[iDC] Can DIY education be crowdsourced?
Anya Kamenetz
anyaanya at gmail.com
Wed Sep 7 19:43:10 UTC 2011
Well, if you're going to toss about words like "builder", "maker," and
"naive",
John Bell has built a tool and platform for learning, which we're currently
discussing to generate new ideas.
Phillipp Schmidt has made a tool and platform for learning, which I'm
currently participating on.
Neither of them are corporate.
What have you built to make the Internet better for radical education?
What's your project?
a
On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 3:23 PM, Brian Holmes
<bhcontinentaldrift at gmail.com>wrote:
> I don't have any such orthodoxy. I just have an opinion on your apparent
> naivete. The Internet is good for a lot of things, but as time goes by,
> more and more of them are corporate. To make it good for radical
> education is actually a project that interests me. However, the
> discussion in this thread just replicates the protocols of Web 2.0
> infotainment, a narcissistic hook and a very superficial format for
> learning. Let the maker and the user beware.
>
> best, Brian
>
> On 09/07/2011 01:56 PM, Anya Kamenetz wrote:
> > Brian,
> > doesn't your participation on this email list violate your orthodoxy of
> > the skin-to-skin holy transmission of knowledge?
> > a
> >
> > On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 2:20 PM, Brian Holmes
> > <bhcontinentaldrift at gmail.com <mailto:bhcontinentaldrift at gmail.com>>
> wrote:
> >
> > This is a timely subject just as public education is getting axed all
> > over the world. It will be the final victory of the bosses: without
> > books, without attention span, without ideas except those piped in by
> > the media and above all without others, control will be complete.
> >
> > You'll get the source without the crowd, perfect sterility.
> >
> > I submit that the chance to escape from total fear and submission
> > depends on having some contact to another speaking body in the room.
> >
> > But probably the apolitical designer types can get two or three weeks
> > work making edu-sites for future capitalist game robots!
> >
> > good luck, BH
> >
> > On 09/06/2011 11:13 AM, John Bell wrote:
> > > Yes, I think identifying and distinguishing types of peers is an
> > > important aspect of the kind of system I'm talking about. The
> part
> > > that's problematic is--without falling back on external validation
> > > like degrees and academic positions--figuring out which people are
> > > which type, and what the scope of the types are. For example, I
> just
> > > did something similar for a proposal as part of the
> > > Mozilla+Journalism project where I was trying to identify
> commenters
> > > with expertise in different fields so they could add annotation to
> > > mass media articles. In that system a commenter could claim a
> level
> > > of expertise when they made a comment and a trust metric would
> adjust
> > > their long-term credibility based on how other users rate that
> > > comment. It's a refinement of the old Slashdot karma model, but
> one
> > > that seems useful in this situation.
> > >
> > >
> > (
> http://www.nmdjohn.com/2011/08/05/moznewslab-week-4-pitching-reposte/
> > > if anybody is curious.)
> > >
> > > But I think there are limits to how much participation can be
> > > incentivized without ending up back at cash, which I suspect
> > > introduces its own problems. Look at the situation with Wikipedia
> > > where they rewarded participation by turning users into
> bureaucrats,
> > > creating a system that's often accused of being petty and
> detrimental
> > > to the health of the project. Amazon's biggest reviewer is widely
> > > regarded as untrustworthy by people who know who she is, writing
> > > reviews of books that she clearly hasn't read (those who don't
> > > recognize her of course don't know this, and Amazon doesn't expose
> > > enough information for casual users to reach that conclusion on
> their
> > > own).
> > >
> > > So the question I'm left with is how to create incentives that go
> > > beyond status in the internal community. Can external incentives
> be
> > > used without creating the equivalent of Warcraft gold farmers?
> What
> > > would they be?
> > >
> > > - John
> > >
> > > On Sep 5, 2011, at 6:02 PM, Anya Kamenetz wrote:
> > >
> > >> Really interesting stuff, John! Definitely agree with you on the
> > >> "necessary but not sufficient" formulation.
> > >>
> > >>>> But the issue we’d like to discuss with the list is what a
> > >>>> system with the same goals--ongoing, deep evaluation of complex
> > >>>> learning--would look like if it were designed to work on the
> > >>>> same scale as, say, the Khan Academy. Is peer feedback
> > >>>> sufficient to meet those goals? If so, quality would somehow
> > >>>> need to be controlled so that it doesn’t turn into a stream of
> > >>>> YouTube comments, and if not some other method would have to be
> > >>>> used to deal with large volumes of students.
> > >>
> > >> What strikes me is that there are different types of peers--some
> > >> peers perhaps more equal than others. In a community of practice
> > >> model there are fellow beginners, who have one type of feedback
> to
> > >> offer, then there are people just ahead of you--like the
> sophomore,
> > >> junior, senior to your freshman, who have a different type of
> > >> feedback (less grounded in immediate understanding of what you're
> > >> going through and more grounded in knowledge and experience), and
> > >> then graduate student/TA/professor with a more sophisticated
> > >> offering still.
> > >>
> > >> One can imagine a scalable system that incentivizes feedback
> > >> according to the experience and sophistication of the person
> > >> offering it, and thus its likely value to the user. Maybe it's a
> > >> "freemium" model where learners give and receive feedback freely
> as
> > >> a condition of participation up to a certain level of experience,
> > >> and the most experienced participants receive other kinds of
> > >> incentives (even money?) in exchange for offering the most
> > >> detailed, sophisticated, time-consuming forms of feedback. I
> often
> > >> think back to my summer studying capoeira where the most
> > >> experienced students took on more and more responsibilities
> > >> instructing the beginners, as an honor--but only the mestre gets
> > >> paid.
> > >>
> > >> Of course there are other technological ways of encouraging
> quality
> > >> control on a large system that depends for its value on freely
> > >> offered feedback. These are all over the net. TripAdvisor,
> Amazon,
> > >> eBay, Quora, Yelp are all good examples--Yelp in particular,
> again
> > >> for the way it incentivizes its best providers of feedback,
> making
> > >> them a recognized part of a community, allowing the raters to
> earn
> > >> ratings. LinkedIn with its endorsement structure another one to
> > >> look at. Maybe you need a system of badges, tags or profile
> > >> keywords so you can ask a native Brazilian to read your
> Portuguese
> > >> paper or a nationally ranked chess player to check out your game
> or
> > >> someone with a stellar Github rating to look at your code. a
> > >
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> > --
> > *New ebook!** *The Edupunks' Guide <http://edupunksguide.org/>*
> > Fast Company column* Life In Beta
> > <http://www.fastcompany.com/user/anya-kamenetz>
> > *Tribune Media column* The Savings Game
> > <
> http://www.tmsfeatures.com/columns/business/personal-finance/savings-game/
> >
> > *Book* DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of
> > Higher Education
> > <
> http://www.amazon.com/DIY-Edupunks-Edupreneurs-Transformation-Education/dp/1603582347
> >
> > *Blog* DIYUbook.com <http://diyubook.com/>
> > *Twitter *@Anya1anya <http://twitter.com/#%21/anya1anya>
> >
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--
*New ebook!** *The Edupunks' Guide <http://edupunksguide.org/>*
Fast Company column* Life In Beta<http://www.fastcompany.com/user/anya-kamenetz>
*Tribune Media column* The Savings
Game<http://www.tmsfeatures.com/columns/business/personal-finance/savings-game/>
*Book* DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of Higher
Education
<http://www.amazon.com/DIY-Edupunks-Edupreneurs-Transformation-Education/dp/1603582347>
*Blog* DIYUbook.com <http://diyubook.com/>
*Twitter *@Anya1anya <http://twitter.com/#%21/anya1anya>
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