The Occupy Learning posts are truly amazing … such a huge improvement. We have shared them around campus and on Twitter to lots of people and the feedback has been very positive.
Today we are going to explore the web as a learning space and as a platform to extend the walls of the classroom. To that end we are going to do some relatively different kinds of things today. We’ll open with a reflection of your Occupy Learning posts that we will record and share openly … we’d like to design an assignment for the open web and invitation for others to join the Occupy Learning movement (yeah, I just called it a movement). Speaking of it as a movement, how would we construct this so that it does emerge as a social movement? Should we “brand” the rooms we’ve occupied with codes that allow people to instantly be taken to the posts? Should we have t-shirts? Perhaps that should be an explicit expectation of the larger assignment?
We’ll then introduce you to the Cluetrain Manifesto and ask you to read the introduction and 95 theses. In your teams you will pull out the three that resonate most with your teams and post them along with a reflection of the web as a learning space. You’ll want to frame that around the things we’ve been reading. You’ll then come back and share your posts.
To help frame up the web as a learning platform we’d like you to watch two of Michael Wesch’s videos. Dr. Wesch is an Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology and is the Coffman Chair for Distinguished Teaching Scholars at Kansas State Unviersity. His award winning videos have been viewed millions of times. He was the keynote speaker for the 2010 PSU TLT Symposium as well. The first is from five years ago called, “Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us”
The second Wesch video is a little newer and is titled, “A Vision of Students Today.”
In Class
- Reflection on Occupy Learning
- Design an open assignment inviting the web to participate in Occupy Learning
- Read the Cluetrain Manifesto introduction and the 95 theses
- Post a reflection of the three theses that matter most to your team relating them to the themes of the course
- Present posts and open discussion
For Next Week
- Read Wenger pages 164-187
- Chapter 11, by Jim Slotta from, “Classrooms of the Future” … posted in Yammer
Occupy Assignments for Two Weeks Out
- Team Dragon will occupy 8 Mueller
- Team Tiger will occupy 202 Chambers