It’s mine – or rather, it’s his: other ways to talk about changing practice
This blog post is a reply that I posted to Stephen Downes’ review of Anya Kamenetz’s booklet on Edupunk, and a celebration of finding David Jenning’s blog.
@Stephen I think you make a valuable distinction in your first paragraph between learning by doing and DIY learning that is useful to anyone learning or trying to help others learn.
I found myself wondering why Anya Kemenetz didn’t refer to the provenance of the term Edupunk or FWIW cited OLDaily as a resource but then I checked out the comments thread here and began to think that maybe Anya would be damned if she did try to acknowledge the ‘origins’ of Edupunk just as she has been damned for not doing so.
I think Ed Webb made a good point on the same comments thread.
Ed Webb says:
February 27, 2011 at 12:54 pm
I can’t be doing with all this movement theology. The spirit of the thing seems to be the most important. If it’s no fun any more, if the thrill is gone, then the breakup makes sense.
Also, this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkdqCTcDkbc
I do wonder about the value of trying to pin down and own the term Edupunk see http://bavatuesdays.com/edupunk-or-on-becoming-a-useful-idiot/
I agree with @David that it is quite a useful booklet. I would think that if I directed two resources – Anya’s booklet and your Future of Online Learning article- to new students thinking about how be effective learners in a changing sociotech landscape, they would find hers much more useful. Whereas learners researching online learning would find yours useful at a much deeper level.
As an idea Edupunk is clearly inspirational and motivating but it’s not a completely fixed thing where you need to check all the boxes. If it were, you couldn’t really ‘claim’ your (excellent) MOOCs as part of it. I remember in CCK08, you and George clearly positioned yourselves on occasions as ‘teachers’ teaching a ‘theory’ despite the rhetoric of teaching by modelling practice
Being a teacher myself I felt a mixture of sympathy and amusement when you were moved to reply to a participant:
“I’m sorry to be snippy – but I’m getting very tired of students in this course saying “I disagree” or “You’re wrong” without giving me even the faintest clue about what it is that seems wrong much less concrete evidence that they’ve read the work they’re disagreeing with).
This isn’t a confessional course. You do not need to profess your faith one way or another. I don’t care whether or not you agreee or disagree with me or anyone else. What I do care about is that you have understood the theory sufficiently as to have some reason for disagreeing.” http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/moodle/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=956#p5802 (scroll down)
What I suspect is at the bottom of this is captured in @David’s last 2 paras how do we critique ideas and practice of learning (like MOOCs , connectivism and Edupunk) in this changing socio-technical landscape. As I commented here , I don’t find the occasionally tetchy tone very helpful. Also, I think we should guard against the premature stabilisation of ideas .
Stephen’s post has also been valuable to my networked learning as it has helped me to find David Jenning’s blog – so thanks to both of you for that.
