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Welcome new organizers - please introduce yourself! (April 2011)

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Hey everyone! I'm Alison and I'm organizing this orientation. I've been with P2PU for a while now and occassionally run courses in ecological design (http://p2pu.org/users/alison).

If you're new and planning on running a course for April/May, please introduce yourself.

Running P2PU courses is quite different from traditional online courses and classrooms. There are no teachers or students. In a P2PU course everyone, including the organizer, is responsible for their own learning - but must work as group to make the experience/learning happen.

I'd love to here from everyone about:

  • Who you are, what do you do?
  • What draws you to the peer-to-peer model?
  • What are YOUR personal learning goals as an organizer?
Robert Rijkhoff's picture
Robert Rijkhoff
Tue, 2011-03-22 23:08

I'm a web designer, systems administrator, and anti-junk mail campaigner (yes, really). As I'm completely new to P2PU I don't have very concrete ideas as to what course I'd like to organise yet. One of my aims for this course is to develop some ideas.

What has drawn me to the P2P model is that I'm a great believer in sharing and developing knowledge with peers - in particular like-minded ones. I can read heaps of books about, say, HTML and CSS, but it's not quite the same as studying the subject with other specialist. Plus, it's free! Maybe the latter is not the best motivation, though I reckon that for people who can't afford education (and there's no way I can afford the Open University here in the UK) it's a great alternative.

My goals for this course... getting to know more about P2PU, working on setting up a course, finding out what other people are doing, and generally having an interesting time here.

Jocelyn Read's picture
Jocelyn Read
Wed, 2011-03-23 01:37

I'm a postdoc working on research in gravitational physics at the University of Mississippi. I met some of the P2PU group at the meetup in Berlin, where I worked before moving here. I'm interested in the future of education, and have been thinking about the evolution and place of current school/university structures. I'm also interested in making education accesible to a broader community.

I'm planning to run a course based on Greg Wilson's Software Carpentry lessons (http://software-carpentry.org/), partly inspired by his mention of P2PU in a blog post (I already followed his blog). I'd been thinking about what courses I might run to try out the P2PU model before that and it seemed like a good fit.

The idea of the course is to help self-taught coders (like many scientists and engineers, but probably this is generalizable) learn some better programming practices and design skills, so their code can be more easily used/shared/reused/modified/verified. I fit the target audience; I'm somewhat familiar with most of the curriculum but need to sharpen my skills.

I'd also like to practice teaching (and/or facilitating learning) and to see how online community learning works in practice.

Jonas Öberg's picture
Jonas Öberg
Wed, 2011-03-23 16:04

Two of the most important hats that I wear is as a lecturer at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and the executive director of the Society for Free Culture and Software where I organise a Nordic network of Creative Commons. At the University, I'm a lecturer in Software Engineering.

We have quite a history of community learning in Sweden, and I dare say that pretty much everyone has been involved in community learning in one way or another during their adult life. What I appreciate with peer-to-peer learning is that it brings this entire ecosystem into a modern context and enables people that would otherwise not be able to participate in this kind of learning to do so.

This also matches very well what we do at a university level with problem based learning, where the power over the learning, the processes around it and what exactly you learn, is in the hands of the students, not the teacher, and where the teacher has a facilitating role, not an expert role.

Here at the P2PU I will run a course in how to find funding for Creative Commons projects. What I hope to learn from this is not so much about technology or peer to peer itself, but I do hope to learn quite significantly from the persons taking the course. To learn more about writing successful project applications. Because while I do have some insight into this, I believe that I will also learn significantly from the process of encouraging others to do this.

Vladimir Támara Patiño's picture
Vladimir Támara P...
Wed, 2011-03-23 16:17

Hi. I have been teacher of programming in some unversities. Now running the course libreoffice-basico in spanish. The virtual part of this course is on p2pu. There is a plan of several courses that I would like to facilitate: http://www.pasosdeJesus.org/?pag=capacitacion (in spanish). I would like to help to translate the interface of p2pu to spanish.

Vladimir Támara Patiño's picture
Vladimir Támara P...
Wed, 2011-03-23 16:18

I forgot to mention that I'm living in Colombia.

Stian Haklev's picture
Stian Haklev
Fri, 2011-03-25 06:15

Hi all. I have been involved with P2PU from the very beginning, but never had a chance (or taken the chance) to run a course - so I guess it's time :) I'm a PhD student at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at University of Toronto, in the field of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) (well, that's not what my program is called, but that's my kind of intellectual community). Sadly, my university doesn't offer any "Introductions to CSCL" courses, so we are going to run one at P2PU! We are me, and my friend Monica Resendes, who is also doing a PhD at the same institution.

This will be true peer-learning, because I am not an expert in this topic at all. But I do have a lot of ideas, and look forward to experimenting with them. As our designs become clearer, I look forward to sharing them with you for feedback, and for us to support each other in the process of preparing and running the courses. We'll also be using the new platform, which will be very exciting in itself!

Jessica Ledbetter's picture
Jessica Ledbetter
Sun, 2011-04-10 02:13

I'm excited to see how it goes :)

Alison Jean Cole's picture
Alison Jean Cole
Fri, 2011-03-25 23:32

Welcome all! It's exciting to see such a great variety of new course ideas coming in. There's a lot of big changes happening behind the scenes at P2PU. We're working on a new platform. The current site (which we're using right now) will be put to rest eventually (July/August). You can see what we're working on at new.p2pu.org. If any of you are interested in running your April/May course on new.p2pu.org let us know. It will definitely still be in prototype phase for April/May, but we predict it will be an exciting experience none the less. More features allowing collaboration and communication will be rolled out by the 25th.

If you have a strong design already on the current p2pu.org you are welcome to run your course here (this site), or at least manage sign-ups here. I believe all current accounts on this site are valid on new.p2pu.org.. but let me double check :-)

One major difference on new.p2pu.org - 'courses' will be called 'study groups', but you can still design your experience like a course. Study groups conveys the idea of peer collaboration stronger than 'course' does, in our opinion. We'll share more details about new.p2pu.org by Monday. Please feel free to ask any questions between now and then!

ALISON

Gabriel Gloege's picture
Gabriel Gloege
Sat, 2011-03-26 15:04

I'm a jazz musician and business writer living in New York City. I spend my days writing for and leading my own quartet as well as writing copy for an educational software company. I taught the drums for many years and am passionate about the importance of the arts as a fundamental component of being human... music being my focus, of course.

The P2PU model fascinates my because it's yet another way that technology is massively and quickly changing not just the way education is delivered, but our very idea of what education is.

My course/study group is called Do You Speak Music. It's about learning how to hear music the way a musician does without actually having to be one. It approaches it like a language, with 5 basic "parts of speech" that anyone can learn. So the first goal is that obviously everyone in the study group comes to understand the 5 elements. But I'm also looking to learn from the other members about their reaction to the 5 parts and tighten up or expand the concepts accordingly. Finally, I'm hoping that some members will feel inspired enough and equipped enough to lead their own study group on Do You Speak Music.

Thanks to P2PU for creating such a wonderful resource that enables these things to happen.

Alison Jean Cole's picture
Alison Jean Cole
Sat, 2011-03-26 22:48

Gabriel - Sounds like "Do You Speak Music" is going to be awesome! Looking forward to it!

Monica Resendes's picture
Monica Resendes
Mon, 2011-03-28 16:11

Hi everyone,
I'm a PhD student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University Toronto, along with Stian Haklev (who's introduction is somewhere in this thread as well). We're going to be working together to create an Intro to Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) course, in the absence of one here at OISE. I'm looking forward to not only creating a functional and growing resource of great work around CSCL, but also playing around with some of the new and innovative features P2PU offers (like badges, for example!)
I currently do work in elementary schools in Toronto that are using collaborative learning technologies for science and history, but I'm particularly excited to get my feet wet in terms of engaging a completely online model for learning :)

Peter Troxler's picture
Peter Troxler
Tue, 2011-03-29 21:07

Hi above and potentially below

I am an independent researcher and earn my money as executive editor an business consultant. The last few years I've been hooked by the idea of commons-based peer-production and transforming ideas from open source software to the realm of the physical.

I find it hard to say what draws me to the peer-to-peer model other than that I feel this is the only natural way to go about business ...

I am primarily here to learn since I'm long done with the idea that teachers know and students don't

Jeff Weber's picture
Jeff Weber
Tue, 2011-03-29 21:25

Greetings All-
I was enrolled as a student in the most recent cycle, Jan-Mar 2011, in 5 courses. While I'll continue to engage as a student, participating as a facilitator is also part of the learning process. Therein my interest in this orientation.

I've spent many years in the investment field, and several most recently in the information technology field. Currently I'm blending the two experiences through the development of computer applications for the global financial markets.

The old education model (the one i spent many years in) is fraying, and from one who studies bubbles, I believe the 'bricks-n-mortar' university model is the next bubble to burst. Not the institution necessarily, but certainly the costs of higher education will come under pressure.

I look forward to interacting with everyone at P2PU.

Gabriel Gloege's picture
Gabriel Gloege
Wed, 2011-03-30 16:58

Jeff... I think you're spot on with the cost of higher education being in a bubble. Fueled by easy credit from the Federal Government (of which I myself partook) the costs are all out of proportion to the value and certainly out of reach of so many consumers. P2PU is a great example of creative destruction.

Jeff Weber's picture
Jeff Weber
Wed, 2011-03-30 17:19

Gabriel-
Thanks for your response. Yes, the 'Perfect Storm' is coming: easy credit (as you mention), 24% default rate on student loans, tightening state funding budgets, rising tuitions, alternative delivery mechanisms (part of the creative destruction), and finally, exorbitant text-book costs. Too bad I can't figure a way to short this phenomena.

Here in my state, all education budgets are to be slashed 50%. So what does that mean? Higher property taxes for K-12 education funding. And higher tuitions for college level. Already the college kids are protesting. When it comes to real $$, out of everyones' real pockets, the level of the protests will make anti-war protestors look sanguine.

Agreed, precisely why this venue is of so much interest.

Best

Alison Jean Cole's picture
Alison Jean Cole
Wed, 2011-03-30 19:56

Alan Michael Collinge wrote a fairly scathing (and slightly controversial) book on student loan justice a few years back: http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2095

I definitely am burdened with undergraduate debt, and feel a little "swindled" myself. So, I started a few imagined graduate school projects to divert my academic goals into a meaningful venture without racking debt. The first project was a total disaster, but I learned a great deal about managing one's lifelong learning. Now the second attempt is going quite well, albeit very slowly: http://www.grungefarmer.org/handmade-masters.html

oki onome's picture
oki onome
Fri, 2011-04-01 10:43

i am oki onome. i am from nigeria. i am fascinated with the p2p study method that i can help but to be a part of. i have a strong engineering background with strong taste for technology and social issues. i believe i will learn and achieve that much by being a member of this team.

Jessica Ledbetter's picture
Jessica Ledbetter
Sun, 2011-04-10 02:10

Howdy everyone :)

This is my first time organizing a course/study group and am doing it over on the new platform. A couple of reasons that I'm doing it over there: 1) I love Beta 2) Eating one's own dogfood is good.

I have taken a few courses before and had a few ideas for a course but someone mentioned what a great idea it would be to have one that helped new developers get involved in developing for the new P2PU platform. That sounded perfect for me since I was in the process of learning that myself!

I'm drawn to the peer-to-peer model because I've had good experiences with study groups offline so figured it would be good to try online too.

My personal learning goals are:

  • learn more Python/Django
  • learn how to contribute to an open source project well
  • learn ways to make it easy, fun, and rewarding for new developers to contribute to an open source project
Maya Incaand's picture
Maya Incaand
Sun, 2011-04-10 20:33

Hi from http://p2pu.org/users/selfstudier and http://new.p2pu.org/en-US/selfstudier/ (although there isn't much on the latter yet).

I've done one course and now I'm running the same one http://p2pu.org/webcraft/javascript-101-1 together with the guy who ran it last time.

Interested in running a course along the lines of "Python & 3D Graphics" and possibly one on "Geometric Algebra".

Shared is better, all sorts of stuff you can pick up that's not in the books, more fun too.

I'd just like to be able to organize (participate) in courses (study groups) well and perhaps make a few friends along the way.

Nick Doiron's picture
Nick Doiron
Mon, 2011-04-11 17:04

Hi. I ran a course from January-March on web mapping with OpenStreetMap and OpenLayers.

I am working with Mozilla's WebMadeMovies project to offer a course on Interactive Open Video. Libraries such as Popcorn.js use the open web to give new visual and technical power to filmmakers: http://p2pu.org/webcraft/interactive-open-video-popcorn

We will have frequent chats with developers involved in the WebMadeMovies project.

Alison Jean Cole's picture
Alison Jean Cole
Mon, 2011-04-11 17:22

Looks awesome Nick. I will definitely share this with some of my friends who are film makers.

Have you checked out new.p2pu.org yet?

Nick Doiron's picture
Nick Doiron
Mon, 2011-04-11 21:23

Interactive Open Video is now part of new.p2pu.org: http://new.p2pu.org/en-US/groups/interactive-open-video-with-popcornjs/ -- I'll ask people in the course to join both.

Dan Diebolt's picture
Dan Diebolt
Mon, 2011-04-11 20:33

Popcorn.js Annotation of Video (Jimmy Wales's Call to Action)
http://p2pu.org/webcraft/node/27443/document/28946

This video is large so it may take a while to load.

Convert Philipp's video to ogv and annotate for a relevant demo.

See the link. The layout of comments does not provide enough width to embed the video.

Nick Doiron's picture
Nick Doiron
Mon, 2011-04-11 21:19

Thanks Dan! I'll see what I can do for another embed example, including use of a smaller video from WikiMedia Commons.

Dan Diebolt's picture
Dan Diebolt
Mon, 2011-04-11 22:27

Well you and the guy that did the open layers course (you again) at least understand the value of jsFiddle and the need to embed it in the platform.

Okay let's leach Wiki Media's bandwidth for Philipp's ovg video.

Joe Corneli's picture
Joe Corneli
Wed, 2011-04-13 16:08

Hi, I want to introduce "Understanding and Shaping P2PU" (formerly known as "P2PU (the course)" or "meta-P2PU"), on the New Platform. Anyone interested in learning about and improving ("hacking") P2PU might want to sign up.

http://new.p2pu.org/en-US/groups/p2pu-the-course/

Amy Donahue's picture
Amy Donahue
Wed, 2011-04-13 17:44

Hi everyone, I'm Amy. I'm a medical librarian working in a small non-profit hospital in a larger system. One of the things that drew me to medical libraries was their focus on using technology to provide the best possible service and because of the focus on education, be it for patients, their families, or for the medical staff who take care of them.

A friend from college introduced me to P2PU because she knew of my interests in technology and education. I love the idea of learning from peers and the creation of an environment that supports learning at any stage of life, in an open way (librarians are generally pretty into the idea of open information).

I've kind of progressed through the P2PU roles, starting as a participant, then as a peer facilitator (a large group that was divided into subsections, so I was learning and organizing at the same time, while using an expert's syllabus and support). Now I'm leading my own class on finding and evaluating health information on the internet, using open sources! I'll also have the honor of sharing the P2PU model with other medical librarians at our large national organization's annual meeting.

Nice to meet you all, and good luck!

Alison Jean Cole's picture
Alison Jean Cole
Wed, 2011-04-13 19:40

Very cool premise for a course - it's now open for sign-ups - so promote away!

Wesley Pennock's picture
Wesley Pennock
Wed, 2011-04-27 19:45

Hi all,
My name is Wesley M. Pennock currently I am research quantum computing independently. I am a high school junior and have been reading books about college level physics topics since I was 10. I love to learn and how to gain alot by being apart of P2PU. Currently I am enrolled in Python 101 and would like to teach a computer security course some time in the future. I love science in general but my favorites are physics and computer science.

Alison Jean Cole's picture
Alison Jean Cole
Wed, 2011-04-27 19:56

Welcome Wesley, great to have you!

Satish Annigeri's picture
Satish Annigeri
Thu, 2011-04-28 11:42

Hi Everyone,

I am a Professor of Civil Engineering and have been teaching for over 25 years. I am based in Hubli, Karnataka in the south of India.

I plan to conduct the course :Getting Started with Scilab" (http://www.p2pu.org/math-future/getting-started-scilab). Engineers rely heavily on numerical computations and many problems they solve require use of matrices. The traditional way is to use a programming language such as Fortran C/C++, but they take the focus away from the problem and shift it to programming languages. A Free Software such as Scilab shifts the focus back on the problem since all matrix and numerical operations on them are built-in into Scilab.

I look forward to experiment with P2PU as a platform for delivering knowledge across geographical boundaries and time zones and its suitability in delivering high value content in a niche segment. It would be interesting to see how one can sustain the commitment of participants and see whether pedagogical tools that work in a instructor lead trainings or classrooms work with eLearning.

Alison Jean Cole's picture
Alison Jean Cole
Thu, 2011-04-28 19:10

Welcome!

Glad to have you here, and see you are joined with Math Future! You can use this space to ask any questions you have during the design process. Also, feel free to check out our new site (beta) that we're testing.

new.p2pu.org

-ALISON