We need to stop creating more closed narratives and finite tales, and instead concentrate on fragmenting the stories we already have into a million pieces and sparking the imaginations of our audiences so they want to put them back together in the way that feels right to them.

#Suleiman13 - A self-directed online education in 2013

I was asked to give some tips about learning online to Suleiman, an 23-yr old Congolese refugee in Nairobi. My wife met him while she was an intern at the UNHCR. With his charm and wit, he was able to convince my wife and back in Holland she arranged funds, my previous laptop, and a friend (Esther Gaarlandt) who coordinates the funds in Kenya, for him to get an education. He is now finishing his first year in Computer Science, and he wants to continue learning and doing things during summer time, and wants to get a degree next year. My first email to him is below, which gives an overview of possibilities of online learning, particularly tech/programming related (because that was what he asked for), and what I think constitutes a good and comprehensive online learning program.

Flattr - future of micro donations

A recent upgrade of Flattr suddenly made the service extremely more useful and powerful than before. Flattr is a peer 2 peer microdonation service that allows content creators to receive micro-donations with each Love (or Like) they receive if they (or their content host) installed a Flattr button. As a giver, you specify an amount that can be flattered each month, and that will be equally distributed to all those “flattered” by you.

Now, however, they upgraded the service so you can easily connect popular services like 500px, Instagram and others, and people can just use the particular service’s Like/Love/Fav or other token of appreciation as an input for a microdonation.

Coursera & InnoCentive: Good match?

Coursera is one of the biggest (open) online education suppliers - with high quality courses in the arts, humanities, technology, and fundamental science.

Coursera (heart) InnoCentive

InnoCentive is one of the biggest ideagoras and offers a platform for organizations to crowdsource their scientific problems.

Letting hundreds of students think about real-world solutions (and have them peer-review those) is a win-win situation: students are more motivated to work on real problems, and companies get their hands on the top-rated solutions. 

Of course, InnoCentive can be any other ideagora or platform for freelance projects like Guru.com or just by including real-world problems.

Likewise, Coursera can be another online educational supplier like Udacity or a smaller one.

Habit Labs: Response to Gabe and Sebastian's #gamification discussion

Brilliant and insightful discussion about gamification.

habitlabs:

A VERY interesting debate has been going on this last week primarily between Gabe Zichermann, author of the new book by O’Reilly called “Gamification by Design”, and Sebastian Deterding, PhD researcher on user experience, persuasive and gameful design.

For those who want to read the…

#Gamification13 assignment 3

Just submitted (a mod of) the 3rd #gamification13 assignment (I skipped the second). Using the teacher’s D6 framework for gamification design, I have described a project I am currently involved in and where we want to apply game elements to improve (or stretch the pedagogical horizon of) education in Latin America.

Stretching the horizon