[iDC] Discussion: The Edupunks' Guide

Tue Aug 9 10:44:12 UTC 2011

Hi Stephen,
Thank you--sincerely--for taking the time to read the guide and offer your
opinions. You even found some nice things to say!
I am sure if you took the time to write a popular guide to DIY learning, it
would be far more intellectually coherent than what I was able to produce in
the short time given me. You have, after all, been working on and
discovering these ideas for a lifetime while I have only been interpreting
and communicating about them for a few years. In fact, if you have the time,
you and some colleagues should write The Real Edupunks' Guide. I would
promote such a thing far and wide.
However. I've never read anything you've written (and yes, I've read plenty
of your writing) that would be particularly useful, comprehensible or
interesting to a bright 19 year old like Weezie, much less a 64 year old
trying to earn a community college degree, like Melvin Doran, the LearnerWeb
participant. Believe it or not, there are lots of people who don't know how
to use Google or do the most basic kind of research.
And this is also why I focus so much on cost. I come to the topic of
education from covering student loans. Simon characterizes the academy
beautifully as a welcoming place and a lever of social mobility, but it
doesn't function that way so well any more in the US because of tuition that
rises at twice the rate of inflation every year. The popular discontent with
organized education is inseparable from its rising cost.
 It is true, that building your own car doesn't save money, but changing
your own oil sure does, or even better converting your car to run on veggie
diesel. A lot of people are indeed attracted to the DIY approach initially
because of cost savings, and as they start to participate realize other
benefits or the process. I think, in the guide, I explain pretty clearly how
to start participating. I talk about forming a goal, finding a network,
approaching a mentor. It's through this kind of participation that
people--hopefully a much, much broader range of people than before--will be
drawn into the process of "becoming" that you describe so beautifully.
But when you write the real Edupunks' Guide, please don't say "Want to learn
how to make Thai food? Great! Go make some Thai food." I'm sorry, that's
just not helpful.
a

On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 8:08 PM, Stephen Downes <stephen at downes.ca> wrote:

>  Hiya Everyone,
>
> I have now had the chance to read the Edupunks' Guide
> http://www.scribd.com/doc/60954896/EdupunksGuide and can now form some
> opinions based on what I've seen. And if I were forced to summarize my
> critique in a nutshell, it would be this. Edupunk, as described by the
> putative subculture, is the idea of 'learning by doing it yourself'. The
> Edupunks' Guide, however, describes 'do-it-yourself learning'. The failure
> to appreciate the difference is a significant weakness of the booklet.
>
> Let me explain. Suppose a person wanted to learn Thai cooking. Following
> the Edupunks' Guide, she would find some recipes using Google, perhaps find
> a Khan-style course, and if very lucky, a Thai cooking Google group. I would
> recommend the Vegan Black Metal Chef series - good tunes, and good food.
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeZlih4DDNg
>
> By contract, the edupunk way is to cook Thai food, and in so doing, learn
> how to be a good chef. There's no right or wrong way to go about it - the
> main thing is to get one's hands dirty and actually learn from the
> experience. In so doing, a person might take a course, search for recipes,
> ask for help, or - in the style of the underrated film 'The Raman Girl' or
> that overrated film 'The Karate Kid' - find a mentor to show you how to
> steam noodles.
>
> Now based on the discussion that has already taken place in this iDC forum,
> I would expect Anya Kamemetz's first response to be comething along the
> lines of "I know that; I do encourage learning by doing." And no doubt
> that's what was intended, but that is not in fact what the booklet does. The
> structure and focus of the booklet is entirely toward the 'do-it-yourself
> learning' model. Here's Anya Kamenetz on learning to cook:
>
> A simple example is learning to make pizza. A few years ago, you may have
> had to take a class or at least buy a cookbook. Today you can put “how to
> make a pizza” into YouTube and within minutes, you’re watching a video that
> shows you how to fling the dough! (p. 2)
>
> But watching a video instead of watching a person (or taking a class) isn't
> what makes something edupunk. It's the act of taking matters into your own
> hands, and making pizza for yourself, instead of buying frozen or ordering
> delivery. And it's more than that: it's growing your own wheat, grinding
> your own flower, growing mushrooms and peppers, and grinding your own
> pepperoni. None of this is suggested anywhere in thge guide. Which is
> unfortunate, because it's misrepresenting what has overall been a pretty
> good movement.
>
> Kamenetz has what may only be described as a very naive understanding of
> education (including online education). Here's her representation:
>
> What DO we mean by education, exactly? There are three big buckets of
> benefit that an educational institution, like a college, historically
> provides.
> - Content - the skills and knowledge. The subjects, the majors. You could
> think of this as the “what” of education.
> - Socialization - learning about yourself, developing your potential,
> forming relationships with peers and mentors. The “how.”
> - Accreditation - earning that diploma or other proof that will allow you
> to signal your achievement to the world, and with luck get a better job. The
> “why.” (p.3)
>
> Notice how 'what we mean' by an education becomes the 'three big buckets of
> benefit' provided by educational institutions. The idea here is that if you
> can just provide these benefits for yourself, you'll be educated. And that,
> in turn, is what defines the overall structure of the booklet - section A
> focuses on the content, skills and knowledge; section B focuses on degrees
> and credentials; and section C focuses on networks, peers and mentors. And
> preceeding these, the 'DIY Educational Manual' offers seven 'how-to' guides
> to learning online.
>
> The section of the book that comes closest to what we are discussing here,
> and what could have been the most valuable contribution, is the section on
> what the DIY movement is, exactly. This, for example, is great:
>
> DIY, or Do-It-Yourself, is a movement about self-reliance and empowerment.
> DIY communities help each other get the knowledge and tools they need to
> solve problems and accomplish goals on their own without being told how to
> act or being forced to spend a lot of money. That can mean growing your own
> food, fixing your own car, publishing your own writing or putting on your
> own rock show. (p.3)
>
> That's very good. Not perfect, but very good. I wouldn't say the reason
> people embrace DIY is to save money. Often, doing things yourself can end up
> being a lot more expensive - just ask anyone who has built his own car. And
> it's not about not being told how to act. Most DIYers will take direction
> willingly, if it accords with what they are trying to do. But DIY is about
> self-reliance and empowerment, and more, it is about a passion for the
> thing, a desire to know, a desire to create or to control, a desire to get
> behind the surface appearance of things.
>
> That's why it is so disappointing to read this:
>
> In the case of DIY education, it means getting the knowledge you need at
> the time you need it, with enough guidance so you don’t get lost, but
> without unnecessary restrictions. DIY doesn’t mean that you do it all alone.
> It means that the resources are in your hands and you’re driving the
> process. (p.3)
>
> Kamenetz simply doesn't understand what 'the process' is, which is why she
> is so mistaken about what it means to say 'you’re driving the process'.
> Education isn't about 'getting the knowledge'. It's not about 'getting'
> anything, except maybe a degree (about which we'll talk below). It's about
> becoming something - whether that something is a painter, carpenter,
> computer programmer or physicist. And becoming something is so much more
> than getting the 'big buckets of benefits' from educational institutions.
>
> Now if your interest is in DIY education - that is, an interest in the
> educational process itself - then the logical next step is to do what
> edupunks have in fact done: to create and experiment with the design of
> courses online, to create their own courses. This is what Jim Groom (who
> coined the term, 'edupunk') has done with digital storytelling (ds106) - he
> has taken the idea of a traditional university course, disassembled it, and
> then inserted his students into the story telling process. His second
> version of the course - the 'summer of Oblivion' - had his student weave
> narratives in and around the narrative about 'Dr. Oblivion' he created to
> teach the course.
>
> And this is what George Siemens, Rita Kop, Dave Cormier and I have done
> over a series of six or so Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) since 2008.
> Again, we have disassembled the educational process, put the tools into the
> hands of the course participants, and then invited them to recreate the
> course along 'connectivist' principles. In offering learning this way we are
> *being* edupunk, as are the course participants who created Second Life
> environments, Google groups, concept maps and illustrations, Twitter
> hashtags, online forums, in-person meetings, and more. We in these courses
> don't learn by reading, we don't learn by accessing course materials or
> watching videos, we learn by doing, by actually *creating* the distributed
> network that eventually became these courses.
>
> Now of course, not everybody wants to learn storytelling or how to create
> an online course. People are interested in every discipline under the sun,
> and the way of approaching and learning in each discipline is unique to that
> discipline. People interested in carpentry build spice racks, then
> bookshelves, then cabins, and learn about mitre joints and toe-rails as they
> go along. People who want to be philosophers read a lot, and try tentative
> arguments in fan forums, gradually over time finding out about and being
> admitted to the insider circles where Fodor and Searle and Pylyshyn (for
> example) play.
>
> It's *hard* to learn this way; in fact, it's *harder* than going to
> college. The educational system as it is currently structured is intended to
> offer a set of short cuts - access to qualified practitioners, creation of
> custom peer networks, guided and scaffolded practice - for a certain price.
> The system isn't (as suggested in Kamenetz's booklet) about imposing sets of
> restrictions and making things more expensive. It's about offering the
> greatest reach in the shortest time. It allows those willing and able to
> invest themselves full-time to master the basics of a discipline relatively
> quickly, so they can obtain employment and begin the real learning they will
> need to undertake in order to become expert.
>
> And this is what Kamenetz simply misunderstands about traditional learning
> - that the greatest of the 'bucket of benefits' isn't provided by the
> college at all, but by the student. It is this full-time *immersion* into a
> discipline that helps someone *become* the sort of person who can, over
> time, be an expert in that discipline. You can't just get the 'benefits'
> offered by a college and somehow 'acquire' an education without that
> commitment, without that immersion, without that dedication. Kamenetz's
> version of DIY education depicts it as a quick and inexpensive short-cut --
> the exact opposite of what it actually is.
>
> Oh, and how. The seven how-to guides are each capsule examples of what I
> have been saying.
>
> Take the first section, how to "do research online" (p.7). It becomes
> pretty apparent from the advice (which begins "start with Google" and
> continues through search terms and hashtags) that by "research" Kamenetz
> means something like "find stuff." As a guide to web-search, the page might
> offer reasonable novice-level instruction (which would be quickly superseded
> by practice). As a guide to "research" it is dangerously misleading.
>
> What is research, anyways? An education in the disciplines that actually do
> research (which is, in fact, most of them) would suggest that it a
> structured method employed in order to identify causes or offer explanations
> of things. The historical researcher isn't interested simply in the fact
> that Napoleon invaded Russia in 1807, she wants to know *why* he launched
> such a dangerous undertaking, what happened, what were the causes of its
> failure, and what the experience teaches us about the French, the Russians,
> and the nature of empires in general. And that is why Tolstoy's War and
> Peace is such a remarkable work. He doesn't just tell a story, he offers a
> thesis about the great events of the time, a thesis that has been expounded
> and studies by researchers of literature.
>
> Where is any of this in Kamenetz's guide? Where is the understanding that
> research needs to have a plan and a method, that it needs to ask questions,
> and set criteria for what would constitute answers to those questions? Where
> is the distinction between different types of research, such as experimental
> research, say, and literature reviews? Shouldn't Kamenetz have advised
> people who want to research online to first learn how to research, and maybe
> suggested some examples of successful research, and places where people
> could practice their own research? No, instead we get "A successful online
> research session will leave you with 20 open tabs or windows at the top of
> your screen." (p.7) That's not advice; that's a travesty of advice.
>
> Or consider the second how-to section, "write a personal learning plan."
> Having a plan is good; having several is even better (I cannot count the
> number of times my back-up plan has become my plan!). What we are given here
> are not plans. Consider these "goals" offered as examples:
>
> “I want steady professional employment in the field of sustainability.”
> “I want to start a business that feeds my love of jewelry.”
> “I want to combine teaching English with travel.” (p.8)
>
> These barely - if at all - count as goals. Kamenetz may as well have quoted
> six-year olds and given as examples "I want to ride a rocket ship" or "I
> want to be a fireman." A goal is something concrete, with a clear indicator
> of success, typically with a time frame, and described in terms of the
> effort being undertaken.
>
> Attempting to clarify the first of the three goals given above would
> reveal, for example, that there is no such thing as 'the field of
> sustainability'. It would be necessary to describe employment as an
> environmental scientist, climate researcher, alternative energy engineer, or
> some such thing. So we would expect a goal to read something like "I want to
> qualify and obtain employment as a solar power designer by 2020."
>
> Ah, but don't take my advice here. There's a lot of good material on
> identifying and setting goals, both online and off. This guide refers to
> none of it. It's as though Kamenetz is just making this up as she goes
> along. Or maybe depending on people like Weezie Yancey-Siegel, whose
> 'learning goal' Kamenetz cites as follows:
>
> To try out more of a self-designed, experiential approach to learning.
> Along the way, I hope to create something new and spark further social
> change in the area of education, social media, global citizenship, and
> general do-gooding. (p. 10)
>
> Her 'plan' consists of watching TED videos, reading some books,
> meditatating, watching 'fictional films', and the like. We don't know why,
> for example, she supposes reading 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
> Maintenance' will help here, except that it was (maybe) recommended by
> Amazon. We don't know why she recommends viewing Nathan Myhrvold on shooting
> mosquitoes out of the sky with lasers. Her 'plan' is what most of us would
> call 'a year off'.
>
> And in fact, she is taking a year off her very traditional studies as a
> sophomore undergrad at Pitzer College in Southern California, majoring in
> International/Intercultural Studies. And her *actual* plan is to "create a
> new popular resource that I have realized does not exist at the moment. My
> hope is that my book and the varied profiles of bold 'eduventurists' will
> inspire other young people like myself to take their own leap into the
> unknown world of experiential, alternative learning."
> http://eduventurist.org/the-eduventurist-project/
>
> Should I go on? How how 'how-to' number three, "teach yourself online",
> where step number 1 and step number 4 are both "ask a question", step number
> 3 is "do some serious reading", and step number 2 is "zero in on unfamiliar
> words, phrases, symbols or expressions." Yes, there's a sidebar that says "the
> process wouldn’t be complete until he tried to do it himself" - but
> there's no sense of learning from example, learning from experience,
> iterative and scaffolded practice, experimentation, documentation and
> note-taking - all the usual accoutrements of do-it-yourself learning.
>
> Take a popular do-it-yourself instance, for example, learning to program
> online. Thousands - maybe millions - of people has taught themselves how to
> write software. The way *they* learned (the way *I* learned) does not in any
> way resemble the advice Kamenetz gives. Aspiring programmersd look at what
> other programmers have done and read the explanations (at this point
> Kamanetz should gave Google-searched for 'worked examples', but she didn't).
> They experiment with the code, changing variables, adding functions, to
> lerarn how what they do creates new outcomes. They start with something
> simple (print "Hello world") move on to something more complex ("bubble
> sort") and engaging ("game of life") long before they, say, write their own
> word processor or database software.
>
> They begin as apprentices, debugging and proposing fizes on other open
> source projects, forking and extending when they get their legs, always
> trying out and sharing their work in the public forum, critiquing and
> accepting criticism. This doesn't just teach them programming, it teaches
> them how to think like a programmer, how to measure success, how to define
> the optimal. None of this is in the programming books - it's what Polanyi
> would call 'tacit knowledge' or Kuhn would call 'knowing how to solve the
> problems at the end of the chapter'. All of which Kamenetz would know, if
> she had *researched* instead of just performing some Google searches.
>
> It's as though Kamentetz has read *about* do-it-yourself learning, online
> or otherwise, but has never *done* it, much less tried to facilitate it. The
> remaining how-to guides (there's no need to deconstruct them all) are
> equally superficial and misleading.
>
> Defending her work in the iDC discussion list, Kamenetz has turned to a
> general defense of the idea of DIY learning, and suggested that her critics
> are entrenched academics with their own interests to protect.
>
> "So who's really uncomfortable with what I'm saying and how I'm saying
> it?" she asks. "A small subset of academics. People whose paychecks are
> currently signed by the academy. People for whom the transformation of
> education is a matter of academic interest in the narrow sense--you may be
> interested in informal, uncodable and untranslatable forms of self-learning,
> Marco, but there is no indication on RateMyProfessor.com that you refuse to
> give grades or credits."
> https://lists.thing.net/pipermail/idc/2011-August/004680.html
>
> Of the names I have cited above - Groom, Cormier, Siemens, Kop - only one
> (Groom) is employed as a university professor. The rest of us - myself
> included - are employed in other endeavours (and yes, we are employed -
> there's no law saying edupunks have to be penniless bums). And of the other
> people I could cite in the same context, some are professors but the
> majority are practitioners of one sort or another - technologists,
> designers, consultants, researchers, programmers, etc. It is ironic - and
> typical - that Kamenetz would join an academics' mailing list, and then
> complain that all the members are academics.
>
> But let's look more seriously at what she is describing in these posts as
> edupunk. It appears to be, "how to get a degree quickly." The 'why' from
> above. She writes (ibid), "For a large proportion of people right now--as
> for a large proportion, if not the entirety, of the people on this
> list--that journey will include earning a credential from a recognized
> institution." She observes "the American Association of State Colleges and
> Universities,
> and some people in the Department of Ed, and not a few community college
> leaders across the country, have been quite friendly to what I'm saying."
> And "Government cuts to higher education are the reality of the world we
> live in, and DIY approaches can help maximize the resources that remain."
>
> She is free to hold he views, but that's not edupunk - it's not punk of any
> sort. It's establishment thinking combined with a good dose of offloading
> costs. Maybe it's good educational advice (it's not... but I digress) but it
> is definitely not edupunk. It's not even a good - or particularly informed -
> discussion of learning in the 21st century.
>
> I don't want to conclude by recommending my own work, but I will, because
> Kamenetz is obviously not familiar with any of the ideas and trends
> characterizing edupunk, do-it-yourself, informal, online, or community-based
> learning. Accordingly, I offer 'The Future of Online Learning - Ten Years
> On' as a comprehensive summary and insight into the technologies and trends
> she is trying to describe.
>
> http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2008/11/future-of-online-learning-ten-years-on_16.html
>
> -- Stephen
>
>
>
> --
>
>  Stephen Downes
>  Research Officer, National Research Council Canada
> 100 rue des Aboiteaux, Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada E1A 7R1
> Website: http://www.downes.ca ~ Email: stephen at downes.ca
>
> _______________________________________________
> iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (
> distributedcreativity.org)
> iDC at mailman.thing.net
> https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc
>
> List Archive:
> http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
>
> iDC Photo Stream:
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/
>
> RSS feed:
> http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc
>
> iDC Chat on Facebook:
> http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647
>
> Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag iDCref
>

-- 
*New ebook!** *The Edupunks'
Guide<http://www.scribd.com/doc/60954896/EdupunksGuide>
*
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>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/attachments/20110809/760c2e71/attachment-0001.htm 