We've got some very good news. Over the next few months we're going to be working with Becta and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (which usually gets shortened to BIS) to improve School of Everything and make it available to lots more people.
Back in November, Becta and BIS put out a call to help them build an 'Informal Adult Learning Web Portal' (which even they admit is a bit of a mouthful). This comes from a government white paper that was published last year called The Learning Revolution all about how the Government could support informal adult learning. Informal learning covers all sorts of things like learning a language, singing lessons, car maintenance, a guided walk, learning to dance or researching a subject on-line.
Here's why they think it's important:
"Informal learning can at its best transform people’s lives. Whether it’s personal fulfilment, keeping active and independent into old age, gaining increased confidence or opening a door to further opportunities, informal learning contributes hugely to the health and well-being of individuals and wider society."
That's what we think too.
So we wrote a proposal, sent it off (registered mail don't you know), popped on a train to Coventry for an interview and waited to find out. It didn't take very long. We got the phone call saying that we'd got the contract just before our Christmas party. That was nice.
We're a bit bashful so here's what Christine Lewis from Becta told us about why they awarded us the contract:
"School of Everything has already proved itself as a platform so we don't need to start from scratch. It already has hundreds of thousands of unique visitors a month and this is now set to get much bigger. It uses web 2.0 social tools, has access to the open source development community and will bring a simple, easy to use solution for everyone which is what The Learning Revolution is all about. At Becta we talk about Next Generation Learning - this is an excellent example of what you can do with technology to make a really big impact for learners. I haven’t been this excited for ages!"
The main changes you'll notice to School of Everything will be:
- You'll be able to find free or low-cost venues to run classes or meet up with other people to learn stuff
- You'll be able to upload and find more resources related to the subjects you're interested in (videos, documents, images... all that kind of thing)
- You'll be able to find courses near you as well as individual lessons and teachers for particular subjects
- You'll also be able to embed School of Everything search widgets on other websites
For us, it means we can do some things we'd always wanted to do a bit faster and that we get to work with lots of great people from the Learning Revolution community that's built up. Hopefully it will also mean that lots more people will be able to teach and learn new things in all kinds of different subjects across the UK.
Anyway, we've promised we'll get all the above done by the end of March so we'd better get back to work!
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Congratulations, well done to all.
Best
SDJ
Great news. Looking forward to the pace of developments getting even quicker around here. More power to ya :)
Sounds great! Informal adult learning is truly essential for modern society.
To make this truly successful in a networked world where learning happens everywhere anytime, it would be interesting to integrate with other platforms or tools people use a lot. I think of social bookmarking and annotation solutions like Delicious and Diigo, personal weblogs, Flickr, Vimeo, Youtube, Twitter?
And vice-versa, making School Of Everything accessible through a solid API. Are there any plans in that direction?
Beware, this is likely to be a Faustian pact. The government has shown no inclination to support informal learning, especially when it involves people learning to become more self confident and to think for themselves. On the contrary it has closed down courses by the thousand that offer this type of learning. Their record has been consistently of getting involved in independent organizations, for instance the Open College Network and much of the voluntary sector. They offer support and funds, and then when they have got you they make it conditional.
The upshot may be that The School of Everything will only be able to advertise training offered by government approved teachers (as is now the case throughout further education) and only if they deliver measurable, competence based government approved outcomes (as as happened with Open College Network courses).
I believe that everyone should have the right to education free of state or commercial control. I hope that The School of Everything will to continue to contribute to this.
John
Be reassured John. This is not the case at all - this development is for non-accredited learning, non-accredited tutors and self-organised groups. There are already lots of things in place for the accredited learning system, this is different. Check out the informal adult learning White Paper: The Learning Revolution which you can find on www.dius.gov.uk/learningrevolution and the press release March 2009 at http://bit.ly/8ZJNvQ
Christine
I am not at all reassured, especially after looking through the white paper. If the government was interested in supporting informal learning, why have they done so much to undermine it?
The white paper is typical of the way this government works. They see something developing that they do not control. They make all the right noises and offer support and funds. Then, once people take the money and become more or less dependent on it the government starts introducing condition after condition to control what they do.
The talk of partnerships is alarming. These partnerships are not equal. They involve responsibilities on both sides, except that small organisations are required to meet their responsibilities or they lose support and funding, but the organisations have no way of making sure that government agencies fulfil their responsibilities. This is frequently the case with voluntary organisations.
Then, in 4.10 of the white paper, the door is opened for government control - "Fit for purpose accountability". Whose purpose? And in 4.10b we have "Ofsted will develop and pilot a new approach for the inspection of informal learning"
The history of the Open College Networks should be an object lesson. Once they were peer networks with objectives much like The School of Everything. Centres would moderate each others courses on a huge range of topics many of which would class as informal learning. Now the (much amalgamated) local OCN's are licensed to accredit a limited range of courses by the NOCN which is "accredited by the Regulatory Authorities in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland".
So, as I wrote, beware.
John
Hi Corne
We are beginning work to make sections of our data available through an API. It's a slightly tricky job, and we will be opening things up bit by bit. Should have built the API first really.... hmmm, hindsight.
Hi John
We are not taking our deal with the "powers that be" lightly. It is a big step, and one has had it's fair share of soul searching. We set out to create a project that would promote an education system that grew from the bottom up, and we will continue to work toward that dream.
For my part, I still consider myself an activist, and I am motivated the belief that we can make society a better place. So far, our experience on this project has been very positive.
We have always set out to work as a business, without any reliance on funding to survive. We are still very much focussed on that plan.
Congrats to the SOE team on the new relationship -- hope to see you continue to grow your presence in the UK, and beyond.
The TeachStreet team remains huge SOE fans!
Dave Schappell
Founder, TeachStreet
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I quite like the idea of e learning where you can study in your own time and are not confined to set times for meeting up for lectures. I did find that I learnt more through self study whilst at Uni than I did through attending classes. Having a lecturer online or face to face is very useful when you have a question or are having difficulty so a must when you are studying.