education and schools.
2. A listing of useful Mind Maps software
3. Link pages on Web 2.0 resources for Learning [60]; #Research reports on the future of learning [61]

Miscellaneous

1. List of University Wikies at http://universitywikinodewiki.wikia.com/wiki/University-wikis
2. Main Unschooling Resources: collated by Chris Corrigan
3. 50 places to read free books, [62]
4. 35 tools for teachers, tutors, and students
5. Cool Mind Mapping and Knowledge Organizing Tools for Schools
6. Top 20 Social Networks for Education

Recommended Instructional Videos

These are absolute must sees:

1. The Machine is US: “Web 2.0 in just under 5 minutes”, explained by the Digital Ethnography Project at Kansas State University (Wesch). The video helps to illustrate important changes brought by Web 2.0 (read/write web, social web) as content and form became separated.

Also:

1. RSS in Plain English; Howard Rheingold Introduces RSS
2. Social Bookmarking in Plain English; Howard Rheingold Introduces Social Bookmarking
3. Wikis in Plain English
4. Social Networking in Plain English
5. Online Photo Sharing in Plain English
6. [[Blogs in Plain English
7. Howard Rheingold on Making Stuff in Second Life
8. How to Behave on an Internet Forum

Open Learning Content Initiatives

Open Textbooks Initiatives

1. Flat World Knowledge
2. CK-12
3. Community College Open Textbook Collaborative
4. Free Digital Textbook Initiative [63]
5. Librivox
6. OER Commons
7. Wikibooks
8. The Open Textbook Initiative, at http://wiki.bssd.org/index.php/Open_Content_Textbooks

Open Audio and Video of Lectures

1. Academic Earth
2. Berkeley Webcast
3. TED
4. YouTubeEDU

P2P Hall of Fame

Educational Theory

Who should be in our P2P Hall of Fame on Educational Theory?

Candidates are: George Siemens [64](connectivist learning theory); Jean-Francois Noubel [65] and Pierre Levy (collective intelligence); David Wiley [66](open content and open education); Stephen Downes [67] (e-learning); Alfred Kohn [68] (democratic learning communities); David Cormier's Rhizomatic Education

Educational Practitioners

Candidates are: Steve Ediger (Woodstock school in Northern India); Bryan Alexander [69](Web 2.0. in teaching); Chris Smith [70] (Shambles.Net, IT for international schools)

Recommended Initiatives

Candidates are: Lucy Hooberman's Mentoring Worldwide initiative [71]

P2P Educational Concepts Encyclopedia