TED Conversations

• John Graves

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"Radical openness is still a distant future in the field of school education." Wikipedia is open today. Can we do it again for learning?

Can the factors which made Wikipedia possible be adapted for learning?

Consider:
1) most people did not have their own encyclopaedia
2) a few people created and shared "modules": articles
3) many more people modified and improved them in small "granular" ways
4) search engines indexed the content so vast numbers of people could find it

Now imagine:
1) most people do not have a personal tutor
2) a few people could create and share "modules" which use text, but which talk, using text-to-speech to deliver short presentations and ask questions
3) many more people could edit and improve these scripts and the links between them in small "granular" ways
4) because the system uses slide images and is text-based, search engines could find the content
5) truly vast numbers of people could gain access through mobile devices

Large groups are forming to try to understand how to do this type of thing.

For example, Education Revolution on Google+ has over 6,000 members.

Clay Shirky wrote a book about this type of sharing: Cognitive Surplus.

Can we distinguish between "inspirational video" and "educational video" (an oxymoron?) and explore the potential of crowd sourced, text-based, open educational resources?