The first post I read, Digital Media & Learning Conference 2012: Learning Innovations in a Connected World by Mr. Howard Rheingold. It is about the 2012 Digital Media and Learning Conference which “explores the deeper learning that is possible by the emergence of Web-enabled, mobile-based platforms that promote new modes of peer-to-peer learning, anywhere/anytime learning, blended learning and game-based learning, both in school and out of school.” The conference will feature the four core threads: democratizing learning innovation, innovations for public education, re-imagining media for learning, and making/tinkering/remixing. The chair for the conference is Diana Rhoten. She is the senior vice president for strategy in the new Education Division at News Corp. Before the conference, Mrs. Rhoten cofounded Startl. This is a social network specializing in starting new education technology and digital learning markets.
Mr. Rheingold held an interview with Mrs. Rhoten to speak about the conference. In the interview, Mrs. Diana spoke of the need for academic researchers, practitioners, teachers, technologists, entrepreneurs and investors to join together in the cause of a learning renaissance. Mrs. Rhoten said, “We are seeking to create a diversified audience and to really be provocative in the sessions so that we can go back on some of these assumptions that are unspoken...and get these different stakeholders talking to each other...so we can start figuring out how to do this in a collaborative fashion.” She also talked about how we need to bring technology into the classroom. We need to benefit the parents and teachers because they are the future and will benefit from this advancement. She stressed we need to reform technology, but no one can do it alone. Everyone must all get together and respect the differences each other has.
I thought this article was very interesting. I have never heard of this conference, and feel that this is a very good cause. We all know that technology is very important for our students’ future
The second post I read, Learning Reimagined: Participatory, Peer, Global, Online is about his project offering a "pop-up university" experiment, Rheingold U. Mr. Rheingold holds a five week online mini-course. He has run the course four times now, with approximately 30 co-learners each time. The co-learners come from all over the world. North America, South America, Europe, Korea, and Australia their backgrounds also vary from public sector, private sector, students, and educators. The ages also vary, but they are skew older, about 20% are students, grad students, or post doctorates, and about 30% are older or retired. One thing I really like about Mr. Rheingold is that he never calls the people who sign up for the course "students." He refers to them as "co-learners." This term acknowledges collaborative learning that he desires and turns his reading group into something more exciting.
Mr. Rheingold works from the beginning of his course to persuade people that it's possible for them to learn together as a community in a more useful way than if students take responsibility only for their own learning. He uses forums, blogs, wikis, synchronous chat and video, social bookmarks, mindmaps as the foundation for the kind of active, culture of conversation, self-directed collaborative groups that bring a peer learning group to life. Blackboard Collaborate is a browser-based environment for discussion, reflection, inquiry, collaboration. The blogs are about an individual co-learners voice. In the forum, the topic of discussion is the subject matter, but in the blog the topic of discussion is the individual's reflections. All the co-learners can participate in the forums and can comment on each other's blog posts. Using these tools to try to make sense together, they are able to co-construct their learning. The last week of their course is about re-examining our learning process, reiterating the most important things they learned, and redesigning the parts of the process that didn't work.
I enjoyed Mr. Rheingold’s post and reading about his online course. I think it is a great idea for co-learners to using technology and participating in peer learning. I did wondering if he ever thought of giving credit, like college credit, to the people who take your course. The co-learners do pay tuition of $250 for the five weeks.
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