• • Jon Dron@jond

  

  Interesting - a whole minor! I see that they managed to get support from various partners for that. We don't have much in the way of resources to put together a lot of courses on our own but that approach seems quite promising.

  Jon Dron February 25, 2016 - 10:19am

• • Viorel Tabara@viorel

  

  Here's a school that offers a Minor in Open Source & Free Culture.

  Viorel Tabara February 24, 2016 - 9:31pm

• • an unauthenticated user of the Landing@speak_freely_user1

  

  Hello Jon,

  As chaotic the change MOOC is, there are some hardened but often late followers. Thank you for a refreshing session.  Here is my take on your week http://wp.me/1Rt6L. By the way is there an easy doodling tool out there? I felt I could have drawn a sketch to illustrate what I wanted to say better. Or is pencil and paper still the best option?

  
  
  - lucky

  an unauthenticated user of the Landing November 28, 2011 - 5:44pm

• • Jon Dron@jond

  

  I totally agree Jaap that we should learn to use the tools well and that we should have great tools. By and large, people who care about teaching tend to learn about such things and become proficient in their use, but it doesn't have to be that way or, to be more precise, great teachers may learn to be highly proficient in a small subset of tools.

  And that is exactly my point, that the elephant in the room is indeed the skills of the teacher to orchestrate the whole thing, pedagogy, blackboard or Blackboard, email, classroom, whatever.  I like 'artistry' more because it conveys the less definable je ne sais quoi that the word 'skill' does not quite capture. I've seen the work of highly skilled amateur photographers who have total technical mastery over their highly expensive and shiny electronically enhanced equipment but, in most cases, I'd rather look at photos by Cartier-Bresson taken with a battered old Leica any day of the week (the Leica is of course a wonderful machine that is very fit for its purpose, but that's kind of the point). Being able to use the tools is a starting point and most good teachers will learn to do that well because they care about teaching. But its not all about wisdom and proficiency. Among the best I've come across have been young, unschooled teachers without much skill but with a lot of passion and enthusiasm combined with a hard-to-pin-down capacity to communicate that to the learners. And that has an effect in every case, from writing a book-based lesson to engaging actively in a face to face classroom.

  Closing the feedback loop is a really important thing that helps all who participate, the observer and the observed - peer review of teaching is a really good start in helping to develop that artistry.

  Jon Dron November 24, 2011 - 11:55am

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