The Occupy Movement, given its concern with global politics and, in particular global capitalism and its inequalities, has an allied concern with education; how it is funded (or not), where it is unilaterally available, and how it might transform a society that is seen as currently morally, as well as economically, bankrupt. As a sub-group of the larger Occupy movement, there is also an Occupy Education 'QARN', as Hands might call it, particularly aimed at US public school and at challenging ‘false notions of social order’ normally perpetuated within formal education (http://occupyedu.tumblr.com/). Participants online include children, parents and teachers from a socio-economic spectrum and, as with the Occupy movement as a whole, they utilize social networking such as Facebook, websites, blogs, video streaming and Twitter to communicate among themselves, in the hope of bringing their message to a wider audience, and to involve people in the discussion over the future of education. An Occupy Education Facebook post from January 3rd 2012 states ‘it is a new year and it is time for a new vision for education!’ and asks for ‘your vision for a transformed education’ to be submitted at their blog.
Exemplifying the notion of encouraging discourse and the participation of students in their own education, one post there shows a teacher asking for suggestions as to how he might change his practice. Although the Occupy Education Facebook and blog do ask for text, they also encourage the uploading of pictures, giving their project a visual immediacy that is made possible by online interaction, but also centres their movement on the people who contribute, rather than on an impersonal political discourse.
As a global movement, Occupy has attracted both positive and negative press from different branches of the press, and their use of Web 2.0 might be said to be an attempt to create a discourse within the public sphere that exists outwith governmental or other political discourses. In terms of educational content online, the Occupy movement in London has a 'real' Tent City University with a website that advertises talks that are also uploaded to their site at http://tentcityuniversity.occupylsx.org/.
The strapline of the website – ‘Anyone can teach, everyone can learn’ – might suggest, for formal educators, a worrying belief that educator’s professionalism is being undermined, but the thrust of the message is a democratization of learning that might be useful in considering learning within formal educational establishments because, as Neary and Winn’s paper (2006) suggests, the student experience might be transformed by involving students as producers in education, rather than as passive consumers, with academics as their collaborators. The use of technology in education is considered at a policy level as being crucial to producing students who must be able to work within a digital culture (QAA, 2008), but it might also be seen by academics and students as a way of attaining this goal of democratization of learning through particular uses of collaborative digital projects. One movement that is particularly interesting in considering this is edupunk, ‘a new instructional style that is defiantly student-centered, resourceful, teacher- or community-created rather than corporate-sourced, and underwritten by a progressive political stance’ (Guardian, June 2008).
(Continue with occupying e-learning...)
As a global movement, Occupy has attracted both positive and negative press from different branches of the press, and their use of Web 2.0 might be said to be an attempt to create a discourse within the public sphere that exists outwith governmental or other political discourses. In terms of educational content online, the Occupy movement in London has a 'real' Tent City University with a website that advertises talks that are also uploaded to their site at http://tentcityuniversity.occupylsx.org/.
The strapline of the website – ‘Anyone can teach, everyone can learn’ – might suggest, for formal educators, a worrying belief that educator’s professionalism is being undermined, but the thrust of the message is a democratization of learning that might be useful in considering learning within formal educational establishments because, as Neary and Winn’s paper (2006) suggests, the student experience might be transformed by involving students as producers in education, rather than as passive consumers, with academics as their collaborators. The use of technology in education is considered at a policy level as being crucial to producing students who must be able to work within a digital culture (QAA, 2008), but it might also be seen by academics and students as a way of attaining this goal of democratization of learning through particular uses of collaborative digital projects. One movement that is particularly interesting in considering this is edupunk, ‘a new instructional style that is defiantly student-centered, resourceful, teacher- or community-created rather than corporate-sourced, and underwritten by a progressive political stance’ (Guardian, June 2008).
(Continue with occupying e-learning...)