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The Sudbury Valley School has, for the past forty years, been the best-kept secret in American education.

Professors of education ignore it, not out of malice but because they cannot absorb it into their framework of educational thought.

Adults do not control children's education; children educate themselves.

“A culture of sharing resources and practices will help facilitate change and innovation in education” (OER Commons, 2011).

Open access initiatives to make research publications freely available online or the adoption of open source software solutions, such as Moodle or Mahara, are already having a big impact on education.

This two-day conference focuses on the impact of adopting openness as a key principle in education.

Writers Jane Austen, novelist. She left school at the age of 11. William Shakespeare, playwright, poet. Only a few years of formal schooling. Mark Twain, printer, riverboat pilot, prospector, newspaper reporter, humorist, author of the first great American novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Left school in fifth grade.

Presidents Abraham Lincoln, lawyer, U.S. president. Finished barely a year of formal schooling. He self-taught himself trigonometry (for his work as a surveyor) and read Blackstone on his own to become a lawyer. Martin Van Buren, U.S. president. Little formal education. Began studying law at the age of 14 while apprenticing at a law firm. George Washington, U.S. president, general, plantation owner. Ended his education after a few years of elementary school. Andrew Jackson U.S. President, lawyer. Little formal education; Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazilian president. With a fifth grade education only, he shined shoes on the streets of Sao Paulo as a kid but later became a steelworker union leader. Scientists Albert Einstein, Nobel prize-winning physicist, discoverer of the General and Special Theories of Relativity. He left school at 15.

Writers Jane Austen, novelist. She left school at the age of 11. William Shakespeare, playwright, poet. Only a few years of formal schooling. Mark Twain, printer, riverboat pilot, prospector, newspaper reporter, humorist, author of the first great American novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Left school in fifth grade.

Too often, we place technologies in the forefront, which end up obscuring authentic knowledge formation.

Our knowledge-based societies demand a deeper change in our culture of teaching, and, particularly, in the ways in which we learn (and unlearn).

We need to rethink and explore all the “invisible” (non-formal, non-certified, but equally relevant) ways of learning in a world where personal knowledge development, comprised of both tacit and explicit elements, is rapidly becoming more valuable than commodified, industrial-style information delivery.

The most profound technologies are those that disappear.

school teachers are no longer the primary means to knowledge, but should act as a coaches or curators, rather than broadcasters.

Now in the age of digital media, the best content and the best people to teach, co-learn and share with are accessible on the network, making centralized models less efficient.

The phones have also helped create a teaching style that the faculty refer to as “mobile-enhanced inquiry-based learning” — combining mobile phones and a learning theory that teaches through experimentation and questioning

In many ACU classes, one component of mobile implementation is lecture podcasts, which allow students to consume much of the information typically delivered in the classroom on their own time and in their own dorm rooms.

The result thus far is BioBook, a device-agnostic, peer-written, node-driven text. In other words, it’s like Wikipedia on steroids.

Informal learning accounts for over 75% of the learning taking place in organizations today

Formal learning includes the hierarchically structured school system that runs from primary school through the university and organized school-like programs created in business for technical and professional training.

Informal learning describes a lifelong process whereby individuals acquire attitudes, values, skills and knowledge from daily experience and the educational influences and resources in his or her environment, from family and neighbors, from work and play, from the market place, the library and the mass media.

La inmediatez, la rápida difusión global y la interactividad en tiempo real que brindan las TIC están cambiando nuestra cultura a una gran velocidad y, en consecuencia, introducen nuevos interrogantes y desafíos en la educación. Sin embargo, el ámbito educativo parece no haber recogido de manera esencial esta transformación.

A know­mad is what I term a no­madic knowl­edge worker –that is, a cre­ative, imag­i­na­tive, and in­no­v­a­tive per­son who can work with al­most any­body, any­time, and any­where

Know­mads can in­stantly re­con­fig­ure and re­con­tex­tu­al­ize their work en­vi­ron­ments, and greater mo­bil­ity is cre­at­ing new op­por­tu­ni­ties.

What hap­pens when the in­vest­ment banker sit­ting next to the ar­chi­tect have a con­ver­sa­tion? What new ideas, prod­ucts, and ser­vices might be cre­ated?

The insanely irresponsible advertising for BlackBoard 8 suggests that Academic Suite release 8.0 will “enhance critical thinking skills” and “improve classroom performance.” What LMS can do this? What Web 2.0 tool can do this? This is total bullshit, how can they make such an irresponsible claim? These things are not done by technology, but rather people thinking and working together. Our technology may afford a unique possibility in this endeavor by bringing disparate individuals together in an otherwise untenable community, yet it doesn’t enhance critical thinking or improve classroom performance, we do that, together.

The learning happens not as a by-product of the technology, it is, or rather should be, the Raison d’être of the technology. The teaching and thinking happen within the medium of texts, videos, film, images, art, conversation, game playing, computers, etc. Technology may provide new ways of delivering and accessing this information, and mark the basis of many a medium, but the idea of a community and its culture is what makes any technology meaningful and relevant.

BlackBoard makes an inferior product and charges a ton for it, but if we reduce the conversation to technology, and not really think hard about technology as an instantiation of capital’s will to power, than anything resembling an EdTech movement towards a vision of liberation and relevance is lost. For within those ideas is not a technology, but a group of people, who argue, disagree, and bicker, but also believe that education is fundamentally about the exchange of ideas and possibilities of thinking the world anew again and again, it is not about a corporate mandate to compete—however inanely or nefariously—for market share and/or power. I don’t believe in technology, I believe in people.