Time Banking and Open Learning

As I continue to puzzle over the economic impact of all this sharing, I'm keeping an eye out for solutions that could make it more workable. One of the solutions I've come across is Time Banking. In a nutshell, Time Banking is simply a way to barter time, hour for hour. I tutor you in math for an hour, you spend an hour looking over my most recent paper for style and grammar errors. It can even be used to buy goods, how does twenty minutes of work for a bushel of bananas sound? Incorporating an economic tool like this into some of the open resources we looked at in chapter 5 would provide an incentive system and a method to keep it viable.

Since I'm getting off the topic, here, I'll refocus on the tools:
-MIT's Open Course Ware (OCW) - They provide everything that you need for the course, from the syllabus to videos of the lectures. Really the only things lacking here are interactivity and the ability to make the course "count" somehow.
-Opensource Opencourseware Prototyping System - this is mainly a way to wikify translation of OCW into Chinese. The website calls for volunteers to simply transcribe the material in English, so even those who don't speak Chinese can help. I'd like to see this expand into other languages as well, and in the unlikely event that the great and mighty English speaking world has something to learn from anyone else, it would be nice to see some things translated into English as well.
-Peer to Peer University - This was by far the most interesting idea in the chapter, and I intend to sign up for at least one course to see what it's like on the inside. The name implies that that it's a bunch of interested people getting together on a common topic to try to figure something out, but the description in the site itself describes something more hierarchical than that.

To go back to the Time Banking idea, it would be great if a way could be devised for people to volunteer in their community as a way to repay the system for its openness. Then the benefit spreads to everyone, even those not directly participating.

Free Speech, Free Beer, How About Free Rent?

Much is made of the notion of free in chapter four of Bonk. I have to admit that few things tickle my anarcho-socialist leanings like the idea of free education for the whole world, but while the price is right, the cost is not. If I were independently wealthy, I would certainly delight in working for the greater good and devoting myself to the endeavor of making the world smarter (provided I survived the inevitable video game binge that would be the unavoidable consequence of such freedom). As it stands now, however, my landlord might have a few sharp words for me, not to mention my wife.

So the question that Bonk unfortunately leaves unaddressed (at least directly) in the book so far is how does someone support himself while giving his work away for nothing?

This is something I've been obsessing over thinking about quite a bit lately. The author Cory Doctorow would probably reassure me that giving things away for free online would make an excellent free advertising campaign for whatever I do sell. The free beer flows in both directions, in this case. Advertising support can generate income as well, and need not be as invasive as pop-ups and flashing banners. As for software (in the form of any games I might write), many companies will offer a hobbled version for free and charge for additional features. In short, there are a variety of answers that can be considered for a variety of situations. I need not panic. I can stop obsessing any time now.

Any time now.

Free Rice and Vanishing Edges

In the e-learning chapter of The World is Open, Bonk cites the website www.freerice.com as an example of one type of e-learning site. If you haven't seen this site, by all means, visit it. It's notable for a few reasons, but the most interesting is the bucking of the trend to put everything in life into silos. We tend to separate work from play, and charitable giving hardly seems to even be in the same plane as either, but freerice.com manages to combine them all into a single site.

This blending together of disparate aspects of life is something of a reversal of a larger trend toward increasing separation. Where work and play were once separate realms, at least in education they are beginning to come together. Games like the one on freerice.com are on the rise, because they add additional motivation to the learning process, and help to engage students that would otherwise be apathetic.

Freerice.com could benefit from some additional "gamification," as it is sometimes referred to in the popular press. Psychologists and casinos have long conspired to rob people of thier money by getting them to continue doing what they otherwise would have avoided. These same tactics can be used to benefit the "victim" by encouraging them to keep at the task of learning for longer. While freerice.com takes advantage of the user's altruistic urges, it could go farther by enabling users to log in and see a record of their progress toward learning new words. Additionally, an optional (since not everyone benefits from such things) level of competition could be added as another layer of motivation. A way for learners or even teachers to modify the word list to fit their needs would also increase the utility of the site. The site's author seems to be satisfied with the admirable goal of providing some education and free food for the needy, but it could be pushed even further.

To know or not to know

One of the trends mentioned in Bonk is something I've been conflicted about for a while, namely the decreasing importance of knowledge in favor of the ability to find information when needed, which Bonk refers to as "Fingertip Knowledge". On the one hand, there is an anecdote about Einstein in which he had to look up his own phone number in the phone book when asked for it; he allegedly claimed never to have memorized anything that could be looked up in less than two minutes. On the other hand there is the saying by Louis Pasteur that "Fortune favors the prepared mind."

While I have seen sources elsewhere documenting the trend away from memorization, I have not seen any that evaluate whether the same level of understanding can be reached without the foundational knowledge that leads to it. I, myself, have rarely successfully memorized anything except by using it repeatedly; perhaps that is where the compromise lies. Gaming certainly provides ample opportunity for this type of "accidental" memorization.

The trend is undeniable, and it may well be that there is as little point in pondering whether it is good or bad as there is to pondering whether gravity is good or bad. In terms of effort, everything tends to roll downhill. It could be that my resistance to the trend is nothing more than a Luddite's response to change and shooing these lazy kids with their internets off my lawn. I certainly hope the trend is for the best, but my doubts linger.

Is this thing on?

Hi.

My name is Alex, and...

I'm a techoholic.

*phew* Glad I got that off my chest.

I'm finishing up my masters here at Lehigh's Instructional Technology program. My main interest is in instructional gaming which, despite being listed as a medium term trend in the Horizon Report, is a field in abysmal disarray. The quality of what's currently being produced, even by some of the major proponents of the field, is surprisingly low, both in terms of adherence to cognitive principles and in plain old enjoyability. I intend to do something about that, dammit.

My background is... diverse. My bachelor's is in biology (Rutgers) and I've been employed in the pharmaceutical industry at the regulatory end, and in numerous other jobs including landscaper, arborist, house painter, math tutor, and generic office "tech guy". Throughout all of this, I was happiest either when I was tutoring, or when I was configuring computer interfaces to be more useful. Instructional technology was an obvious choice.

On a more personal level, I've tried to match the tone of this first blog to my default state. I prefer to be informal and humorous when possible, and at this point in my life I've come to realize that if I'm not hard at play when I'm hard at work, I won't be functioning at my optimal level. I'm also getting balder and fatter by the day, but I'm not bitter about that. Not at all.