EduCamps is a series of workshops on the use of social software tools was designed and implemented, modeled a face-to-face social networked learning space in which several emerging concepts (such as e-learning and personal learning environments/PLEs) were brought into play. EduCamps were intended to enable a different learning environment, directly related to the possibilities of current technologies, in which responsibility in the use of ICTs was made evident, as well as the need to consider how and when to distribute the role of the expert among a community of learners.
The Origin of the EduCamp
The original idea of the EduCamp workshop emerged from conversation with Nancy White, Jay Cross and Fernando Diaz del Castillo (at the time, the person in charge of the use and adoption of ICT for Basic Education at the Ministry of Education). Brainstorming took place in August, 2007 about how to design and experience to facilitate what White called “Over-the-shoulder” learning.
“Over-the-shoulder” learning is a fairly common practice in software development training, where students share solutions to specific problems as they appear, working side by side, generating a relationship different from that seen in a typical classroom. It is recognized that anyone can act as an expert in a specific area (the use of tools, for example) and that knowledge is not exclusively transmitted from one to many (for instance from teacher to students), but also can be transmitted among unstructured groups of people.
How to enable it? It was not enough to talk about the possibilities of technology. Rather, it was essential to make them visible and to model them for all attendees. With these thought in mind, a full-day workshop was designed, mixing several techniques of individual and collective work. It was presented as a “workshop on the use of social software tools” and designed to be offered to about hundreds people at once.
The Concepts Embedded in the Design
The approach used in EduCamp, a PLE diagram may include, with more or less detail, the physical spaces in which people learn, the people from whom learning happens (teachers, mentors, colleagues, other learners), the media used to access relevant information (such as textbook, academic articles, television, radio, newspapers, blogs, wikis, mailing lists, etc.), and the tools used to compile that information or to interact with others (including, usually, a variety of social software tools).
The components of a PLE vary from person to person, as do their relative importance. More than an application or computer platform, a PLE is composed of people, spaces, resources, and tools that are interrelated and that interact in different ways depending on the habits and needs of each person.
There was an interesting in getting participants to experience different forms of organization for collective work, enabling each learner to discover and explore his or her interests using technology, outside of the curriculum and objectives predetermined by others. For this reason the design of the workshop was based on several techniques used to carry out unconferences. An unconferences relies on minimal structure, allowing participants to decide the issues to be addressed within a broader subject area. The name EduCamp itself comes, in part from unconferences having the suffix camp in their names (FooCamp, BarCamp, PodCamp, Pecha Kucha, etc.), but with an educational emphasis.
The workshops were designed with a defined yet flexible structure, which brings together several concepts and has a specific interest in the adoption of social software tools. They were not designed as a BarCamp, whose discussions are related to education.
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