"TOGETHER WE KNOW EVERYTHING"

"digital technologies are now providing educators and students with tools of study, as opposed to tools of instruction" [1]

Introduction

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

It is maintained by Steve Ediger and Michel Bauwens.

It is dedicated to the pioneering work of Alfie Kohn on democratic learning communities.

For a good introduction see John Heron on facilitation and the revolution in learning

Read also this essay on the Teaching to Learning Paradigm Shift by Robert B. Barr and John Tagg.

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'. Some basic entries are his Propositions on Learning, and his Connectivist Taxonomy

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.

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

Here's an extraordinary mind-blowing scenario map, with linked resources on the Forces Affecting the Furure of Education

Key Topics: Open Education, Open Educational Resources, Open Courseware Initiatives, Open Textbooks

Thematic Issues of P2P News on Epistemology: Issue 89 [2]; Issue 77 [3]

Some Citations

Citation 1: The Open Education movement is gaining momentum

"The field of open education is gaining momentum around the world. Literally hundreds of open education projects are springing up from Tokyo to Boston to Paris to Beijing. Over 2000 courses are now available through OpenCourseWare projects alone. Add to this the growing number of open access learning object repositories, increases in the number and quality of open source educational software projects, the open education work agencies like UNESCO and the OECD are doing, and the field is diversifying as quickly as it is growing.." (http://cosl.usu.edu/conferences/opened2006/)

Citation 2: Schools need to open up to peer-based learning models

"When you look at children's learning outside school, it is driven by what they are interested in, which is the direct opposite of school-based learning. For example, in the United States a group of students were interested in Manga, the Japanese animated cartoons. In order to get hold of them before they were due to arrive on the market, this group got together, taught themselves Japanese, subtitling and web streaming, because they were motivated to.

What is the relationship with this idea that education is handing down a general base of knowledge? I think that is one of the tensions.

When you look at learning in the home you see knowledge-building communities. Children can act as teachers, they are allowed to adopt different identities and they are not just learners. They have control over the time of their learning and how long it will take. The school system needs to know a lot more about what is happening outside school in terms of children's passions, interests and abilities than it does at the moment.

We need a shift towards an education system that is about listening to what the learners are bringing into the school situation, as well as thinking about an education system that is pushing things out." (http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2006/07/smart_learning_.html)

Citation 3: the Learning 2.0 approach

"The traditional approach to e-learning has been to employ the use of a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), software that is often cumbersome and expensive - and which tends to be structured around courses, timetables, and testing. That is an approach that is too often driven by the needs of the institution rather than the individual learner. In contrast, e-learning 2.0 (as coined by Stephen Downes) takes a 'small pieces, loosely joined' approach that combines the use of discrete but complementary tools and web services - such as blogs, wikis, and other social software - to support the creation of ad-hoc learning communities." (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/e-learning_20.php)

Citation 4: Education is diverging from schooling

"Education, the means by which young people learn the skills necessary to succeed in their place and time, is diverging from schooling.

Media-literacy-wise, education is happening now after school and on weekends and when the teacher isn't looking, in the SMS messages, MySpace pages, blog posts, podcasts, videoblogs that technology-equipped digital natives exchange among themselves.

This population is both self-guided and in need of guidance, and although a willingness to learn new media by point-and-click exploration might come naturally to today's student cohort, there's nothing innate about knowing how to apply their skills to the processes of democracy." (http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2006/11/14/participatory_media_and_the_pedagogy.htm)

Citation 5: Theresa Williamson on The power of peer teaching

"Everybody knows the proverb about how it's better to teach a man to fish than just to give him a fish, but there's a step beyond that: it's better that a man's neighbor is the one teaching him to fish, his peer. If some expert swoops in from afar you miss half the value of the interaction because of the inequality in that relationship. But if it's his peer teaching him? Then the man is much more likely to offer something in return. You are much more likely to create a real sustainable relationship rather than just a new dependency."

Theresa Williamson, Founder, Catalytic Communities (http://www.nextbillion.net/node/1723)

Citation 6: John Maloney on the new knowledge leaders

From http://www.kmcluster.com/ (newsletter, 2004)

"The silent killers of effective knowledge leadership are the pervasive 20th-century traditions of linear, mechanical and reductionist thinking paired with their obsolete managerial behaviours of control, dominance and technocracy.

Top knowledge leaders routinely 'suspend their disbelief' to unlearn their harmful industrial-era habits and models. They learn from the emerging future through authentic conversation. 21st-century knowledge leaders actively pursue external interactions and continuously use genuine action/research networks to their strategic and collaborative advantage."

Citation 7: From learning "just in case" to "learning on demand"

Paul D. Fernhout:

"Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting "learning on demand" based on interest or need which is at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to "learning just in case" based on someone else's demand. Compulsory schools don't usually traffic in "learning on demand", for the most part leaving that kind of activity to libraries or museums or the home or business or the "real world". In order for compulsory schools to make use of the best of educational technology and what is has to offer, schools themselves must change." (http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html)

Key Resources

Key Articles

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.

Here's a good 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 [4]. Chris Smith also maintains a link page of Web 2.0 resources for Learning [5]

'Coming of Age' [6] is an introduction to teachers on how they can use the 'new World Wide Web'.

Food for Thought

Toward a Place for Study in a World of Instruction

Is Compulsory Education Needed in a Gift Economy

More Articles

Key essay by Yochai Benkler: Common Wisdom: Peer Production of Educational Materials [7]

An introduction to Connective Knowledge (and Knowing Networks), by Stephen Downes is an absolute must read introduction to participative epistemologies [8]

Migrating to Open Source Learning Management Systems, a thesis available online.

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

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.

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.

Key Blogs

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

1) The Connectivism blog [9], a new educational theory for the peer to peer age

2) Global Mentoring blog [10], bringing peers together for learning

3) Open Content and Education blog [11], freeing educational content

4) Flosse Posse [12] monitors the use of free and open software in the educational field

5) OL Daily by Stephen Downes [13], monitors how online can help in the creation of a more open and participatory learning environment.

6) eLearn Space blog [14], for discussion of eLearning developments

7) [15] monitors learning theories and epistemology from a deeper historial and philosophical background, as it related to e-learning, warning for digital myth-making.

For educational blogs, see Schoolblogs and [http:www.edublogs.org Edublogs].

Key Books

Alfie Kohn's work on democratic learning communities and intrinsic learning motivation is foundational, see booklist at http://www.alfiekohn.org/books.htm

Howard Rheingold recommends Will Richardson’s excellent book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms

Knowing Knowledge. By George Siemens.

An exploration of participative learning.

Key Conferences

Microlearning 2006

Future of Learning in a Networked World

Key Podcasts

David Wiley on the Open Education Movement

Doc Searls on Free and Open Source in Education

Exploring Wikis in Education

Stephen Downes on Connective Knowledge

Key Tags

P2P Learning

P2P Epistemlogy

Key Tools

Teaching Collaboration

1. Eduforge is an open access environment designed for the sharing of ideas, research outcomes, open content and open source software for education.
2. The OER Commons is an open learning network where teachers share learning materials.
3. 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.

Teaching and Learning Resources

1. If you want free access to online learning resources, check out this Massive Directory of Learning Resources available in Open Access#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.
2. 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
3. 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.
4. Here is a list of podcasts provided by universities.

Student Sharing

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.

Miscellaneous

1. List of University Wikies at http://universitywikinodewiki.wikia.com/wiki/University-wikis
2. Chris Smith has a guide to free software and Linux resources for education and schools.
3. Chris Smith of Shambles.Net keeps a listing of useful Mind Maps software

P2P Hall of Fame

Educational Theory

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

Candidates are: George Siemens [16](connectivist learning theory); Jean-Francois Noubel [17] and Pierre Levy (collective intelligence); David Wiley [18](open content and open education); Stephen Downes [19] (e-learning); Alfred Kohn [20] (democratic learning communities)

Educational Practitioners

Candidates are: Steve Ediger (Woodstock school in Northern India); Bryan Alexander [21](Web 2.0. in teaching); Chris Smith [22] (Shambles.Net, IT for international schools)

Recommended Initiatives

Candidates are: Lucy Hooberman's Mentoring Worldwide initiative [23]

P2P Educational Concepts Encyclopedia