Table of Contents
Culture of participation: long tail learning and energy sustainability
“School is a design artifact, not an immutable object”
“Historically we associated the role of teacher with a person, maybe rather associate it with a context”
Transformation frameworks for learning and education
- school learning → life-long learning
- consumers → active contributors (culture of participation)
- teacher driven (curriculum) → learner driven (idiosyncratic, long tail)
- learning when answer is known → learning when no one knows the answer (education research for the public good; energy sustainability)
Fundamental transformations
- many new approaches are too timid and not thinking radically enough
- theory of learning based solely on school learning is a limited approach
- cultures of participation: provide all people with the means to participate actively in personally meaningful problems
The envisionment and discovery collaboratory
The long tail framework
- originated in business world
- shifting from focus on relatively small number of “hits” (mainstream products and markets) of the head of the demand cure and toward a huge number of “niches” in the tail
- in learning and education
- learn about exotic but personally important topics
- communicate with people who share similar interests anywhere in the world
- contribute your own knowledge to create open living spaces
Basic beliefs
- participatory internet (Web 2.0) supports design requirements for a Long Tail inspired view of learning and education
- most people are interested / feel passionate about something (Might be very idiosyncratic, locally sparse, world-wide there may be some niche communities)
- people getting engaged in thousands of cultural tribes of interest connected less by geographic proximity than by shared interest
- unlimited shelf-space → unlimited knowledge
- megabits → core curriculum
- niche markets → unique topics, niche communities
Energy sustainability
education research for the public good
new technologies necessary but not sufficient - need change in human understanding and behaviour, individual and collective
collecting quotes from people about their understanding of energy
Learning and understanding with new designs
Personally, globally
move from passive consumers of energy to active decision makers. Smart grids, visualizations.
Conclusion
life long learning
want to learn rather than have to learn
