Learning from the Alpha Geeks

I was listening to lullabot podcast episode#33 this morning and found the discussion very interesting. Lullabot is a company that specializes in Drupal (opensource content management system) development/workshops/training. I stopped listening a while ago when I stopped working with Drupal. But now that I'm back into the OpenSource world I put them back into iTunes and the GoogleReader.

Learning, DIY, and DoOcracy:
Alpha geeks are the ones that truly get DIY learning, Communities of Practice, Learning2.0, etc. Its simply amazing, as a learning professional, to listen to them talk about how they create their learning environments utilizing existing technologies to share and learn from each other. Nobody talks about ADDIE models. Nobody talks about pedagogy. They talk about the DoOcracy. I LOVE THAT! It's my new favorite word. To them, learning is about doing, failing, and doing again. So when you get a bunch of people into a virtual space to share the learning experience of DO-Fail-DO, repeat...you have a DO-ocracy. Everyone can participate, at different levels, and anyone can create a lesson. It's all about defining a new goal to create something, bringing people together, and just going for it. Its very much like the idea of UNconferences.

Tips for listening to the podcast as a learning professional:
Fastforward through the first part of the podcast and get to the interview...then ff through the first part of the interview until you hear them talking about the drupaldojo. If you are not a drupal user or a techno-geek, then try to ignore the techno-jargon and just listen to how they talk about the dojo, the phylosophy, the how and why it works, and the passion.

Other opensource learning stuff:
If you are interested then you should also check out DrupalEd.
DrupalEd is an active community of Educators using drupal for educational purposes. They are currently updating the site, but groups.drupal is going strong.

I've also seen some interesting work being done to integrate Drupal and MOODLE and Elgg. And OpenID efforts should help the login process across multiple systems as well.

The learning ecosystems are coming together nicely...stay tuned.