[iDC] Can DIY education be crowdsourced?

Brian Holmes bhcontinentaldrift at gmail.com
Wed Sep 7 20:02:56 UTC 2011


http://messhall.org/?page_id=934

On 09/07/2011 02:43 PM, Anya Kamenetz wrote:
> 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 <mailto: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>
>     <mailto: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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