'Everyone is a Ragged University - a unique and distinct body of knowledge, accredited by their life experience with a membership of one'
6th Feb 2014: COOCs and the Rhizome; A World Where Everyone Is A Teacher And Knowledge Is Up To You by Peter Shukie
Come along to the Castle Hotel on the 6th of February at 7pm for a bite to eat and listen to Peter talk about Community Open Online Courses…
Table of Contents
Title of talk:
COOCS, a world where everyone is a teacher and knowledge is up to you
Bullet points of what you would like to talk about:
Nomadic wanderings – rhizomatic learning ideas
Technology as a liberator
Popular Education and informal education
COOCS – a community of knowledge sharing where everyone can teach, everyone can learn
A few paragraphs on your subject:
The idea that the internet is changing everything, that all levels of living are now undergoing transformation, that we are in the midst of a revolution, is nothing new. Are we blasé about significant and widespread change? Is transformation and revolution the new everyday and normal?
I won’t really be answering these questions, but I will be looking at how one aspect of technology, learning and education, CAN realise a form of revolution. Often the concept of 21st now plugged in, the teacher is on Skype, the textbook has become an ipad. Often the model seems just the same, like an episode of the Jetsons, the technology is different but the ways we teach, learn, live are not really any different.
I want to talk about COOCS (Community Open Online Courses), a model with beliefs similar to Ragged University: that all of us can be involved at all levels of learning; that all of us have something worth sharing in order to make a better place (I’d say a better world, but it gets a bit Miss World like, and we only really can change our place – at least to begin with!).
A few paragraphs about you:
I am Peter Shukie and I have spent many years in different ways doing different things with much of this involving learning. I have been a student, I have been a teacher, and I am currently exploring what either term means for me and hoping to share that with you. I started as a paid member of the educational order as an English Teacher in Greece and worked in Adult Literacy in the UK for a good while.
Now I am teaching at a University Centre and doing more study, the sort of study that costs money and never ends! I work at Blackburn University Centre and study at Lancaster University but I learn in many more places. I have realised that the more we look to institutions for answers, the more they think they can provide them. Thankfully, the internet has opened up many avenues for exploration and I will be using some of these to give a story of learning that involves everyone, especially you.
What free internet knowledge resources do you use?