Fri, Feb 12, 2010 Weather - It seems that schooling's relationship with money is a broken one. The corporate presence in schools and that interference is something that's well-noted. Schools are in place to model people into a certain type of person, and this interference seems like it's pretty well-suited to suit the ones funding the whole thing. To me, the paths of knowledge you're talking about all seem to be pointing towards ones that are advantageous to those who make more money (The hierarchy).
Olena - I'm not sure what my idea is entirely, either. I guess the first thing to do is to set a more exact scope for this - Widely, the idea I've got is something that covers everything school is supposed to, as a workable alternative that surpasses the teaching potential of the current public education system on many levels. This means something that people will want to go to instead. It's one which avoids certain aspects of school that are demonstrably faulty and non-conducive to learning potential, while adding aspects which current schools do not take advantage of. A project like this would also have to include a target audience, and that's something which would have to also be discussed as part of the scope. Multiple volunteers with a wide range of creative skills would have to drop a lot of time into this, and a focus on creativity would also have to be present for way to many reason to list without digressing heavily.
The school systems in place already have options to migrate whole courses into the online realm. This raises another question, is the concept of a linear "course" a good thing or can we break it down and think of something that works better? I'm thinking that a lot of experimentation would have to be done with this, but where's some experimentation which has already shown a lot of potential? I'm sure a lot of already existing alternative schools have a lot to offer in terms of inspiration - The open source/democratic aspect, non-linearity, and creativity aspects of this growing idea certainly have their antecedents in currently implemented alternatives which have decades of history behind them.
Really, though, I think that just 2 properties that would make such a project a success would have to be that it holds attention better than school, and yet teaches better than school.
Weather - It seems that schooling's relationship with money is a broken one. The corporate presence in schools and that interference is something that's well-noted. Schools are in place to model people into a certain type of person, and this interference seems like it's pretty well-suited to suit the ones funding the whole thing. To me, the paths of knowledge you're talking about all seem to be pointing towards ones that are advantageous to those who make more money (The hierarchy).
Olena - I'm not sure what my idea is entirely, either. I guess the first thing to do is to set a more exact scope for this - Widely, the idea I've got is something that covers everything school is supposed to, as a workable alternative that surpasses the teaching potential of the current public education system on many levels. This means something that people will want to go to instead. It's one which avoids certain aspects of school that are demonstrably faulty and non-conducive to learning potential, while adding aspects which current schools do not take advantage of. A project like this would also have to include a target audience, and that's something which would have to also be discussed as part of the scope. Multiple volunteers with a wide range of creative skills would have to drop a lot of time into this, and a focus on creativity would also have to be present for way to many reason to list without digressing heavily.
The school systems in place already have options to migrate whole courses into the online realm. This raises another question, is the concept of a linear "course" a good thing or can we break it down and think of something that works better? I'm thinking that a lot of experimentation would have to be done with this, but where's some experimentation which has already shown a lot of potential? I'm sure a lot of already existing alternative schools have a lot to offer in terms of inspiration - The open source/democratic aspect, non-linearity, and creativity aspects of this growing idea certainly have their antecedents in currently implemented alternatives which have decades of history behind them.
Really, though, I think that just 2 properties that would make such a project a success would have to be that it holds attention better than school, and yet teaches better than school.