Notes

From Gosh! 2009: Open Source Hardware Summit

Education, Reaching Critical Mass,

US govt. wants to revamp the curriculum completely for 4th year.

Tim: Neurobiology of learning – physically acting out knowledge.

What are the opportunities for learning – symbiosis, social practices, etc.

How do you make a concept real for students?

Josh. How to make it easy? Have a link into the repository, how are you able to communicate parts and schematics?

SK. How can we integrate with Grade 7 curr. Worked with Grade 7 in Banff, to learn the cultural history of Banff.

Principle was excited with Banf’s proposal. We studied Grade 7 and replaced curriculum. New manifesto in Alberta, students must engage with technology – tied to funding. It was the right time and place to do the Banff Mobile History Project.

What’s place; What’s location?

Geomap of Banff produced – 70 hotspots

Team: Principle, Teacher, Parents … BBQ at end, the social interaction turned the project for the school.

The event doesn’t allow for that sustained relationship.

Kath. The warm up exercise – wobbly robot that makes swirly patterns.

Jonah invited in Ireland to do project with 9-12 – multidisciplinary.

Physical Programming. (do these guys have a link for this?)

Required content: Is there a way to interject into that curriculum?

Kath. What is the motivation in working with this age group?

Within core curriculum is only one approach, there are avenues outside. The US govt. recognizes it can’t meet needs.

UK Future Lab in Bristol is receiving funding for ed.

James. He has started to address this in OSH. You need to empower people who are teaching these skills to earn money. In the UK the easiest way to learn this is to have qualification within the qualifications framework. Open College Network: Anyone within OCN can…what is the gap in OSH,; low-level, OCN level 2 – 30 hours learning time, 13 contact hours, one day workshop. Small amount of learning. Can tutor others. Needs models to deliver.

Needs to be achievable in 2 days.

6 qualifications: one credit at level 2, nearly have a GCSC. (16 – 25 year olds)

1. Intro to OSH – strategic skills acquisistion. 2, 3, 4. User level – office, graphics, net,…could substitute any software.

They seem basic, but they are easily two days of interaction.

5, 6. Installing LINUX; introduction to system administration.

Jurg. LINUX ed. James. Too long a course, doesn’t empower user.

Jurg. Engineering of network devices. Students are learning proprietary systems, practical, job-oriented. Another stream, stating we need OSH to teach real knowledge about how things work, not just names and labels. How can ed. Programs deal with this.

The idea of openness includes teaching and learning.

Jess. To James: What is the economic model? Teaching to teach for $?

Andre. Boring approaches to teaching science in the 1970s.

Kath. How to build your hardware system and share it with others?

Gwen. Conflating process, and knowledge.

James. Nugget up the knowledge. Small self-contained workshop training model.

Jess. In engineering school there is a resistance to hands-on work. There are two career tracks. If you are working on the stuff you are a technician. Class-based system. Units of accreditation. Technician jobs…

Long tradition – master in handcrafting, masters in theory.

Prof. in Germany to encourage girls to enter engineering.

Technicians, are still considered to be on a different track. How can DIY impact this?

Opportunity with technology start-ups. The skill set may change.

Jess. GOSH! So strange that this is happening in an art context. Art Schools offer a certain freedom. The nuclear power industry in Texas.

Tim. I do hardware development, software, but he is in a neurobiology lab. He does all this work, but is no closer to finishing his PhD.

John. Making things more accessible, will make a difference in this. The only purpose of the ed. system is to create more professors.

Josh. How can you parse education value.

Gwen. Strengthening the relationship between knowledge and making.

Jurg. On one side is the content, the other side is the social and side skills. Example of young man (17) who attended wireless network group. He started to programming, etc. He began to develop his own meshing protocols. He received an invitation for a prof. in Taiwan, they wanted to use it for developing protocols for earthquake…He is working in Taiwan, speaks Chinese, he is one of the super-geeks. Totally outside of the academic community.

You can do this outside of the career-building system.

Gwen. How to facilitate learning that is outside of the system?

Tim. OSH There is nothing you can’t touch or change. Equating time with effort. Instill the belief, given time and the ability to …critical to have one-on-one teaching.

James. Many ed. Projects. The secret, appeal to people who are beginners, who are low in confidence. Maths tutoring, one example. Bringing people together outside of conventional education. If you do the opposite you have a different didactic structure.

Jurg. Ed. System has side agendas.

Applied ed, becoming a problem. In Canada now about tools and applications. How can tools and applications have that role? Funding at research level, pulling $ out of pure research.

Jess. Engineering – educational trade school. Art School begins to look like a Pyramid scheme. We don’t live in a world where we can fun all the time.

Kath. Students don’t necessarily have a lot of exp. With computers. It will instill an openness to new areas of study. Those are learnable skills. But, learning without a plan.

Jess. What are the outcomes? It is worth talking about from the OSH perspective.

Are the two approaches fundamentally opposed? More formal approaches to ed. or a highly individualized approach.

Openness is a key to exchange. Openness, education, and knowledge-building belong together.

Open Courseware at MIT.

James. Metarecylagem network and we’ve opened 90 centres in Brazil, and now we advise the Brazilian government. The Brazilian ministry of culture have opened 600, but we are looking for 3000 by the time of the next election. What is it that we don’t get?

Josh. Response to urban juvenile criminality – give these people the hope they could create media for TV.

Combination of fantastic policy and a nimble culture, an organic response.

Brazil has long history of nimble pedagogical techniques. Paolo Friere’s writings as an example.

"There is no limit to what a man can achieve as long as he doesn't care who get's the credit" -- Bob Woodruff. President, Coca Cola. Some dispute of this idea.