"It's really easy to understand the lure of small, artisanal projects that we can polish to a satin finish: they offer a sense of craftsmanship, a human scale for our work, and the chance to get something really *right*. But larger projects and bigger systems can often feel soulless and unsatisfying, even when we're excited by the causes and ideas behind them. So is there a way to work on an ambitious scale without losing the purpose and handcraftedness that makes more intimate gigs so much fun? (Hint: yes.)

Via the craft of content strategy and its intertwinglements with design and code, this talk follows the connections between making small-scale, handcrafted artifacts and designing big, juicy systems (editorial and otherwise) that encourage both liveliness and excellence."

"For decades, Japan simply imported the wares of foreign cultures, but recession has led to invention. The country has begun creating the finest American denim, French cuisine and Italian espresso in the world. Now is the time to visit."

"During the robust economy of the '80s, Japan's exports ruled, and the country would import the best that money could buy from the rest of the globe, including Italian chefs and French sommeliers. Which made Japan an haute bourgeoisie heaven where luxury manufacturers from the West expected skyrocketing sales forever.

But now 20-plus years of recession have killed that dream. Louis Vuitton sales are plummeting, and magnums of Dom Pérignon are no longer being uncorked at a furious pace. That doesn't mean the Japanese have turned away from the world. They've just started approaching it on their own terms, venturing abroad and returning home with increasingly more international tastes and much higher standards…"

[See also Stateside: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/adam-davidson-craft-business.html ]

"I’m using these two words—apprenticeship and certification—in a way that’s overly simplistic, but I’m doing it to make a point: when your daughter heads off to school each morning, does she treat it like an apprenticeship or an internship?

Is she more concerned with learning something interesting, or her GPA? Is she developing deep relationships with mentors, or merely securing snazzy letters of recommendation? Is she learning something useful right now, or participating in a ritual as preparation for the future?

* * *

Here’s perhaps the most important question: does your daughter’s school view it’s work as closer to providing apprenticeships, or internships?"

"What is needed quite urgently is a new approach to helping those in the workplace do their jobs, or do them better – in more effective, efficient and relevant ways in the modern workplace. An approach that is NOT about designing and delivering courses, but is about working with individuals and teams at the grass roots to both encourage and support continuous learning practices as well as to identify more appropriate solutions to business and performance problems through non-training interventions."

"What if we put students in the driver's seat of a new kind of R&D to transform education? One that provided a platform for engaging students more fully in a real world effort that also involves faculty, education administrators and other system players? Could we improve a student's education experience? Yes. Could we take it a step further and transform education itself? Yes.
The Business Innovation Factory's participatory design studio gives students the opportunity to use real-world research and design methodologies to transform their student experience. Framed within the context of a real problem, the lab leads students through the design process, ultimately landing on a set of solutions to improve their experience."

"…started as a summer camp in the mountains. The idea was to bring kids w/ limited opportunities, both from the city & country, together to make art. Turns out it was a pretty good idea. Kids who said they couldn’t draw found out they were artists. Students who were at risk of dropping out of school kept w/ it, graduated from high school, won college scholarships & came back to work at Caldera.The artists who worked w/ the kids found the experience made them better artists, so we invited them back during the winter to work on their own projects. & because art isn’t just for summertime, we started working w/ students every week, expanding our activities into their schools & communities in Portland & Central Oregon. Today, we work year-round w/ thousands of students, & we invite artists from all over the world for month long residencies at our arts center near Sisters. Caldera’s mission is to be a catalyst for transformation through innovative art & environmental programs."

"Thus at present, facing a a confusing state of automated technology, excessive urbanization, & entirely new patterns of work & leisure, the best educational brains ought to be devoting themselves to *various* means of educating & paths of growing up, appropriate to various talents, conditions, & careers. We should be experimenting / different kinds of school, no school at all, the real city as school, farm schools, practical apprenticeships, guided travel, work camps, little theatres & local newspapers, & community service. Many others…Probably more than anything, we need a community, & community spirit, in which many adults who know something, & not only professional teachers, pay attention to the young."<br />
<br />
…I recognize…experimentation Goodman is referring to.<br />
<br />
Big Picture Learning<br />
Democratic/SudVal/Free schools<br />
Unschooling groups and families<br />
Unschooling Adventures Group<br />
Place-based education<br />
Online Education<br />
Specialized schools"

"Situated learning was first proposed by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger as a model of learning in a Community of practice. At its simplest, situated learning is learning that takes place in the same context in which it is applied. Lave and Wenger (1991)[1] argue that learning should not be viewed as simply the transmission of abstract and decontextualised knowledge from one individual to another, but a social process whereby knowledge is co-constructed; they suggest that such learning is situated in a specific context and embedded within a particular social and physical environment."

[Also includes a section on "Situated Learning and Social Media"]

"The technological power of the "cloud" as an aggregator of global knowledge & social network capital combines w/ natural tendency to learn through sharing & playing to create a multidimensional, interconnected network that solves complex problems. Simply put: Purpose & play drive learning.<br />
<br />
These students help us discern what is valuable about higher-ed learning & what needs to be shed to save it from complete ossification. The insular nature of academia could lead to its demise, but these students also see tremendous value in its ability to incubate. Unis become testing grounds where students can find mentors, receive funding, & iterate initiatives with real-world consequences. The design community can debate where innovation comes from, but we can no longer look to authoritarian, top-down dictation to drive societal change. If the blossoming of this pattern doesn’t point to a new trend in education, then it at least represents what these higher-ed institutions must become."

"Remember the Revival World Premiere Jam back in 2009? Well...it's 2011 and Jake just got back from the Yamaguchi Frame Building School in Rifle, CO. A few Polaroids, 6 rolls of film and about a hours worth of keyboard time and this is what we got from our now bearded friend up in Seattle (Damn Hippie, I'm proud of you)."<br />
<br />
"I have no clue where to begin my story of attending the Yamaguchi frame building school. I'm not a good writer so I will do my best to share my two week experience in Rifle, Colorado with you. All I can say is Koichi Yamaguchi might be one of the most amazing persons I have ever meet, let alone learn from."

"…the student seeks out the master & their tutelage. More than tips, tricks, & practices, the understanding is that the thing of enduring value that is being transmitted is knowledge & wisdom, which opens a way to method. The student arrives & the master questions their abilities. Often, the student gets turned away. The purpose of the master turning away the student or questioning their intentions is to underline the importance of readiness."

"The lesson of the master is that if one isn’t ready to face a large task (say, a wall of text), they should not even try. “Go away,” the master usually says. Come back later, when you have more presence and mindfulness, Frank. Readiness may be in 20 minutes, later in the week, in a few months, possibly never."

"We should allow ourselves to leave behind the things we are not ready for; we may come back to it later. Instead, we should read hard on the things to which we are ready. It is then that we may be better students."

"This overseas business teacher pointed out several 'hidden problems' that were discovered in his 'apprentices': <br />
<br />
1. academically brilliant students often more aloof, pull down group<br />
2. passing the buck / hogging work<br />
3. overlooking fundamental facts<br />
4. not listening to other team members<br />
5. taking a stand or not taking enough<br />
6. witholding information<br />
7. cannot evaluate flaws<br />
8. not finishing work<br />
9. political intrigues<br />
10. conflict-seeking behavior."

"Jim Groom suggested apprenticeship might be a good model for networked learning, particularly for those students who are not auto-didactic…a model that is well understood, can work for a variety of topics in less formal settings, can get learners productive on certain tasks quickly, & can get the benefits of scale by using modern communications technologies…So in this post, I’m going to consider the question of what it would take to embed apprenticeship into the fabric of our society as a broadly accepted career path across a wide range of career types…<br />
<br />
If it’s really going to take hold, then digital apprenticeship has to be very clearly class-leveling rather than class-perpetuating. But what would that look like? How can we craft a modern apprenticeship relationship that has a close bi-directional apprentice/master relationship and is economically leveling?"

"In this important theoretical treatise, Jean Lave, anthropologist, and Etienne Wenger, computer scientist, push forward the notion of situated learning--that learning is fundamentally a social process and not solely in the learner's head. The authors maintain that learning viewed as situated activity has as its central defining characteristic a process they call legitimate peripheral participation. Learners participate in communities of practitioners, moving toward full participation in the sociocultural practices of a community. Legitimate peripheral participation provides a way to speak about crucial relations between newcomers and oldtimers and about their activities, identities, artifacts, knowledge and practice. The communities discussed in the book are midwives, tailors, quartermasters, butchers, and recovering alcoholics, however, the process by which participants in those communities learn can be generalized to other social groups."

"The 21st century is a world in constant change. In A New Culture of Learning, Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown take up the challenge of understanding how the forces of change can not only be managed, but how they inspire and invite us to imagine a future of learning that is as powerful as it is optimistic. This is a book that looks at the challenges that our education and learning environment face in a fresh way.<br />
<br />
By exploring play, innovation, and the cultivation of the imagination as cornerstones of learning, Thomas and Brown create a vision of learning for the future that is easily achievable and that grows along with the technology that fosters it and the people that engage with it. It is a guide book for arc of life learning that shows us why we neither need to fear nor resist change, but how we can learn to embrace change as a way to follow our passions and make sense of a world that is constantly growing, evolving and changing."

"John Seely Brown…has a new book coming out soon, The New Culture of Learning…download first 3 chapters from the site.<br />
<br />
He talks a lot about one of my pet subjects, Community Mentoring, the apprenticeship model of education:<br />
<br />
"Where traditionally mentoring was a means of enculturating members into a community, mentoring in the collective relies more on the sense of learning and developing temporary, peer-to-peer relationships that are fluid and impermanent. Expertise is shared openly and willingly, without regard to an institutional mission. Instead, expertise is shared conditionally and situationally, as a way to enable the agency of other members of the collective."<br />
<br />
as well as a dozen other favorite topics of mine: play as a means of learning, constraints as a stimulus for, rather than an inhibition of, creativity, and so on. I wish I could figure out how to get my hands on the whole book. There is a great page of resources on the site as well, for further exploration."

"Our vision of the perfect learning environment is a library, but like none we have ever encountered. The library would have books and videos and tapes and computers, but that would be just the beginning. There would be lots of librarians, or more accurately “docents” — guides to the trails of knowledge. Primary docents would provide instruction in the technologies necessary to utilize the available resources. … There would be a vast learning exchange of skills, from basic mathematics to auto mechanics. There would be lending libraries of tools and materials, from carpenter’s saws and hammers, to biologists’ microscopes, to astronomers’ telescopes. There would be organized classes, learning support groups, and lectures. Self-evaluation tools would be available for learners to measure their own progress.

There would be large gardens and orchards, staffed by botanists and farmers, where students would learn to grow fruits and vegetables, and home economists who would teach their preparation and storage. There would be apprenticeships for virtually everything kind of employment the community requires.

There would be rites of passage and celebration of subject or skill mastery. There would be storytellers and community historians, drawn from the community’s older members. Seniors would play a vital role in preparing young children to make use of all the library has to offer.

The library would be the community’s hub and its heart. It would be supported the usual ways we support schools, through public taxation, but all users, both children and adults, would be required to contribute time to the library’s success."

"Teaching from a textbook is almost always crappy teaching, so the whole system is flawed. It seems to me that cheating is the almost inevitable consequence of test-giving and test-taking. It doesn’t have to be this way. The best method for assessing learning progress is self-assessment, with the input of someone passionate and knowledgeable about the subject. This would require a lot of trust in the student, but also more work on the part of the teacher — who would not really be a teacher at all, in the traditional sense, but a person in love with a certain topic, probably a practitioner of the subject in question, maybe retired, maybe active.<br />
<br />
Here’s my idea of what an ideal school would be like, borrowed from David Albert’s book And the Skylark Sings with Me a book about a family’s experience in home and community based education. It’s how I’ve envisioned, but never articulated, my own perfect school. "

"College Unbound is designed to harness the passion of students. By connecting students with live-learning (internship) experiences that are rich with working knowledge and building skills, students become immersed in their learning. College Unbound is a vibrant, fast-paced learning environment. The College Unbound program brings educational concepts and theories to life and unites personal motivation and discipline with progressive coursework and real-world learning."

"In short, the educational system so radically decentralized becomes congruent with the urban structure itself. People of all walks of life come forth, and offer a class in the things they know and love: professionals and workgroups offer apprenticeships in their offices and workshops, old people offer to teach whatever their life work and interest has been, specialists offer tutoring in their special subjects. Living and learning are the same. It is not hard to imagine that eventually every third or fourth household with have at least one person in it who is offering a class or training of some kind.”"

"Imagine a retirement where you could have an extra $1million to $3 million in the bank with basically no effort. Now imagine telling your kids that you aren't going to send them to college. And, you go on, you want them to immediately start a business or get to work as soon as they finish high school.<br />
<br />
These are difficult things to imagine because we've been so scammed by the "career industry" that tells us we need college degrees in order to succeed in life, regardless of how much money we spend for those degrees or what we actually do with our lives during the four to eight years it takes us to get those degrees.<br />
<br />
But in my view, the entire college degree industry is a scam, a self-perpetuating Ponzi scheme that needs to stop right now."

"notgoingtouni.co.uk is dedicated to helping young people make informed decisions about their future by showing the opportunities that exist outside of university. University is great for many people & UCAS has long existed to show students the courses available. notgoingtouni.co.uk shows the other side and can be described as the ‘non-graduate UCAS’."

"The educator luddites I have in mind are people who have always understand school to be more than test prep and who see themselves as far more than the agents of a standardized testing industry. I see them leading the way to create inquiry driven schools where students and teachers are not too busy to think. Schools where the technology serves the learning rather than drives the teaching and where the demand for original work is a collaborate effort to solve compelling problems to which no one present knows the answer. In such a school, the curriculum is not driven by the textbook, the flow of information is not unidirectional, learning is networked and students and teachers work together across the boundaries of age and experience as active seekers, users and creators of knowledge. In this rosy picture, individual schools form a kind of globally aware and networked cottage industry of creative learning."

"Why are kids in Germany paying [union] dues, voluntarily [and in increasing numbers]?

"...implementation of apprenticeship model. Grade levels where EVERY student has to move up at end of 9-10 month cycle do not exist. Not to mention fact that if student isn't able to move up at end of cycle he has to wait another 12 months for opportunity to move up again. Instead of grade levels, students just move to next topic/skill.

"JP Rangaswami is chairman of the social enterprise School of Everything. In 2020 - Shaping Ideas he talks about how the educational institutions of the past have overlooked our human urge to feel free and to participate. In social networks and the open source movement he sees the potential for a whole new approach to learning." [Also at: http://www.ericsson.com/campaign/20about2020/jp-rangaswami.html#video-4]

"artists who work in certain materials have, for decades, usually had trouble being taken seriously as fine artists. Glassblowers, ceramicists, textile workers, furniture makers &, until a few decades ago, photographers were all not usually welcome in fine art galleries or the museums that show fine art… unless it was a show dedicated to only ceramics, for example.

"we expect students to be "on time" not because it is educationally important [NBIIEI]...but because we are training workers to be on time. We create "standards" for each grade level NBIIEI...but because we are teaching single-tasking & work conformity. We test individually, blocking collaboration (which we call "cheating") NBIIEI...but because we are manufacturing workers for assembly line.

"College works on the factory model, & is in many ways not suited to training entrepreneurs. You put in a student & out comes a scholar.

"A number of educational theorists are advocating increased attention on teaching students skills, rather than merely focusing on their mastery of abstract content. Influential reports like Henry Jenkins, et al.'s "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century" & the New Media Consortium's Horizon Project have outlined the skills that students need to be active participants in new media culture. As educators working with digital media, we need to begin to seriously think of our work as a form of apprenticeship, where we ask ourselves: what sorts of skills are we modeling for our students? And how are those skills preparing them for the future?

"[My sister an I] were discussing formal learning vs informal learning & how I probably survived because I had the privilege of having access to smart people & mentors, support of an understanding mother, an interest driven obsessive personality & access to the Internet. I completely agree that improving formal education & lowering dropout rates is extremely important, but I wonder how many people have personalities or interests that aren't really that suited for formal education, at least in its current form.

"Before universities existed, most people learned by apprenticeship. As Harold points out, before WWII universities apprenticed elites; priests, doctor, scholars, teachers, etc. . .. The mode of learning was still an apprenticeship model and most elite education ended with a very specific apprenticeship practice like a dissertation or medical residency, or for the wealthy, an initiation into “the club”. But educational theory ignored the way things worked and stressed knowledge over doing, knowledge that was represented by a degree.

"Companies big and small use internships to gauge if they want to hire young people. Internship programs and their purveyors are invaluable tools in cultivating and retaining a pool of talented professionals locally.

"social & technological networks subvert the classroom-based role of the teacher. Networks thin classroom walls. Experts are no longer “out there” or “over there”. Skype brings anyone, from anywhere, into a classroom. Students are not confined to interacting with only the ideas of a researcher or theorist...The largely unitary voice of the traditional teacher is fragmented by the limitless conversation opportunities available in networks. When learners have control of the tools of conversation, they also control the conversations in which they choose to engage. Course content is similarly fragmented. The textbook is now augmented with YouTube videos, online articles, simulations, Second Life builds, virtual museums, Diigo content trails, StumpleUpon reflections, and so on...The following are roles teacher play in networked learning environments: 1. Amplifying 2. Curating 3. Wayfinding and socially-driven sensemaking 4. Aggregating 5. Filtering 6. Modelling 7. Persistent presence"

"One of the most effective mechanisms for knowledge transfer which has emerged in human history is the apprentice scheme. via @snowded: "Highly ritualised in medieval times with the apprentice walking the boards once they had reached a certain level of competence to become Journeymen. Then, for some the execution of the master work to become one of the company masters. Dress changed at each stage as did obligation. The educational model was also community based. Journeymen also educated apprentices and were often better able to do so than the masters. While in the early stages of knowledge transfer there was a degree of rote learning, increasingly the apprentice learnt by practice and by tolerated failure. They did not copy the master, they adapted with variance and as such the body of knowledge progressed, it was not transferred as a static entity – something all too common in most KM [knowledge management] programmes – but as a living, breathing and changing practice.""

Will Richardson needs to get out a little more: "So this might totally fall flat on its face, but I’m wondering how all you out there who are deeply invested in social learning spaces might respond to this unlikely but hopefully compelling scenario:

"Universities had it easy too. They could say that getting a degree helped you get a good job, because salaries were correlated with education. Enrollment increased, universities expanded and the academic system flourished. If it were so easy today.

"The Homogenizing Hopper...The Home-Schooling Revolution...Free Agent Teaching...The End of High School...A renaissance of apprenticeships...A flowering of teenage entrepreneurship...A greater diversity of academic courses...A boom of national service...A backlash against standards...The Unschooling of Adults...The devaluation of degrees...Older students...Free agent teaching...Big trouble for elite colleges...Learning groupies"

"How do you follow your curiosity?...A template? Maybe something like this: Spend a year listening, reading, learning about a new practice. Find out who the thought leaders are and why. Ask everyone who is in the particular practice community three questions: what’s your story? ... who’s your hero in your field? who else should I meet? Go to the trade conferences & dive deep. Listen to everything. Read everything. Filter by simple keywords...Spend the next year helping out & apprenticing. Be a humble servant, asking questions but also getting hands dirty and trousers scuffed. Be active, modest & become a learner. Move about, but focus on the nuances of the craft aspects of the practice community. Another year making/creating/building on your own, whatever the field might be. Prepare to be a contributor in a more active way. Find a voice of your own. You would’ve created a network that knits you into the community by this time. And subsequent years, refining and polishing that “voice.”"

"As I continue to visit charter schools in Manhattan, I am struck with the prevalence of arrangements in which there are two teachers in a classroom. The classrooms themselves often have between 20 to 30 children, but the kids are frequently split into two groups or some other arrangement in which they seem to be getting more attention than the typical single-teacher approach. A few thoughts on this:"

"The Citizen Schools after-school program turns educational basics into real-world purpose."

"Here's the reality: Everyone in every occupation starts as an apprentice. Those who are good enough become journeymen. The best become master craftsmen. This is as true of business executives and history professors as of chefs and welders. Getting rid of the BA and replacing it with evidence of competence -- treating post-secondary education as apprenticeships for everyone -- is one way to help us to recognize that common bond."

"'m offering an apprenticeship/not-internship/graduate school/charm school track-changing opportunity to a few people this winter. It's free, it's fairly audacious and I hope you'll check it out. It might not be for you (in fact, it probably isn't) but I have no doubt that you know people who might be interested.

"If you're stuck in a dead end job in publishing, or if you made a not-so-great choice in getting your career started, or if you thought Wall Street would be a different place, or if you just got laid off, or if you're not crazy about fretting away the next six months waiting to get fired and you're not quite ready to start your own gig... this might be the turbolift you were hoping for. Yes, it's free.

"Jolley says he thinks of his relationships with his students less as teacher-student than as master-apprentice. His goal, as he sees it, isn’t to teach students about philosophy; it is to show them what it means to think philosophically, to actually be a philosopher. When the approach works, the effect can be significant. Several years ago, a student named Zack Loveless wandered into one of Jolley’s classes and very nearly dropped it after the first day. “I was expecting a survey course, and in walks this big scary guy, using words I’d never heard before, talking about Hume as background for Kant, telling us how hard the class was going to be,” Loveless told me."

"be Gladwellian: patient, calm, inquiring, & most of all peripatetic....And...be Baconian...prepared to think whatever you need to think to make sense of the evidence you see before you, even when this means breaking from scholarly & marketing orthodoxy"

"Eschewing a formal architectural education, four years into his apprenticeship with his father, he opened his own design firm. He remodeled some interiors, then designed buildings in Mexico ranging from houses to a television studio."

"School is strange, artificial thing, half sterile, half feral...Teenage kids used to have more active role in society. In pre-industrial times, they were all apprentices ...weren't left to create own societies....were junior members of adult societies."

"El escenario del presente siglo impone sobre los individuos y las colectividades una necesaria reforma en las habilidades y capacidades, tanto para la elevación de su competitividad, como para la sostenibilidad de su enfoque ético, en el largo plazo."

"past 5 years has managed Bike Hut...With full-time staff of 2 & bushels of volunteers, he repairs & rents bikes. Perhaps more importantly, he trains young people from impoverished neighborhoods in bike mechanics & by default, in social graces."

"No...we care about intelligence, curiosity, passion, character, motivation, taste, intuition, writing skills, and the ability to make smart value judgements...most of [these qualities] are better learned through practical experience."

'I think we have a complete mismatch between the education establishment and the kind of people we will need to get through peak oil, overpopulation, all those kind of things."

lots here: Swiss teen apprentice = similar social networking and communication patterns to adults; Europe/US...20 core (7 intimate circle + 13 close circle), 37 weaker ties; only 40% of core are chosen, rest are family, classmates, colleagues, neighbors

"Arrange the work in every workgroup, industry, and office, in such a way that work and learning go forward hand in hand. Treat every piece of work as an opportunity for learning. To this end, organize work around a tradition of masters and apprentices: a

"The term now refers mainly to the free transfer of thought and technical expertise, usually carried out without the establishment of designated facilities or institutional authority, spread by a loosely connected system of word-of-mouth referral or localized bulletin-board system, and supported through barter (i.e. trade of knowledge or services) or apprenticeship."

"The mission of the Rural Studio is to enable each participating student to cross the threshold of misconceived opinions to create/design/build and to allow students to put their educational values to work as citizens of a community. The Rural Studio seek

"Suppose...you had the kind of society you wanted. How would you live...in that society? Start living that way now! Whatever you would do then, do it now. When you run up against obstacles, people, or things that won’t let you live that way, then begin

"Seth questioned whether four years in a place that teaches how to be normal filled with students who are looking for a degree helps me. He wondered aloud whether two years on the road traveling in different cultures, and two years reading books and meet

"To hear Mr. Lucas tell it, though, his preferred innovations are in many ways throwbacks. "Our platform is to say that there are time-tested ways of learning," he said in an interview earlier this summer. "Aristotle taught four or five people; he didn't

""The Big Picture Company’s mission is to catalyze vital changes in American education by generating and sustaining innovative, personalized schools that work in tandem with the real world of their greater community. We design break-through public schoo