With that in mind, I am hosting a discussion at the Networking Uncommons at Midwinter on Sunday at 9am. During this time we will likely discuss the following:

• making current unconference offerings less special and more the way we do things
• ways to encourage speakers to leave behind traditional sage on the stage presentations
• planning sessions with different formats
• linking the virtual and physical conference for a more meaningful experience at both
• anything else you want to discuss within this topic

True to the topic at hand, the discussion format will be decided by the group on Sunday, depending on how many people show up and how we are feeling that day.

If you love the unexpected, if you long to revitalize the conference circuit at ALA, if you want a place to discuss new ideas, if you want to be a part of a meaningful discussion (instead of a passive listener), if you need some new ideas to take back to your group, if you are a dreamer, a wisher, a hoper, or a magic bean buyer, come join us for a conversation that can make a difference.

–Jane, with apologies to Shel Silverstein

Mob Rule Learning is reviewed over at ForeWord.

These kinds of things make me do one of two things: make me think, “Hey, I wrote that!” or look behind me for that smart person being discussed; she sounds interesting.

–Jane, is occasionally interesting

I really would like the discussion about how people are using the wisdom of the crowd in the classroom to be something that happens more often. A lot more often because I really do feel that this can revolutionize the way we approach the classroom.

–Jane, likes the unpredictable mob

unconference.net – Though the blog on this site is not updated often and much of the information was posted long ago, there are a plethora of resources on unconferences here. There are explanations of unconferences, facilitation styles, how tos, and a discussion about Open Space Technology.

Open Space World – The original site on Open Space(OST). It is a must read for noobs.

Unconference LibGuide – This is a resource site put together by some librarians who have attended many unconferences. There are some great checklists for planning and some other resources.

Crowdsourcing in Higher Ed IT – This is a step by step guide from Educause on how to use mob rule to make campus and even multi-campus wide IT decisions.

25 Great Ways Colleges Are Using Crowdsourcing – A fabulous list to inspire your own ideas to improve your teaching or impact your community. Some of the ideas are only marginally related to Higher Ed, but they are still very interesting.

–Jane, what mob are you growing today?

Today, Mob Rule Learning is officially out. Like a debutante in a white dress, I am hoping it gets a lot of serious attention, but not just for its good looks. I think the book has some good things to say about some very exciting things going on in conferences and higher education.

Order the book or ebook today from Amazon or order the ebook from Barnes and Noble, Sony, Kobo, or ebooks.com.

A book is about people you love because without them, you would just be a crazy person with a crazy idea. A lot of people I admire and love got me to this place. Today, I want to especially thank librarians.

Librarians are awesome. They are learned and hard working individuals who are underpaid and overworked. They struggle in a system that often does not appreciate their efforts and they do it all For the Greater Good. Thank you for holding me to high standards and for dreaming your big dreams with me.

–Jane, loves being a librarian

To win a signed paperback copy of Mob Rule Learning: camps, unconferences, and trashing the talking head, you only have to do one thing:

Leave a comment on this post and answer this question: If you could plan and attend an unconference on any topic, what would it be?

I will choose, at random, three winners. This contest will run until noon Central time on Friday, September 30, 2011.

–Jane, loves free stuff

The gamers solved the puzzle and mapped the protein in three short weeks. (link is a pdf of the article) A program called Foldit was used to turn the problem into a game. Seth Cooper, co-creator of Foldit, was quoted saying:

People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at. Games provide a framework for bringing together the strengths of computers and humans. The results in this week’s paper show that gaming, science and computation can be combined to make advances that were not possible before.

There are two things that I find interesting about this discovery. One, that humans brains succeeded where computer modeling failed. Two, that a group of gamers spent three weeks solving something ten years of toil by traditional methods could not untangle. Computer modeling is very useful and important, but sometimes we forget that humans are very smart and capable of more than we know. We also forget that sometimes a different approach and a different viewpoint are all we need to find our way out of the woods. That and a mob of dedicated people working to solve the problem with us.

–Jane, prefers first person RPGs

For a third year, Sonic is helping teachers and schools raise money for materials and projects with the help of the public. According to the website, there are three ways to participate:

Anyone with a valid email address can go online and vote for their favorite teacher’s project once per day.

Get two extra votes with any SONIC purchase. Vote codes are provided on the bag sticker.

Vote online 10 times and get two extra votes. Vote codes will be sent via email.

Projects with the most votes will get sponsored by Sonic. Individuals are also encouraged to give money to projects they like. You do not have to purchase items from Sonic to participate which I think is fabulous.

Sonic is working with an ongoing charity called DonorsChoose.org which uses the concept of mob funded charities to help teachers and schools year-round. Using the power of the mob to fund the future of our schools and the future of our kids is a great idea. Using this method of charitable giving means that people can be connected with the needs of others, no matter where they live, to make a difference in a community that needs the help.

–Jane, it is a feel good mob rule kind of day

Tapscott, author of, among other things, Wikinomics, Macrowikinomics, and Grown Up Digital said that our current education system is not only not meeting the needs of our students, but its failure to adapt since its creation will be its demise.

Tapscott said, “All these kids that have grown up collaborating and thinking differently walk into a university and they’re asked to sit there and passively listen to someone talking.” He goes on to talk about the new research that is beginning to show that not only do students learn different and multitask, but the very fact that they are multitasking and learning different is changing the way their brains function and grow. The students in our classrooms now learn different because of the world they live in and yet we are still teaching them the same way we taught people when the classroom was invented. We ask students to sit and learn, to be containers for information instead of creators.

It is not just that we are asking them to be passive, but we are also cramping a process that could be broad and more enriching than a lecture. Tapscott gave an example:

I was talking to a youngster at Harvard, and he said: Why would I sit there and listen to a TA talking to 300 of us, a teaching assistant. I can’t even ask a question – the topic is Peter Drucker- when I can go online and interact with a real-time Peter Drucker.

Social media allows us not only to study a topic but to interact with it. The student from Harvard correctly points out one of the major flaws in our education system. We often ignore a resource rich world and force students to learn in a resource desert: the traditional classroom. Tapscott goes on to talk about how the way we do everything has changed and evolved as our understanding of the world has changed and evolved, except the classroom. This is something I also discuss in the second half of Mob Rule Learning. We have a teaching pedagogy that has not changed in hundreds of years.

One of the callers, Mandolin, talked about her experience in college with professors that did or did not understand their students learning styles, but she goes on to talk about her subsequent experience in the work force. The problems with higher education do not stop when our students graduate. Unfortunately, one of the things that students are learning in our colleges and universities is that multitasking is not an acceptable form of hard work, even though the newest generation in our organizations works better as multitaskers.

Multitasking has had some negative connotations lately and arguments abound regarding if increased multitasking is causing the ruination of society or making us better, stronger human beings. For the sake of this argument, I want to define multitasking as a form of multi-learning. What I mean is a learner that pulls in information from many different sources and media at once, reflects on the information, and then creates new content based on that information that is then shared with other learners in an interactive way that often allows those learners to also learn and create. This is the way that true multitasking in learning works. It means using everything at your disposal to create something new in the discipline. This is what students do now and this is what our traditional classrooms are hampering. As Tapscott points out, a student can listen to a lecture on something or they can go interact with that something. They will choose the latter almost every time and so would I.

What kind of student would you rather have in your classroom? A student who comes and listens quietly to your lecture as a passive learner or a student who comes, uses their laptop to look up additional information on the subject, later corrects an error on that subject page in wikipedia, and develops understanding for the topic on their own?

Another caller talked about an interactive textbook that he helped create and Tapscott’s response was this:

…what we just heard was a teacher acting as a curator rather than a content creator. And imagine if we had this global network for higher learning, there was a platform where all university faculty and educators could cooperate together where we could reach out into the public Internet to curate a lot of this content, like some of it obviously won’t be good, but some of it is spectacular, as the caller just alluded to And you know, we can do this. It just requires some leadership.

As teachers, we should be guides and curators. This is also where librarians are essential to the process. Librarians are curators of information already. We pride ourselves on curating information so that is accessible to as many people as possible. In the learning process, librarians should be making themselves indispensable in the curation process. We can help both with the discovery of information and with the curation of the new content being created by students.

Librarians, who have experience in curating (like cataloging), can help colleges, universities, and educators to move into these new roles, roles librarians have been filling in other capacities for some time. If we are going to change the way higher education works, we will all, teachers, librarians, and students, have to work together, in true mob fashion, to make the changes needed to make the education system reflect our new understanding of the world around us.

–Jane, wrote this with a lap full of 5 month old

My upcoming book, Mob Rule Learning: camps, unconferences, and trashing the talking head, is now listed on Amazon for preorder! It is only available in paperback as a preorder but when it is released, I have been told it will be available in all ebook formats.

There is also a web page for Mob Rule Learning attached to this blog where I will put news regarding the book and an updated list of resources.

Expect more blogging here starting next week. I have some fun things to talk about in regards to crowdsourced learning lined up. Bairn 3 starts school a week from today, so I will have a little more time to write.

–Jane, currently writing in a quiet house and has no idea what to do about that