Final day in Austin today – last evening I had a chance to go out with Joel Greenberg, Director of Strategic Development at The Open University to listen to some music and chat about developments in the eLearning space at the Open University. A key interest of Joel’s is how we can harness the opportunities afforded through the whole social networking paradigm for the sake of education. At the OU they are actively working on creating online educational environments that resemble things like facebook, myspace and bebo etc.
It was with interest then that I read this morning on Jane’s blog about SuperCool School, a Facebook app that makes online learning social by democratizing the learning process and empowering everyone to demand, create and participate in live and interactive online classes. I haven’t had a good chance to look around it yet, so can’t really comment on what it is like – however, what appeals to me is that this is indeed evidence of what I think we’ll begin to see more of as people look to de-construct our current paradigm of classroom-based education and look for ways of democratising the experience, creating opportunities for more personalised learning to occur, where learners themselves are able to take responsibility for determining their own learning goals and tragectories, and where they may also be recognised for their expertise as ‘expert learners’, taking a role of guiding others in their learning.
3 replies on “SuperCool School”
Hi Derek,
I have been reading parts of your blog for a fair while now and thought it was about time I made a comment.
I agree that we as educators need to look at what gets the students excited and try and use these ideas for teaching. I will also be checking out supercool school. The future of education is very challenging and exciting and it’s great to be part of it.
Hopefully we get to the point where there is more individualised learning and digital learning objects can be easily accessed in a classroom situation for the individual learners needs.
Had a good squiz at SuperCool school, lots of potential. Love the way that all members can be both teachers and learners. Thanks for pointing this ‘enabler’ out !
Was just having a chat today about students’ online lives to a teacher, and will be doing a half hour PD session on bebo, facebook and myspace, just so teachers know what they look like. The comment from this teacher was whether there is an educational version of facebook – now I know where to look and what to show – It’s show and tell all over again