Drumbeat NYC—Edu

Our group honed in on two threads:

1.) Fragmentation: that too many open-source education projects means that multiple smart people are reinventing the technological wheel instead of building communities on existing - if imperfect - solutions. This produces competition for the potential users of the systems. In general it also means that none of the systems enjoy the benefits of network effects that work so well for (e.g.) Facebook.

2.) Instructor Freedom: on the other hand, instructor freedom to assign and use what works is paramount. An educator should be allowed to pick a system or to develop a new one if it has a better match to their needs. They are the users. The way they choose to distribute the right content is what should be considered.

A few scattered notes to follow the tick-tock of the conversation:

-Campaign to youth to think about/manage digital identity

-Digital identity assessment: tell students to find out as much as they can about a fellow student on web

-Internet literacy for potential instructors

-Fragmentation: "problem of 1,000 eyeballs" with web/open educational products

-How do we aggregate resources for ease of instructor use?

-Ways for Instructors to use pre-existing networks of instructors to form lesson plans and courses

-Need to for a standard platform for education vs. platform as secondary to content

-Most important is that students use it

-Important for students to understand the various licenses and terms of use on the internet, building a set of meta-practices

-Youth-facing vs. instructor-facing experiences

-Importance of having a safe space for students

-Importance of getting user feedback

-Need an educational platform that lets teachers share their experiences, amplify open, aggregating what already exists, and balance with instructor freedom