Thanks for this Prof. Dron! For anyone that would also like to sign a petition against this buyout by Rogers, can do so at the following link:

https://openmedia.org/StopTheBuy-em

Thanks for that, Nicolosus - I've added my voice and got my thank-you email!

The recording of the day of action is available at the original URL. Highlights for me were Michael Geist (around the 50 minute mark) and Cory Doctorow (around 1:58), both of whom are incredibly smart people and excellent communicators to whom I always pay a lot of attention, but the stories from less eminent folk, especially from those struggling on the periphery and choosing between Internet access and food, were often quite moving. There was a lot of really good information from very diverse stakeholders throughout - some really interesting stats from UoT researcher Sam Andre from Ryerson U on the digital divide in Toronto compared with Canada as a whole, for instance, just after the 38 minute mark.

Ya this pandemic has been hard on everyone...

To summarize my school years, from K-5 I was in public school, from 6-12 I was homeschooled. I loved it! But I was also not your typical kid... I love to learn, and I learned at a faster rate than most of the other kids, I flourished in homeschooling as I could go at almost twice the pace. My school year was from October-April/May, and each day was from 8am-12pm. When I was older (14-16) I got jobs with local farmers, and also started lawn mowing for the older ladies who could not do it themselves. My last 3 years of school I worked extra hard and graduated a year early.

So this was my experience, not your typical! I saw other homeschooled kids and familes with varying degrees of success, and my biggest take away was that if your child needs motivation and guidance, your going to need to invest. If your child is driven like I was, all my parents had to do was find good curriculum and buy it, I did the rest. So tailor your school envirenment to your children, learn how they learn best and work with that. Do some research as well on homeschooling curriculum, there are lots of resources out there, and a good curriculum will fill the gaps where you lack, and you'll probably learn some new things along the way too! Get the teachers guides too, if your going to school when your daughter is older too, solutions manuals for math are invaluable. Mostly, go with your instinct, you know your own daughter best, and obviously want the best for her so you will do great!

Another tip with homeschooling, just because the books are closed and not in front of you, doesn't mean the learning and teaching have to stop! If your daughter shows an interest in "helping" in the kitchen (our son loves this, he is 3), teach her as you make dinner how things work. If you are adventurous, go hiking and teach about nature while you do it. Planning field trips are a great way to boost your childs learning if it is about what they are interested in.

I couldn't add anything on homeschooling that Nicolosus hasn't said far better! Yes, the huge advantage of homeschooling is that you can follow the vein of gold that is a child's curiosity far more effectively than when you have to follow a curriculum (though definitely worth having a menu of more conventional options and support for the trickier bits as needed). The social aspect, though, is really important - really useful to find other home-schoolers online or (especially) nearby and find ways to learn with others. The most inspiring person I ever met in this regard was Dale J Stephens, who was very young indeed when he did a keynote at a conference I was attending, probably more than 10 years ago. Very smart, delightful person, full of passion, and a great advert for the process. He had just founded Uncollege.org, which is a particularly brilliant resource for older kids and college-age students, though it has some very good resources that are valuable for pretty much anyone. Alas, his book on the subject (Hacking Education) is not open, but it's still worth reading.

Jon

Nicolosus and Dr. Dron,

Thank you so much for your valuable insight into homeschooling. Your comments are highly appreciated and very valuable to me.

Thank you Prof. Jon,

Those slides are interesting, I like the comparison between controlling and liberation patterns and I also like how you are able to use this approach within your courses.

I learned how to learn from you, and I hope to learn how to teach as well.

Thanks Rania: though I tend to reuse a lot of slides in my talks, that one was new in this presentation, so I'm glad that it resonated.

Over 20 years ago I wanted to call my PhD (which involved the creation of a social bookmarking system designed to help the crowd to teach itself) 'Getting rid of teachers' but my supervisors (wisely) advised against it. In fact, it was exactly the opposite of what I was really doing, which was capitalizing on the fact that we are all teachers, even when we don't mean to be.  Though software can help to amplify and guide that process, I think it is also implicit in a lot of the human-enacted technologies of teaching: the things we normally refer to as pedagogies. A big part of much effective teaching - especially online - is not about telling people stuff or making them do stuff, but about helping to create conditions that make it easier for them all to learn from one another.

One of the best side-effects my particular approach to doing that is that I wind up learning more from my students than they learn from me, so thank you for teaching me!

This all has bee encouraging for me to read! And yes you are correct, we all do at times need a little direction, can't overlook that fact, especially with some of us who get disctracted easily, and run down rabbit trails that, while not directly bad for our current study topic, are not exactly good for it either. I am one of those people, I also love to learn, and I want to learn EVERYTHING!

Keep doing what you are doing Prof. Dron, it is encouraging to see and I just learned a little about teaching, and hope to take that with me when I start to teach others as well.

This insight is very interesting, and it makes sense. Definitely agree that the impacts social media has on people heavily depend on who the users are and how the users use them.

Hi Jon,

If I am understanding your post and the LIS website correctly, the format being used would be an approach more like "The problom I wish to solve would be the constraints of bio-engineering in todays technical limits", and upon that build out a degree program that includes the areas of study needed to work in that specific field, whereas instead with current institutions one would say have to study for a degree in biology, and then a degree in engineering, and maybe even a third in computer science?

If so, how do they award degrees? Is it a customized title based on your criteria? Or more generic?

I'm not sure, Nicolosus. Certainly there would be no need to study for multiple degrees, and the various disciplinary perspectives would be far more integrated than in most programs/courses. There are quite a few degrees that work in the way you suggest, such as the MSc/MA by Learning Outcomes at the University of Brighton, UK, in which a goal is decided upon, then outcomes are negotiated at the start between student, institution, and employer and modules are chosen to match, but I suspect this is not quite like that.

If I were designing this then I would most likely identify some fairly broad course (=program) outcomes, addressing things like problem-solving, synthesis, values, and application, then map the specific module (=course) outcomes to those, allowing students to adapt their goals as they learn (unlike the 'by outcomes' approach), but I don't know if that's what LIS are doing here.

It would be interesting to find out!