Education Uncut Leeds

I had planned a short presentation for today’s Education Uncut event in Leeds, but fortunately for the other participants I lost my voice had to bail out.  In any case, the presentation was essentially a series of examples of ‘open-ness’ in learning for a socia purpose that include the use of ICT. These were organised in three areas – open resources (inputs), open methods and ‘voice’ (outputs of social purpose learning). The examples are given below, but they are only that – the intention of the presentation was to sketch out some of the terrain of what is available or possible.

Resources

By resources, I mean the kind of things than can be reused and repurposed (usually, but best to check on any restrictions) in designing social-purpose learning events.

OpenLearn – the OU’s repository of open learning resources including this collection of resources under the banner ‘Participation Now: Experiments in Public Action‘. They are resources about/links to examples such as campaigns, petitions and other participation mechanisms.

iTunesU contains a wealth of freely downloadable podcasts that can be used. As many friends know, I can bore for England about how I use some of these as intelligent company when driving. . Some examples include: University of Oxford’s  Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, as well as Social Science Bites and, personal favourite, Philosophy Bites.

IFWEA YouTube channel: a collection of short videos from the International Federation of Workers’ Education Associations primarily about youth and globalisation.

Methods

There’s a plethora of methods associated in various ways with ICTs which might be of value in learning for a social purpose, including:

• hackcamps
• digital storytelling,
• participatory video,
• international study circles,
• citizen journalism
• Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs). MOOCs have been the subject of much recent debate in higher education recently (see John Daniel’s “Making Sense of MOOCs: Musings in a Maze of Myth, Paradox and Possibility“). The approach may also have potential in other contexts.

etc.

To be continued…

Outcomes