Paul Miller, School of Everything

My really rough notes from the first presentation at #BeBettr. The usual disclaimer applies, things may be inaccurate. Plus uploaded from my iDevice, so expect mistakes (have you ever typed HTML through one of these things? Jeez).

When it comes to hacking education we’ve got nothing to lose but our metaphors. The cliches that come with childhood education are transferred to adult education. Hacking education is about reorganising it. He wants to talk about hacking the system.

Family and Kinship study from 1955. It found a poor economic world, but one rich in connections where people worked and learnt together. During the 60′s and 70′s this idea of social capital was eroded. E.g. TV has eroded our social time, the car has allowed people to ignore their neighbours.

That era might be over. Silently the city is becoming connected to the internet. The information layer as a representation of the real world is bringing people together. The School of Everything aims to do this. It brings together people who want to teach and people who want to learn.

Most of the learning they connect is one-to-one. However, they realised there was power in small group learning. E.g “Brain Trains”, peer learning on a commuter train with a study circle taking place. This was popular but didn’t survive the change to more open carriages when they were introduced.

A university is just a set of rules. We can recreate them in code. School of Everything wants to create those rules for people to work to. Hacking education is about simple interventions that change eveything. A sort of education jujitsu.

Accreditation. Can put people off. School of Everything is about learning for fun.

Biggest subjects for learning at the SoE are music, arts and crafts, languages and some tutoring of more classroom based subjects.

Posted on Friday 14 January 2011.

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