insights from keith hamon's blog

Just introduced to Keith Hamon... I'm reading through his blog,... (I went back - not to his beginning post - but to 2007) these are my top findings so far:

1. student-centered

Nicholas Negropante at Ted: The Vision Behind One Laptop Per Child

Biggest take away.... we don't learn to walk and talk and eat by being taught those things... it's all about self-teaching. Plan was to have the laptops all over by 2010...


2. gaming as a great model

James Paul Gee on grading with games..

Games give immediate feedback - the assessment and the playing are all one movement.

Huge emphasis on production rather than just consumption.

If we create learning environments that aren't like traditional school - may draw more professionals into teaching.

3. 5 friends and the wisdom of crowds
5 friends - a crowd gets smarter the larger and more diverse it becomes.

4. Tools for aggregating wisdom

....thousands of Web 2.0 tools....available ..—most for free—to help us connect/collaborate/create.... most think of spreadsheets as a business or science tool..., but consider what these four people did with it:

Collaborative Spread Sheet Art 

5. Student as professional

Hamon talking to his students: 

Step 1 ....in moving from friendship-driven networks to interest-driven networks is to learn the tools. This is an easy one, as most of you already know how to use many of the tools, and ... (for others you had heightened nerves, claiming)..I am not that great in computers, but after I created my Wiki on the class page I began to realize this is not all that hard, it is just something I am not familiar with."

Step 2 is more difficult. I'll say it bluntly: you must quit thinking of yourselves as just a student.  I am learning through this class we can't be educated because we are the education. When everyone collaborates, shares ideas, and asks questions we all become more educated and the true learning takes place.
...existing organizations resisting the movement away from traditional, hierarchical, command-and-control ways of doing things (such as universities) and toward new-age, networked, connect-and-collaborate ways of doing things. ...they are often threatened by collaborative networks. They see them as threats to their authority and control. They see collaboration as cheating. ...They just can't quite see..network structures where the network nodes (for instance, students and teachers in a university network) are both producers and consumers of learning.




left off at jan 07 intereset driven networks

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