May 062013
 

That last was just a bit naive; maybe all of this falls under that heading.  Peter Grey argues that it’s pretty much impossible to reform education from within; he seems to have K-12 mainly in mind, but at the moment I’m not feeling any more hopeful about the University (that probably shouldn’t be caped; any university).  There are some interesting things happening; the Minerva Project is particularly interesting.

After a couple of weeks thought, naive may be a bit kind.  As in: If education is like reality, and reality is, as Paul Krassner would have it, “Reality is silly putty.” with the corollary, “Reality isn’t silly putty, but it is considerably more like silly putty than most of us are comfortable with,” then it would follow that education is far more open than most of us are comfortable with.   btw teh title aint wrong, sometimes the inability to closely follow conventional rules, of spelling for instance, can lead to some interesting knowledge.

Well this has drug on in edit mode far too long; long enough to stumble on the following from NPR Ted Talks: “We do not need to reform our schools; our schools are no longer necessary.”  Pretty much sums up the entire meme I was working on.  As in: the internet makes discovery learning all we need.  Of course how long it takes us to catch up to that is a good question.  By way of analogy: Do we really need the AP, NBC, ABC , etc. to tell up what the Boston Police are Tweeting?  We are at a strange moment in which the technology far outstrips our knowledge of how to use it.

Or of where to start. Who are we to educate? Who is our best hope?  The obvious answer is, “Catch ‘em young, the younger the better.”  But it’s not going to be a children’s revolution, nor I’m beginning to suspect, a student revolution.  There’s an interesting article in The Chronicle of Higher Ed which argues that business still use a college education as the basic bar for recruitment not because of what graduates know/have learned, but rather because they have demonstrated the “discipline” to complete a college program; less kindly, they have fully mastered the mind set of waiting in line and following directions.  People with college degrees have “learned” to adapt to the expectations of the curent cultural climate.  The problem is that’s not necessarily a good thing

Feb 232013
 

The major model of our project is ecological, evolutionary. The first principle is that we are not “selling” or even providing information or content. Information is a Bing/Google away. We are creating information in Bateson’s sense of, “…a difference that makes a difference.”   You might want to say, borrowing a current buzz phrase, that we propose to be “experienced designers” rather than “instructional designers”. What follows is a first cut, there are a lot of rough edges, and undoubtedly errors and dead ends. Hopefully, however, it will make the 5 Friends project a little more comprehensible.

Let’s tell the story of a potential course:

Let’s make it about 3-D Printing and imagine that it starts with three departure points:

Orientation - Organization Phase (2 – 3 weeks)

Presume an initial enrollment of 20K (We’re doning fantasy MOOC here, but it’s not unreasonable 3-D printers being a hot topic). The first couple of weeks will be Spent organizing learning teams. (In the future we can imagine courses which require five person learning teams for registration, or some sort of analytic engine capable of analyzing participant applications and assigning them to effective teams [something like the DISC assessment tool?]. At the moment, however, we will have to rely on self organizing units.) We will be running on some sort of aggregation engine such as gRSShopper which will aid team formation.

In keeping with the course departure points we will assume three major areas of focus:

    • Open-source hackers and coders who are interested in building things primarily for the challenge of building
    •  Entrepreneurs who are interested in the application of things built either for-profit or social good or both
    •  Cultural engineers and sociologists who are interested in the potential effects of the first two categories

While we can expect learning teams to organize around one of these focus areas, we want to encourage cross membership and thus cross-fertilization. During the start up period we want to borrow from the Open Space Technology movement the Rule of Two Feet: “If at any time during our time together you find yourself in any situation where you are neither learning nor contributing, use your two feet, go someplace else.”  we can expect a fair amount of confusion during this period, but we will insist that further participation in the course requires membership in a five person team. This will undoubtedly cause a number of dropouts, and will in fact be effectively unenforceable, but again we are trying to establish an ecology.

Research Phase: (Three – six weeks):

Now that the learning teams have been established, and the original starting points consumed, the teams begin an exploration phase during which time  they follow leads, identify new information sources and potentially related projects, and begin to think about possible and practical applications of 3-D printing. Each team, or perhaps groups of teams, begin to evolve project proposals.  We can expect that research and proposals will expand beyond printers, to areas such as input (Leap Motion) devices and modeling environments. The proposals are refined into presentations, and during the last two days of class the participants vote selecting the 40 projects which seemed to them to have the most real-world potential. The selected projects now proceed to the

Production & Integration Phase: (6-12 weeks):

We are now down to 40 projects and 200 participants. We now begin a phase of rapid prototyping and analysis. Are the proposed projects really practical? Can they accomplish their promise, what exactly is their promise? Ideally this phase would be tied to physical spaces, maker-labs, etc. (As every film student knows one of teh major reasons for going to film school is access to equipment).At the end of the phase another vote is held (we could use either the 200 remaining participants, that 200+ whoever from the original participant group is still following along, or some weighted combination of the two). 10 projects are selected to enter the:

Marketing & Distribution Phase: (as long as it takes):

The final 50 participants now begin to seek whatever funding is required to move forward with their proposed project. Most obviously we see a potential collaboration between the maker/coders who actually produced something concrete and the entrepreneurs who expect to “exploit” these productions. However, if you followed this far, it may have occurred to you  that I have not  suggested which fields of focus the selected projects live in. Logically it seems as though they must belong either to the makers or the entrepreneurs, but wo could equally imagine academic papers examining the process of said makers an/or entrepreneurs or artistic responses to any or all of the above.  whatever the case, the final “product” of the course will be something that matters in the real world. Perhaps something that prints, something that makes money, or improves society, or ideally does both.

******

If I have captured your attention at all, you will understand that there are a variety of forks in the above story. Points at which a slight variation in the “rules” would create a very different narrative. In a sense, what I am proposing is a framework for experimentation and development. If you’ve gotten this far,  you’ll probably want to jump ahead, were back to either Reboot (recommended) or Beginnings; from there I’m hoping that you’ll be interested enough to join me and start telling you own tales.

RebootBeginnings

Feb 232013
 

The 5 Friends project isn’t exactly new. It’s an offshoot of MOOCs and an attempt to do something about their central problem: most of us don’t know how to learn on our own. Most of us, if we’re honest with ourselves,  benefited from higher education simply because we were given assignments and due dates, and because we found ourselves in a social environment in which, to 1° or another, these assignments were important. We could’ve learned on our own, but we didn’t know how. Yes, there’s certification and all of that, but had we really learned, educated ourselves, we could’ve found a way.

dave cormier provides an instructive video on how to succeed in a MOOC; basically what five friends attempts to do is formalize (make a requirement) his advice:

Feb 222013
 

I was prepared for that. I had two paper bags, and the first of these I opened, producing a freshly cooked crab, which I placed on the table. I then challenged the class somewhat as follows: “I want you to produce arguments which will convince me that this objects is the remains of a living thing. You may imagine, if you will, that your are Martians and that on Mars you are familiar with living things, being indeed yourselves alive. But, of course, you have never seen crabs or lobsters. A number of objects like this, many of them fragmentary, have arrived, perhaps by meteor. You are to inspect them and arrive at the conclusion that they are the remains of living things. How would you arrive at that conclusion?”

Gregory Bateson Mind & Nature

The 5 in 5 Friends is not arbitrary, of course nothing is fixed, but there is a strong recommendation.  The reasons are, kindly, theoretical, or if you’re comfortable with the concept, metaphysical.  If you’re not comfortable, I’d refere you to the Wikipedia entry, which begins:

Five is the third prime number. Because it can be written as 221+1, five is classified as a Fermat prime; therefore a regular polygon with 5 sides (a regular pentagon) is constructible with compass and unmarked straightedge. 5 is the third Sophie Germain prime, the first safe prime, the third Catalan number, and the thirdMersenne prime exponent. Five is the first Wilson prime and the third factorial prime, also an alternating factorial. Five is the first good prime. It is an Eisenstein prime with no imaginary part and real part of the form 3n - 1. It is also the only number that is part of more than one pair of twin primes. Five is a congruent number. Five is conjectured to be the only odd untouchable number and if this is the case then five will be the only odd prime number that is not the base of an aliquot tree.

The number 5 is the fifth Fibonacci number, being 2 plus 3. 5 is also a Pell number and a Markov number, appearing in solutions to the Markov Diophantine equation: (1, 2, 5), (1, 5, 13), (2, 5, 29), (5, 13, 194), (5, 29, 433), … (OEISA030452 lists Markov numbers that appear in solutions where one of the other two terms is 5). Whereas 5 is unique in the Fibonacci sequence, in the Perrin sequence 5 is both the fifth and sixth Perrin numbers.

Who knew? and it runs on like that for several screens. The point being that 5 is a magic number, even if you’re a scientist or mathematician.  For the rest of us, think number of senses, holes in your head, fingers, toes, and on and on…

In other words 5 is a very important number, and we theorize that it is a critical number.  We could be wrong; a fire-team is 4, a troika is 3, and 9  old men. But we theorize 5. If you’re wondering how that relates to the opening Bateson story, or simply are wondering about the anser to the problem, you are directed to The Pattern that Connects.

Feb 222013
 

The difficulty is not on coming up new ideas, but to undo the old one. - Wonton Food Inc.

At first blush it might seem that setting out to change the world lacked a bit of humility, But it’s a matter of definition. The butterfly effect; to change oneself, to educate oneself, to think outside one self, is to change the world, and the world, not you or I, will decide the magnitude effect change.

Inquire of the oracle once again Whether you possess sublimity, constancy, and perseverance; Then there is no blame. Those who are uncertain gradually join.

 Hexagram 8: Holding Together

 Clearly, I am personally lacking on all these fronts, but the question is, indeed the project hinges on this question, can I find four compliments? In fact, I need eight; four local and four remote.  One of the potentials, I’ve been surreptitiously pitching 5F participation, said how much, as a student, he had hated group assignments, because you found yourself dependent on people with little interest and no committment. I suggested the idea that you couldn’t register for a course in groups of less than 5, which he granted might be interesting. This entire project is overrun with conflicting needs and desires. Structure vs Openness, independence vs cooperation, and at the moment my desire get this going vs the need to let things develop naturally.  I want to encourage participation, but what voice to use; I am desperate to persuade and know that the first requirement for participation is that you will not need persuading.

Fundamentally, 5F project is predicated on the successful intervention of the random; Remembering that the random is very difficult to achieve. Despite all common sense, we believe we are on to something, but explaining why we hold that belief would be like trying to explain why/how 5 = 6.

Feb 192013
 

There are 2 kinds of entities: Those who know about “b” & those who don’t know about /b/.  They both need to work it out.

In other words, if we’re proposing to use the internet for education, for anything actually, it behoves us to do a little thinking about how the internet works. If you’re on the net, it’s probably safe to assume that you know about Twitter; that we can’t say the same about 4chan should tell us something.  If much of what follows seems overtly sexual, see rule 27, well duh.

The Rules of the Internet were first posted on 4chan circa 2006, and may be based in part on The Rules of Usenet. No two sets of rules are identical. This is likely due to many /b/tards changing the rules as they pleased. According to Moot, the rules were variously invented by The Man or Gaia. The “traditional” 47 rules are available only as image (see rule 32 photoshop excepted) which is entirely appropriate.

Those applicable to 5f (according to dl) are as follows (the complete evolving list is here):

1. Do not talk about /b/.
2. You do NOT talk about /b/.
11. All your carefully picked arguments can easily be ignored.
12. Anything you say can and will be used against you.
13. Anything you say can be turned into something else. – fixed
14. Do not argue with trolls — it means that they win.
15. The harder you try, the harder you will fail.
16. If you fail in epic proportions, it may just become a winning failure.
17. Every win fails eventually.
18. Everything that can be labeled, can be hated.
19. The more you hate it, the stronger it gets.
20. Nothing is to be taken seriously.
21. Original content is original only for a few seconds before getting old.
22. Copy ‘n paste is made to ruin every last bit of originality.
23. Copy ‘n paste is made to ruin every last bit of originality.
24. Every repost is always a repost of a repost.
25. Relation to the original topic decreases with every single post.
26. Any topic can be turned into something totally unrelated.
27. Always question a person’s sexual preferences without any real reason.
28. Always question a person’s gender – just in case it’s really a man.
29. On the internet, all girls are men, and all kids are undercover FBI agents or Perverted Justice Decoys.
32. You must have pictures to prove your statements.
***34. There is porn of it, no exceptions.***
36. There will always be more fucked up shit than what you just saw.
38. No real limits of any kind apply here — not even the sky.
39. CAPSLOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL.
40. EVEN WITH CRUISE CONTROL YOU STILL HAVE TO STEER.
42. Nothing is Sacred.
43. The more beautiful and pure a thing is, the more satisfying it is to corrupt it.
45. When one sees a lion, one must get into the car.
46. There is furry porn of it. No exceptions.
47. The pool is always closed.

Feb 102013
 

I assume that one of the urtexts for our undertaking will be Stevens’ Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction which has 3 essential qualities:

  1. It must be abstract
  2. It must change
  3. It must give pleasure

Not a bad place to start. Like everything else the exact objectives are unformed and evolving, but our assumption, which we make without apology, is that learning is change or it is not learning. That it changes the learner should be obvious, but that change in one will be a change in all.  Setting out to change the world might seem to fall somewhere between naive and overreaching, but what have we got to lose and what could be more fun?

What is the abstract but the establishment of context?

Feb 102013
 

If the 5 Friends project seems even remotely interesting leave a comment, or send your contact info to [email protected]  Ideally folks will sign on in groups of 5, but right at the moment we need to build a couple of core groups so individuals are welcome. We also encourage suggestions for both structure and mechanics. We need to establish directions and decide on appropriate platforms.

2nd ThoughtsElevator Pitch

Feb 102013
 

In the latter part of my graduate carrer I started teaching a media theory class based around MTV, Aristotle’s Poetics, and DeBord’s Society of the Spectacle. After a couple of semesters Beaivis and Butthead appeared on the scene, and since their theorization of Music Television was clearly superior to mine, I decided to shift the focus of the class.  Before long my friends started suggesting that I was teaching, as they put it, “Don 101″.

On consideration, and putting the ego aside, I decided that this wasn’t an altogether bad thing. All courses are to one degree or another the story of the instructor, and the better the story, the more passionate and involved with the material the instructor is, the better that story will be.  So in a sense what I hope my portion of this course will be is Don 500/600. In other words less ego on the part of the instructor (rule 13: Anything you say can be turned into something else. – fixed), and much greater demands on all the participants. What I’m interested in is art and the internet, and how both can be used to both free us and make us, or perhaps better help us fully discover what it means to be human. The four other first responders will bring their own stories, and their own interests.

Join InWhy 5?

Feb 072013
 

This is a sort of brainstorming area; what follows are a few things that I think may be true, and many questions that we need to ask/think about, not necessarily answer, as we move forward.

What is the environment

  • We ar not selling information (what we used to define as knowledge)
  • We now have effective access to all the world’s libraries
  • These library’s are updated continuously and we have access to new material within minutes of its creation.
  • We can now publish to the Universal Library
  • Authority is now fungible

Why would you take an online course (open or revenue)?

  • Why would you drop out
  • Why would you stay
  • To what degree do you come to school to get homework & deadlines
  • To what degree is the “pack mentality” critical to hitting those deadlines
  • Is it simply the “web-rabbit-hole” that distracts you
  • Is it the perceived isolation

How do we minimize/manage faculty commitment

  • Stand up theory/education (mini-lectures)
  • Student (non-enrolled) generated content
  • Student (enrolled) generated content
  • Hybrid classes there is a f2f component & a purely online enrollment
  • In blended/hybrid classes how do we involve the online student component

How do we teach to the “C” student

  • What motivates
  • What rewards
  • How can we generate “peer-pressure”

How do we make courses meaningful/relevant

  • What does the class “accomplish” in the world
  • Who is the “audience” for the class
  • How are the “results” distributed/applied to the world

Structure:  The major inovation is that we begin to think and organize in terms of entities rather than individuals.  The military provides an example of this kind of structure.

Military: Structured from the top down, command and control

  • Fire Team  - 4
  •  Squad 8 – 13
  • Platoon 25 – 55
  • Company 80 – 225
  • Battalion 300 – 1,300
  • Regiment 1,500 – 3,00
  • Brigade 3,000 – 5,000
  • Division 10,000 – 30,000

Clandestine cells are often built from the ground up, and tend to have 4 – 8 members.  The add on is that individuals tend to belong to more thon one cell, which allows distributed control.

Open Course Structure

  • Learning Team
    • Driver/Coordinator
    • Researcher
    • Creative
    • Historian
    • Connector (is a member of a second team ta allow cross-polination
  • Topic Team
  • I’m not sure where to go from here, more thinking

Turning a large lecture into a seminar. Carl “In a large lecture you’re supposed to have lots of answers.”

SyllabusRules of EngagementOutcomes