[iDC] Can DIY education be crowdsourced?

Thu Sep 8 14:42:52 UTC 2011

Some people are starting to use DIT, do it together....

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 3:33 AM, davin heckman <davinheckman at gmail.com>wrote:

> Mybe the problem is embedded in the name DIY.  I admit, I am a DIY
> kind of guy.  I think people should make things.  And I think that
> when I identify a problem, I should put my back into fixing it.
>
> But the Y stands for "yourself," which maybe means that it is
> appropriate to talk about DIY learning.  Education, on the other hand,
> carries with it some connotations of leadership, and implies that it
> is relational, and that this relation is set into motion via power
> differentials.  A person leads another person, implying that there is
> something they could be led to.  These power differentials can be
> economic, informational, epistemological, etc.  An ideal model of
> education would show respect and apply itself as strictly as possible
> to forms of knowledge that can modify that which is already known.
> Honestly, I expect a room of teenagers to know tons of really
> important stuff and I trust that they can inuitively grasp justice,
> but I doubt that they can efficiently discover how the world works
> without good tools and guidance.  I mean, look at the Tea Party, most
> of those people are in their 50s and 60s, they fancy themselves
> incredibly savvy about politics, world history, and economics....  but
> they don't know.  And many of them have taken education into their own
> hands, they read books, they go to lectures, they read white papers
> from economists, and take courses from Glenn Beck's online university.
>  They are aware that something is wrong with our political system.
> They clearly know that the U.S. government often fails to represent
> them.  They understand that opportunities for working people are
> diminishing.  They know their health care sucks.  They are beginning
> to sense that war might be an enormous waste of life and resources.
> But they are confused about how and why this is happening.  They think
> maybe it's George Soros or Hitler reincarnated or the Antichrist or
> Saul Alinksy or Big Bird.
>
> To the extent that DIY education can just be a bunch of people talking
> about what they already wanted to talk about, crowdsourcing and DIY is
> a potentially tragic combo for education.  Maybe we don't need f2f all
> the time, but we do need education to be rigorously interpersonal, and
> this interpersonal aspect needs to be directed.
>
> Now, I know that much of the scholarship and much of the anecdotal
> evidence on DIY ethics tend to acknowledge the powerful role that
> communities play in cultivating, validating, and benefitting from the
> ethos.  It is a powerful step in the life of a person to choose to
> take responsibility for the things that matter to them.  But the next
> step from personal responsibilty is the correct recognition of those
> things for which you aren't personally responsible and for those
> things which you cannot overcome on a personal basis.  DIY
> consciousness is a transitional phase to DIO (Do It Ourselves).  And,
> once we give in this idea that yourself is just one part of the
> collective set of selves, then we do step into relationships where
> reading lists, direction, leadership actually matter.  And, as a
> matter of personal preference, I like being in a seminar with students
> who are all reading the same thing and writing linear argumentative
> essays.  It is a format that I know how to use, and one which teaches
> concentration, patience, argument, and mutual respect in the pursuit
> of critical thought.
>
> On the other hand, I think good education is not about the format.
> It's about finding the places where individual desires and necessities
> and common desires and necessities converge, it is about cultivating
> an understanding that the world beyond the self is real.  And, so
> education, maybe, can only be DIY insomuch as it can transcend itself.
>
> Davin
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 2:39 AM, Jon Ippolito <jippolito at maine.edu> wrote:
> > Anya Kamenetz wrote:
> >>> What's your project?
> >
> > Brian Holmes wrote:
> >> http://messhall.org/?page_id=934
> >
> > "The first part of each session will be a course delivered by Brian
> Holmes, with readings that may be done in advance or afterwards."
> >
> > How is "delivering" a course based on assigned readings more exemplary of
> DIY education than teenagers tossing their *own* ideas back and forth, in an
> open-source environment they built themselves?
> >
> > For all his jargon, John Hopkins offered a more meaningful critique than
> glib allusions to "capitalist game robots":
> >> There is no particular need to search externally for knowledge....A
> community without any f-2-f component who attempts this generation of
> relevant knowledge promulgates an increasing degree of deeply operating
> alienation.
> >
> > Given the choice, I'd also rather meet over breakfast than over a BBS.
> But some valuable interactions require a nonlocal conversation.
> >
> > Students in rural Maine can't afford to fly to Chicago for Marx at the
> Mess Hall, but they can afford to load The Pool in their browser and debate
> ideas with students participating from the other side of the nation. In
> 2009, Ryan Page was frustrated at a state referendum repealing the first
> governor-signed law recognizing same-sex marriage. The next day in The Pool,
> Page solicited collaborators for a campaign called Documenting Bigotry,
> meant to record the statements of politicians who opposed the law, so their
> testimony could be used against them once society got around to recognizing
> the rights of all genders.
> >
> > Page's proposal inspired some astute feedback from a student at UC Santa
> Cruz using The Pool, who was sympathetic but nevertheless argued against his
> idea. Adriaan Noordzij had suffered through a similar defeat in California
> the year before (Proposition 8), but having had more time to think over,
> counselled Page to engage his opponents rather than exacting revenge on
> them.
> >
> > It is hard for me to imagine any other way the average 20-year-old Mainer
> could afford to find and converse with a fellow 20-year-old political
> strategist 3000 miles away, in the other state of the union that had just
> repealed same-sex marriage.
> >
> > Nicholas Mirzoeff wrote:
> >> Anyone that needs to ask "what has Brian Holmes done?" should go and do
> some research and not engage in flaming.
> >
> > With due respect to Brian, that may just be the most snobbish response I
> have read to date on iDC. (Brian and I can remember much more offensive ones
> from nettime ;)
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > jon
> > ______________________________
> > Still Water--what networks need to thrive.
> > http://still-water.net/
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