http://www.slideshare.net/HansMestrum/homo-zappiens

Some highlights:

School is for meeting friends, rather than for learning.

Non-linear learning strategies demand a redesign of content …

Different media lead to different skills

Harold, I think I have shared with you one or more of Veen’s Powerpoint slides that outline the key points, haven’t I ?

But there are still barriers to collaboration, especially between school-based (teachers, scientists) and non-school-based (parents, homeschoolers, journalists, policy-makers) people. We trust our tribes & institutions to do quality educational work, but not necessarily our markets or networks. “Ecucation” in policy debates is still limited to “public schools.” How can we make a public case for broader trust in networks?

Thanks for this post – I’ll be following your links, and learning.

Educational institutions (T+I) harbor tribes whose action lacks coordination. These tribes are individual classroom teachers dishing out assignments without regard to all those other tribes doing the same. The students are not exclusive members of any tribe anymore than customers belong to stores or subscribers do what the social networking platforms tell them to do. Each teacher’s practice is novel amidst the chaos of the students, teachers, administrators, parents, voters, neighbors to the school yard, textbook publishers, etc. The institution formulates best practices for successfully coordinating facility and classroom schedules so there’s no class trying to use the lunch room during a lunch period or a gym class interfering with a stage rehearsal. This coordination delivers a staggering number of different people showing up in the right place at the right time for classes, stage performances, trips and assemblies. It fails to coordinate learning, workload, different rates of progress or unique interests.

If education was delivered by markets (T+I+M), tribal teachers would cooperate with each other. They would make concessions to other teachers who’s assignments, activities and deadlines pre-empted their own. These lose/win sacrifices of an individual teacher’s control of curriculum would benefit the customers/students, create more long term educational value and establish a service economy. The complicated situation of each student’s workload calls for cooperation between teachers to not overload any student, undermine value propositions or do a disservice to the community. This would effectively customize the curriculum for each student, honor the students’ Bill of Rights and protect the students from institutional or tribal abuses.

If education was delivered by networks (T+I+M+N), tribal teachers would collaborate with everyone else. The formal education delivered by instructors would lose significance as teachers devoted their time to learning too. Instructors would morph into coaches, mentors, facilitators and curators would learned from changing situations how to respond creatively in the moment. The students would learn from the example of everyone learning how to manage their own educational processes. Each student would define their own curriculum and make requests for assistance, insights and guidance from other collaborators in the network. Peer learning, open exploration and self-remediation would all become norms. Problems with boredom, anxiety, retention or loss of motivation would vanish as the resilient network made learning come alive for every participant. — That’s the world I want to live in