Learning Pirates - Learn freely on the open web. Knowledge is yours for the taking!

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Welcome !

We are students in the Designing New Learning Environments MOOC (Stanford Venture Lab) taught by Paul Kim: Chief Technology Officer and Assistant Dean, School of Education, Stanford University.

Learning Pirates Team 16626

Mission Statement

We've created an international online learning laboratory where learners and educators of all ages can come together in an online, self-regulated and collaborative learning community with the intent to learn and develop 21st century skills including, but not limited to :

Critical thinking and problem solving

Collaboration across networks and leading by influence

Agility and adaptability

Initiative and entrepreneurialism

Effective oral and written communication

Accessing and analyzing information

Curiosity and imagination

Empathy

Our mission empower a generation of learners and educators and help them prepare for the inevitable paradigm shift in education and in society as a whole. Each person can and must take responsibility and ownership of their education by using free, open-source tools to gain the knowledge, skills and networking abilities they will need to thrive in the information age.

The only requirement to join the Learning Pirates Fellowship is an open and curious mind, a will to learn something new and a strong desire to share, collaborate and be of service to the greater good.

Martin Daumiller - München, Bayern, Deutschland

Student, who is interested in too many fields and discovered learning as one of the biggest pleasures in life.

Aiste Sidlauskaite - Leiden, Zuid-Holland, The Netherlands

A professional the field of online Master’s education, who holds a MSc in Public Administration, and is very passionate about new educational opportunities.

Yanik Falardeau - Val-David, Quebec, Canada

Mother, artist and former IT Project Manager currently using techno pedagogy to provide an open-source education for my 9 year old digital native.

Inspiration:
Khan Academy - their mission is to provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere.
http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/youtube-for-schools - Example for an Viral Youtube Video, promoting its use in school
http://hastac.org/blogs/slgrant/2012/03/01/researchers-introduce-new-model-learning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_Century_Skills

The Future of Learning, Networked Society - Ericsson

STOP STEALING DREAMS: Seth Godin at TEDxYouth@BFS

Educating for Freedom :Zoe Weil at TEDxYouth@BFS Critical thinking

The Global Transformation in Education (Updated)

7 Skills students need for their future

Rethinking Learning: The 21st Century Learner | MacArthur Foundation

Does School kills creativity - ken robinson - YouTube.flv

Accessibility

Google services http://www.google.ca/accessibility/
Wifi hotspots Une île sans fil http://www.ilesansfil.org/welcome/

Friday, December 14, 2012

The rationale

What are the needs of 21st century learners?

Dr. Tony Wagner, co-director of Harvard's Change Leadership Group talks about the 7 skills 21st century learners must develop and master in order to survive and thrive in the new economy.

Although Governments, administrators, school boards, Principals and Teachers are moving in the right direction, the general consensus in educational circles online is that many, if not most teachers do not master the technological tools or possess 21st century skills themselves thus making it difficult for them to provide timely and accurate information to their students.

Given the rigidity of the structures current educational models as well as the current trend of standardized testing, teachers often lack the resources, time and technical support they need to implement 21st century tools, learning and evaluation techniques in their classrooms or schools.

It may take a decade for formal institutions to embrace the new reality and implement the necessary changes to educational environments. We believe it is urgent to usher in a new paradigm. All the tools we need are already freely available, but we need to learn to work together in order to truly create a new educational model.

While it is important and relevant to conduct exhaustive studies on the new educational models it is equally important to quickly start testing new methods and gaining experience now.

In order to create new models, we must first ask ourselves : What school for?

Millions of people use social networks every day. According to a study conducted by Joanna Brenner of the Pew Internet and American Life Project in November 2012, 69% of online adults, on average, use social networks. If we consider only people who are between 18-29 that number soars to 98%.

40% of cellphone users visit social networks on their phone and 28% of them use it daily.
Source : Pew Internet and American Life Project

Google Plus

As of December 2012, G+ has 500 million registered users of which 235 million are active on a monthly basis.

Source : Wikipedia

Facebook

Facebook has over one billion active users and more than half of them use Facebook from their mobile device.

Source : Wikipedia

YouTube

Over 800 million unique users visit Youtube each month. 72 hours of video are uploaded every minute. YouTube is localized in 43 countries and features videos across 60 languages. More than 50% of videos are commented on each day.

Source YouTube Press Statistics
There has never been a time in history in which networking, online collaboration and learning has been so accessible and universal.

Our educational model aims to use existing (free) network infrastructures to connect with people where they congregate and socialize and create a self-regulating open-source learning laboratory where we can begin to learn, experiment with and master the 21st century skills we need to thrive and contribute to the greater good.

What is school for?

What is school for?

Seth Godin is a master when it comes to reframing problems and asking the right questions. In this recent TED talk, Mr Godin asks us what school is for and riffs on how we will not be able to take an evolutionary leap till we can all agree on the answer to that question.

Link YouTube : Seth Godin TEDx Talk at the Brooklyn Free School.

Wikipedia tells us that :

A school is an institution designed for the teaching of students (or "pupils") under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is commonly compulsory.

Source : Wikipedia

Learning Pirates believe that learning is ours for the taking and we reject the notion that education can have a one-size-fits all, standardized approach.

We believe that students need to learn how to learn.

We believe students should be encouraged to ask questions, reframe problems and find their own answers.

We believe education should be personalized.

We believe we should measure results, not how much a person can memorize.

We believe that students should be allowed and encouraged to find study the topics they are passionate about.

We believe that we need to become informed citizens and

We believe that learning takes place everywhere and especially outside of formal institutions and schools.

We believe that we should be teaching students to stand out and get creative instead of teaching them how to conform and fit into the system.

We believe in Communitagogy where teachers are more like mentors and guides who help students to ask better questions and figure things out for themselves.

We believe that each person must take responsibility for their education and that they must explore, experiment, try, fail and try a new approach in order to learn.

We believe that we are all students, and we are all teachers. We all have something to learn from each other and we will make the world a better place once we learn to share what we've learned.

We believe that school should be a place where students can learn at their own rhythm.

We believe in personalized and student-led learning.

We believe that all the tools we need to educate the planet are already at our disposal.

We believe we need to build bridges between nations and between people.

We can no longer wait for our institutions to catch up to the real world.

We believe we are the change we have been waiting for.

Now, what skills are most essential in the Information age?

Changing educational paradigms: Are we ready?

The Learning Pirates are ready to usher in new learning environments.

Sir Ken Robinson eloquently describes how our current educational system is shaped around the interests of industrialization and how it has been created in its image.

In our current educational system, dropout rates are sky high, bullying is rampant , Ritalin is often used to encourage children to comply in school and suicide rates jump for children and young adults. In fact, suicide is the third leading cause of death for youth between the ages of 10 and 24. Considering that young people in these age groups spend the majority of their time in school, it's quite clear that we need a revolution in education.

Our current educational models do not provide students with sufficient opportunities to develop 21st century skills, This isn't due to a lack of good teachers in our schools, but rather to an outdated system that no longer serves our best interests.

It's time to change the paradigm. But first, we must ask ourselves: What is school for?