[iDC] Can DIY education be crowdsourced?

Anya Kamenetz anyaanya at gmail.com
Wed Sep 7 20:30:44 UTC 2011


I don't think it's flaming to ask people to speak constructively and even
ground in their own experience when criticizing the work of others. Mess
Hall does look very cool.
a

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 4:24 PM, Nicholas Mirzoeff <nmirzoeff at gmail.com>wrote:

> Anyone that needs to ask "what has Brian Holmes done?" should go and do
> some research and not engage in flaming.
>
> Nicholas Mirzoeff
> Department of Media, Culture and Communication,
> NYU,
> 239 Greene St, 7th floor
> New York, NY 10012
> Blog: http://nicholasmirzoeff.com/RTL
> News: http://nicholasmirzoeff.com/news
> The New Everyday: http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/tne
>
> On Sep 7, 2011, at 3:43 PM, Anya Kamenetz wrote:
>
> Well, if you're going to toss about words like "builder", "maker," and
> "naive",
> John Bell has built a tool and platform for learning, which we're currently
> discussing to generate new ideas.
> Phillipp Schmidt has made a tool and platform for learning, which I'm
> currently participating on.
> Neither of them are corporate.
> What have you built to make the Internet better for radical education?
> What's your project?
> a
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 3:23 PM, Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift at gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
>> I don't have any such orthodoxy. I just have an opinion on your apparent
>> naivete. The Internet is good for a lot of things, but as time goes by,
>> more and more of them are corporate. To make it good for radical
>> education is actually a project that interests me. However, the
>> discussion in this thread just replicates the protocols of Web 2.0
>> infotainment, a narcissistic hook and a very superficial format for
>> learning. Let the maker and the user beware.
>>
>> best, Brian
>>
>> On 09/07/2011 01:56 PM, Anya Kamenetz wrote:
>> > Brian,
>> > doesn't your participation on this email list violate your orthodoxy of
>> > the skin-to-skin holy transmission of knowledge?
>> > a
>> >
>> > On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 2:20 PM, Brian Holmes
>> > <bhcontinentaldrift at gmail.com <mailto:bhcontinentaldrift at gmail.com>>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >     This is a timely subject just as public education is getting axed
>> all
>> >     over the world. It will be the final victory of the bosses: without
>> >     books, without attention span, without ideas except those piped in
>> by
>> >     the media and above all without others, control will be complete.
>> >
>> >     You'll get the source without the crowd, perfect sterility.
>> >
>> >     I submit that the chance to escape from total fear and submission
>> >     depends on having some contact to another speaking body in the room.
>> >
>> >     But probably the apolitical designer types can get two or three
>> weeks
>> >     work making edu-sites for future capitalist game robots!
>> >
>> >     good luck, BH
>> >
>> >     On 09/06/2011 11:13 AM, John Bell wrote:
>> >      > Yes, I think identifying and distinguishing types of peers is an
>> >      > important aspect of the kind of system I'm talking about.  The
>> part
>> >      > that's problematic is--without falling back on external
>> validation
>> >      > like degrees and academic positions--figuring out which people
>> are
>> >      > which type, and what the scope of the types are.  For example, I
>> just
>> >      > did something similar for a proposal as part of the
>> >      > Mozilla+Journalism project where I was trying to identify
>> commenters
>> >      > with expertise in different fields so they could add annotation
>> to
>> >      > mass media articles.  In that system a commenter could claim a
>> level
>> >      > of expertise when they made a comment and a trust metric would
>> adjust
>> >      > their long-term credibility based on how other users rate that
>> >      > comment.  It's a refinement of the old Slashdot karma model, but
>> one
>> >      > that seems useful in this situation.
>> >      >
>> >      >
>> >     (
>> http://www.nmdjohn.com/2011/08/05/moznewslab-week-4-pitching-reposte/
>> >      > if anybody is curious.)
>> >      >
>> >      > But I think there are limits to how much participation can be
>> >      > incentivized without ending up back at cash, which I suspect
>> >      > introduces its own problems.  Look at the situation with
>> Wikipedia
>> >      > where they rewarded participation by turning users into
>> bureaucrats,
>> >      > creating a system that's often accused of being petty and
>> detrimental
>> >      > to the health of the project.  Amazon's biggest reviewer is
>> widely
>> >      > regarded as untrustworthy by people who know who she is, writing
>> >      > reviews of books that she clearly hasn't read (those who don't
>> >      > recognize her of course don't know this, and Amazon doesn't
>> expose
>> >      > enough information for casual users to reach that conclusion on
>> their
>> >      > own).
>> >      >
>> >      > So the question I'm left with is how to create incentives that go
>> >      > beyond status in the internal community.  Can external incentives
>> be
>> >      > used without creating the equivalent of Warcraft gold farmers?
>>  What
>> >      > would they be?
>> >      >
>> >      > - John
>> >      >
>> >      > On Sep 5, 2011, at 6:02 PM, Anya Kamenetz wrote:
>> >      >
>> >      >> Really interesting stuff, John! Definitely agree with you on the
>> >      >> "necessary but not sufficient" formulation.
>> >      >>
>> >      >>>> But the issue we’d like to discuss with the list is what a
>> >      >>>> system with the same goals--ongoing, deep evaluation of
>> complex
>> >      >>>> learning--would look like if it were designed to work on the
>> >      >>>> same scale as, say, the Khan Academy.  Is peer feedback
>> >      >>>> sufficient to meet those goals?  If so, quality would somehow
>> >      >>>> need to be controlled so that it doesn’t turn into a stream of
>> >      >>>> YouTube comments, and if not some other method would have to
>> be
>> >      >>>> used to deal with large volumes of students.
>> >      >>
>> >      >> What strikes me is that there are different types of peers--some
>> >      >> peers perhaps more equal than others. In a community of practice
>> >      >> model there are fellow beginners, who have one type of feedback
>> to
>> >      >> offer, then there are people just ahead of you--like the
>> sophomore,
>> >      >> junior, senior to your freshman, who have a different type of
>> >      >> feedback (less grounded in immediate understanding of what
>> you're
>> >      >> going through and more grounded in knowledge and experience),
>> and
>> >      >> then graduate student/TA/professor with a more sophisticated
>> >      >> offering still.
>> >      >>
>> >      >> One can imagine a scalable system that incentivizes feedback
>> >      >> according to the experience and sophistication of the person
>> >      >> offering it, and thus its likely value to the user. Maybe it's a
>> >      >> "freemium" model where learners give and receive feedback freely
>> as
>> >      >> a condition of participation up to a certain level of
>> experience,
>> >      >> and the most experienced participants receive other kinds of
>> >      >> incentives (even money?) in exchange for offering the most
>> >      >> detailed, sophisticated, time-consuming forms of feedback. I
>> often
>> >      >> think back to my summer studying capoeira where the most
>> >      >> experienced students took on more and more responsibilities
>> >      >> instructing the beginners, as an honor--but only the mestre gets
>> >      >> paid.
>> >      >>
>> >      >> Of course there are other technological ways of encouraging
>> quality
>> >      >> control on a large system that depends for its value on freely
>> >      >> offered feedback. These are all over the net. TripAdvisor,
>> Amazon,
>> >      >> eBay, Quora, Yelp are all good examples--Yelp in particular,
>> again
>> >      >> for the way it incentivizes its best providers of feedback,
>> making
>> >      >> them a recognized part of a community, allowing the raters to
>> earn
>> >      >> ratings. LinkedIn with its endorsement structure another one to
>> >      >> look at. Maybe you need a system of badges, tags or profile
>> >      >> keywords so you can ask a native Brazilian to read your
>> Portuguese
>> >      >> paper or a nationally ranked chess player to check out your game
>> or
>> >      >> someone with a stellar Github rating to look at your code. a
>> >      >
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>> >
>> > --
>> > *New ebook!** *The Edupunks' Guide <http://edupunksguide.org/>*
>> > 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>
>> >
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>
>
>
> --
> *New ebook!** *The Edupunks' Guide <http://edupunksguide.org/>*
> 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>
>
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>


-- 
*New ebook!** *The Edupunks' Guide <http://edupunksguide.org/>*
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>
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