Research Supporting Dropouts...its about time

Okay, so this study isn't scientific, and dang it, I've got no time to write more on this, but I had to post the link Study Says Drop out of school (via digg). The link goes to this blog.
As a father of 3 kids, all in school, this does not surprise me. They have my kids for six hours a day and can't seem to teach them anything...whats up with that?
Anyone interested in starting a virtual school? I figure between ELGG, mediawiki, MOODLE, Secondlife, and now Elluminate, we can get some serious educating done on the cheap. Teachers could make a heck of a lot more money...and all would be right with the world.
Teachers could compete on the open market for students. If I want Miss Jones in Australia to teach 2nd grade math to my second grader then I pay her and we use the technology to connect and make that happen. Miss Jones manages her own schedule and as many students as she can handle for let's say $100/month per kid, and she's tech savvy enought to support 50 kids from around world effectively...I believe that would be a significant pay increase. Can anyone verify? ;-)

Web2.0 Opt-in Learning MOODLE and Video converters

One of the greatest things about the new web, or Web2.0, is the changing opt-in culture of conversations. There are many, MANY topics/conversations that I wish I could focus my time on. I scan many, a smaller number are read and consumed, and an even smaller number do I engage.

I have been well aware of MOODLE for many years, excited enough about it to stay up to date but never having a need. At times I had tried it out but it just wasn't something I was willing to take on technically. Until now...

Now, I have a need. Now, MOODLE has matured. Now, I am engaged in the MOODLE community soaking up everything I can from other's experiences via the MOODLE forum. I would normally get the RSS feed, but when I need to be fully engaged, I subscribe via email and don't mind being overwhelmed with every single post. Why? Because I'm learning! Because I have a need and at some point I will have the same need that others in the community are having right now...its all connected. As a noob, I'm spinning myself up on all things MOODLE by engaging in the conversation...I'm OPT-ing in...No book, no class, just engaging in the conversation that is already going on.

Using Fantastico via my web host (www.siteground.com) it only took a couple clicks to have a complete MOODLE install ready to go for experimental learning. I would highly recommend siteground for many reasons but above and beyond them all is the fact that their customer service is AWESOME!!! Example: Elgg and Mediawiki are NOT part of Fantastico, but they had BOTH environments installed and ready for me in less than 12hours. It was probably more like 2 hours, but I didn't check my email for a while after I made the request. [UPDATE: I checked my siteground support account and noticed that they had ELGG and Mediawiki installed in 15mins...now that's customer service]

Another side benefit is meeting amazing educators who are doing great things with MOODLE in the schools, non-profits, and business. But even better is the NON-MOODLE related learning that pops up every now and then. Example: Someone asked about converting video to play inside of a MOODLE resource and because of this conversation I now know about Media-convert.com and Mediacoder.com. Amazing media conversion tools that are FREE and/or opensource.

And another fun little video tool for blogs and websites is Flixn. You can actually put a video recorder on your blog for others to leave video messages for you. So cool! Of course the person recording needs a web cam.

These are amazing times...are we having fun yet?!!! ;-)

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.

The OpenSource Learning Hat-trick

Elgg and Drupal are working together. And the best part is MOODLE is next in line. Woohoo!!!

Now that's a hat-trick made in open source heaven.

But wait...

Add SLOODLE into the mix and now your really onto something HUGE!