April 17, 2012 1 Comment

TEDxMuskegon: A Recipe for Free Range Learning

I just realized I never posted the Recipe for Free Range Learning video from TEDxMuskegon.  You can watch the video or you can read a rough transcript of the talk, posted below.

Here’s the text this talk was based on …

“Free range learning” describes the learning that takes place outside of the formal boundaries of education. I’ve been asked if the existence of “free range learning” implies that there is also some sort of “caged learning” as well. Well, the current U.S. education system was developed in the industrial era using the principles of a “factory model.” So, in a sense, you could call formal education a sort of “caged” system of learning, but [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Future of Learning, Learn This Button, Motivation and Behavior, Personal Learning, Science of Learning Tagged: ,
August 29, 2011 2 Comments

Ignite on the Learn This Button

After this presentation, my husband told me it was the best one he has ever seen me do.  The Ignite format is 5 minutes, 20 slides, 15 seconds each.  Please watch, and if you want to see Socrait get built, please forward it to everyone you know, post it on Facebook, share it on Twitter and GooglePlus.  Thanks :)

Ignite Great Lakes: Where’s the Learn This Button?

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Filed Under: Edge of Learning, Future of Higher Ed, Futuring, Learn This Button, Managing the Information Stream Tagged:
August 18, 2011 Leave a Comment

Remembering What You’ve Read

While trying to get all my Kindle devices in re-sync (iPad, Kindle, Android, Laptop, and Desktop), I discovered a feature of the browser-based Kindle app that I wasn’t aware of.

Remember the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve?  In 1885, Ebbinghaus showed that we need repeated exposure to information to store it in biological memory … and pretty much we’ve been forgetting things ever since.

I try to build reflection into my learning routines (to take advantage of the Ebbinghouse curve) by doing things like rereading my tweets and the end of the week, organizing ideas into mindmaps, and composing blog posts that bring together ideas.  This Kindle Browser feature helps with that (at least, it will if you remember to use it).

“Daily Review is a tool to help you review and remember the most significant ideas from your books.  It shows you flashcards with either your highlights and notes or the popular highlights from one of your books.  Only books that you have marked as “read” are eligible for review, and Daily Review will take you through all of your read books, one per day.”

The Kindle Daily Reader is getting closer to what I would want Socrait to do, but it’s missing the recall portion.  This app provides the highlights or notes that you have marked important, but you only process them as recognition items.  I still think a forced recall from memory would be more powerful.  Nonetheless, kudos to Kindle for building in this feature … now when can I have it on my Android App?  :)

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Filed Under: Digital Life, Learn This Button, Managing the Information Stream, Personal Learning, Reading Tagged:
July 8, 2011 1 Comment

Learn This Button World Future 2011

Yesterday I spoke at the Education Summit of the World Future Society 2011 Conference about the idea for SOCRAIT (a vision for an education future where learning is personal).  Thanks to an audience member from the front row for volunteering to record the talk.

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Filed Under: Edge of Learning, Future of Higher Ed, Futuring, Learn This Button, Managing the Information Stream Tagged:
November 29, 2010 1 Comment

What is SOCRAIT?

SOCRAIT is my name for the SRSLS (spaced-repetition socratic learning system) that we need to push learning into the digital age.  The name SOCRAIT (pronounced so-crate) is a play on Socratic (because it’s based on Socratic questions), it contains SOC for social, AI for artificial intelligence, and IT for information technology.

Since July,  I have been preoccupied with this idea.   Many technology and learning experts who have read or talked with me about SOCRAIT have told me that they believe that our learning future has to at least look something like SOCRAIT.  They say (and I agree) that the simplicity of it just makes it feel “right.”  In fact, it’s such a simple idea, that I spent the last four months wondering if I was crazy – after all, if you’re the only one with the idea, then there must be something wrong with it, right?  As more people read the article and prodded at its weaknesses, the idea grew more robust.  The text of my article, The World is my School: Welcome to the Era of Personalized Learning, published today in The Futurist (read it as a PDF or read it online) has been finalized for some time, and at this point, I could probably write another article just about the game layer that SOCRAIT will need.

Now I need your help.  Someone or some company needs to step forward and build SOCRAIT.  I’ve pursued as many avenues as I could, but as a community college professor from an obscure city in recession-occupied Michigan, it’s hard to get taken seriously.  So, here’s your assignment:

  1. Read the article (the whole thing).  You can’t stop halfway, or you’ll get the wrong impression.  Every sentence matters.  Print it and read it.
  2. Agree or disagree, please share your thoughts and ideas (and if you have a public space, please use it) … tweet, blog, write, discuss.
  3. Send the article on to others through email, Facebook, and discussion forums.

If you believe in the power of a new way of learning (even if it doesn’t turn out exactly like SOCRAIT), please help me spread a new (positive) vision for what education could look like in the future.  Thanks!

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Filed Under: Edge of Learning, Future of Higher Ed, Futuring, Learn This Button, Learning Analytics, Managing the Information Stream Tagged: