[iDC] Can DIY education be crowdsourced?

John Sobol soboltalk at gmail.com
Wed Sep 7 17:57:32 UTC 2011


I'm not sure if I am missing the point, but it seems to me that these tools
exist and are very widely used already. In the business world sophisticated
Social Media Monitoring tools are everywhere, measuring what was said by
whom to whom and how that message made its way through the social
media-sphere. Isn't this similar to what you are after? Tools to assess and
quantify the usefulness of knowledge circulating in informal knowledge
networks? That is the whole point of technorati, to identify the blogs that
are 'most authoritative' based primarily but not exclusively on the number
of inbound links. The idea being that if people are consistently returning
somewhere for info about a subject then it is likely a high-quality source.

Also, I would argue that 'dialogues' are ends in and of themselves in
digital - or what i call OS3 - culture. They don't need a reason to exist.
They are existence itself. Just as they are in oral (OS1) culture. The
subject of the conversation - useful or playful or solemn though it may be -
is typically less transformative than the conversational dynamic itself,
especially at the macro-social level. In other words, instead of seeking
truthful answers digital culture is after trustworthy relationships. And yes
this promises to change or at least challenge our definition of knowledge,
but imo that is for the best.

John
--
www.youareyourmedia.com



On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 12:00 PM, Anya Kamenetz <anyaanya at gmail.com> wrote:

> Pride of influencing a field I think can apply equally to amateurs and
> professionals.
> As a mother-to-be following perhaps the deepest, most high-stakes informal
> learning path of my life, I've spent countless hours so far sharing
> knowledge and ideas with other women on online forums and email lists. Why
> do we spend this time answering each others' questions? What motivates a
> busy working woman with two children to put in her time advising a n00b? A
> lot of it is deeply social and intrinsic.
> a
>
> On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 11:50 AM, John Bell <john at novomancy.org> wrote:
>
>> But what value would such a score represent to an amateur scholar?  For
>> professional scholars it's mostly valued due to pride of influencing the
>> field and tenure committees.  Is there another carrot that can be offered to
>> people with deep knowledge but no interest in advancing an academic career?
>>
>> - John
>>
>> On Sep 6, 2011, at 4:20 PM, Anya Kamenetz wrote:
>> > So the question would be, to what extent is it feasible to represent a
>> similar type of score, based on references to their previous statements, for
>> amateur scholars? That would be an interesting example of an incentive
>> that's both internal and external.
>> > a
>>
>>
>
>
> --
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> *Book* DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of
> Higher Education
> <http://www.amazon.com/DIY-Edupunks-Edupreneurs-Transformation-Education/dp/1603582347>
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>
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