Wikiversity for Free Education and Free School

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URL = http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Free_education_and_free_school%3F

Essay on the Wikiversity as part of the Free Education tradition:

Wikiversity for Free Education and Free School: a New Initiative for Global Capacity Building?

Teemu Leinonen, Tere Vadén & Juha Suoranta

Draft - v.0.8, 2.8.2007


Abstract

"There is a chance that Wikiversity will become an important part of an online education institution - one which offers an introduction to free Lifelong learning. This philosophy of Lifelong education is shared between all members of all projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. It is the foundation stone of Wikiversity.

In this paper we will firstly introduce three metaphors of learning that are common in the Western way of thinking about learning. These are acquisition, participation and knowledge creation. The friction between these metaphors strongly affects the ways in which we go about instituting educational routines. After this we will present the history and practical implementation of free adult education and free school movement and an idea of activist university. The free adult education will be presented as seen in the Scandinavian tradition. The ideas and implementations of the free school and empowering education is be based on number of radical pedagogical thinkers around the world such as Paulo Freire (1993), Henry Giroux (2007), bell hooks (1994), Ivan Illich (1971) and Peter McLaren (2005), among many others. And the activist university, in its turn, is a concept originally introduced by Bertell Ollman.

Based on the three metaphors of learning and three traditions of education we will present several ideas and recommendations for the future direction for the Wikiversity. Our argument is based on the belief, that without forgetting the basics, Wikiversity – as well as the other wiki-projects – should aim for the highest possible potential intrinsic in their unique combination of free content, volunteer co-operation and massive distribution of labour. We should not be content to replicate or even to replace existing resources or functions. The Wikiversity should be a build on two-fold foundation: (1) the Wikipedia project's success factors forcing genuinely new forms and results in education and learning and (2) tradition of free and liberal educational philosophy and practice." (http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Free_education_and_free_school%3F)


Excerpts

See: Three Metaphors of Learning