A radical high school teacher came up with the title.
Last year his class ran under his experimental class operating system in stealth mode. Howard Rheingold, Jerry Michalski, and others, myself included, have dropped by. The teacher will uncloak soon to reveal an interdisciplinary approach where students select what to learn from Open Education resources. Learning is experiential and self-directed.
We had scant time to talk because I’m under the gun completing a project but I immediately “got it” because I’d seen the same approach in business. This is Steve Denning’s concept of Radical Management applied to schools with a bit of Daniel Pink enlightenment stirred in. #1, delight the customer. #2 = see #1. Throw in the responsiveness of peer networks, the ability to prototype for pennies and ride the wave of complexity instead of fighting it.
Trust your customers/students. Empower them. You can’t lecture people into having sound values and acquiring the thinking skills to deal with complexity
Lots more to come…
Perhaps you could explain what’s fundamentally wrong with Skinner’s Box before labelling it as 2.0 with what I assume is pejorative intentions. If anything seems to be Skinner’s Box 2.0, it is Khan Academy, which seems to be Skinner’s Box combined with massive data, not MOOCs. I’m actually quite willing to give Khan Academy another 5 years to prove itself as it combines, I hope, its current approach with personalized learning paths. I truly don’t understand the post outside of a context where we are to understand “Skinner’s Box” as code for anything bad (i.e. anything Behaviourist). The other concepts mentioned I believe I have seen before, but I will have to associate them explicitly with this post to clarify the meaning, but I need to understand if the title of this post is meant as code for something we should avoid.
Peter, while I wish I had thought it up, the Skinner’s Box 2.0 is from the teacher. Nonetheless, I will own up to using it pejoratively. I am not a behaviorist. Science is illuminating a lot of things that were once in the black box.
I’m not here to denigrate Skinner but I think we have better models at our disposal than he had.
Regarding MOOCs, that’s what Wednesday’s Hangout is about.
Jay,
You truly captured the essential ingredients of Open Source Learning. Another business parallel that applies, is that self-same teacher to be named later can I believe legitimately take credit for truly introducing the concept of “pull” into the classroom ecosystem. The resulting transformative impact on learner and learning community engagement, enervation, and productivity is exponential, demonstrable, quantifiable, with unprecedented levels of student work-product output, learning engagement and learning community interaction.
Ultimately, at the heart of all of the above lies, as you pointed out above, a fundamental belief, faith and trust in the learner and learning community to take charge and embrace ownership of and responsibility for their own learning journey.