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As I’ve mentioned before, it is up to online communities to disrupt the oppressive status quo at conventional institutions. The same applies to our conception of currency, and how we form online “transactions.” Now that the focus among the technorati is shifting from how to monetize social media toward how to use it to create social impact, we have an opportunity to harness the meaning economy

“Abundance breaks more things than scarcity does.”

PickupPal, a ride-sharing service in Ottawa that was providing information for commuters to more easily use the service. It became so easy to use that the City of Ottawa, whose public transportation system was at risk of loosing market share, passed a law making carpooling and ridesharing unreasonably difficult to do. PickupPal was deemed “too efficient.” A local movement to save the rideshare company began and the uproar in the community caused the city to rewrite the law.

A success for college-made free online courses—except that Mr. Ziegler, who works for a restaurant-equipment company in Pennsylvania, is on the verge of losing his job. And those classes failed to provide what his résumé real ly needs: a college credential.

the recession and disappearing grant money are forcing colleges to confront a difficult question: What business model can support the high cost of giving away your "free" content?

The education oracle offers another prophecy for open courseware. "Every OCW initiative at a university that does not offer distance courses for credit," he has blogged, "will be dead by the end of calendar 2012."

I can become a better photographer simply by the sheer act of continually doing photography… heading towards the idea of 10,000 hours at doing something can get you near the “Welcome to Expertise” sign. This seems simple- I get better at something by doing it. There is no central authority, no entity that is approving what I do. If I skip a day or more, there is no punishment. It is not based on attendance. I get out what I put into it. I’m really on my own. That’s is as Personal as the Learning Environment can be, eh? But I am not completely on my own… and what I think is a key ingredient here is the feedback I get by being in a network of peers doing the same thing. It is the comments, suggestions, and even small reinforcements that others doing the same activity as me that increase or reinforce my learning, not a teacher’s.

1. The longest path is the shortest and the shortest path is the longest Essentially, if you are looking for shortcuts to learning , your end path will take more time and effort. At first the path of learning all of the basic concepts seems like a long route, but in the end, the authors argue will be shorter in the long run. 2. Avoid isolation. This not only means find online communities, but also people you can talk to or bounce ideas off of. It’s the “Learning is social” concept –“As a self-learner, you do not have the convenience of scheduled class time and required problem sets. You must be aggressive about finding people to help you.” 3. Avoid multitasking It does not mean you cannot study with music playing (I am listening to a blues show as I type) but it is important to focus solely on trying to learn a task or complete a project. 4. You don’t read textbooks, you work through them It ain’t a novel and need not be read cover to cover, or even chapter start to end- “Successful self-learners don’t read, they toil. If there are proofs, walk them through, and try proving results on your own. Work through exercises, and make up your own examples.” It’s more like exercising than reading. 5. Build Eigencourses I cannot define “eigencourse” but to me it says leverage the open content that is out there. The “eigen” part seems to mean its not all in one place, you will need to pick and choose, mix and mashup. Don;t expect a single course pack. 6. What to do when you don’t understand. This point was a bit more vague to me and aimed more at learning to code, but the idea of a “logic tree” tells me there are patterns of ways to figure out how to step back and sort out what you need to learn something you don’t get at first. Maybe it should read, “DON’T PANIC”? 7. There is nothing so practical as a good theory. The authors here suggest to not be a “theoretician” or a “practitioner” but both. “Not all textbooks can be read with application in mind, despite that they serve as the theoretical foundation for applied work. This is why you must have a deep sense of patience and commitment – which is why a prolonged curiosity and passion for a topic are so valuable… Avoid the dualistic mistakes of technical execution without intuition, and intuition without technical execution.”

Kevin Donovan had an ambition to build an open-courseware Web site, this one amid the "not-so-free culture" of Georgetown University, as one blog put it. Mr. Donovan, a junior in Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, wants to see first-class education available to the third world. He argues that open courses make sense, given Georgetown's Jesuit tradition of social responsibility. The dean of his school bought his pitch, which carries a valuable lesson for fellow student organizers: once you obtain that kind of high-level support, things get a lot easier. The open-courseware project became Mr. Donovan's summer job. Working with faculty and the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, Mr. Donovan helped put six courses online last year. He hopes to build on that start in the coming semester.

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