I have read and admire much of Dr. Ravitch’s work — especially her history of 20th century American education. I have learned a lot from her.

A global golden age of learning is dawning because the education establishment is going the way of VCRs and bundled journalism. Let’s build an open and individual learning commons for all children. The economic woes of “public” funding are making it easier to step away from educational policies whose momentum has kept learning from entering the connected age.

I recommend you read Diane Ravitch’s book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.” She connects a lot of dots. And, she’s a conservative, which I’m assuming you’ll like and appreciate.

http://www.elearningguild.com
http://www.mlearncon.com
http://www.devlearn.com

Not sure that mobile can be more than a catalyst then, and at the same time is does provide some interesting possibilities.

Part of the problem of revolutionizing education is all this “lock in” to the current system. I think we would be amazed if families were given vouchers for school and were allowed to choose their own. Right now we don’t have a free market for education.

Certainly, learning spaces should be individual, and supporting them is a huge advantage of handschooling. Different from the learning space — something like a student sandbox — is the release by unbundling of a student into the open online knowledge commons that the unbundling of knowledge allows, along these lines:

On the bundled knowledge side, cutting the cord means small nodes of ideas can link in dynamic patterns for an individual learner to mirror what he is thinking. Networks form patterns, not bundles. Nick Carr has a whole chapter on this titled “The Great Unbundling” in his book Big Switch. Carr is writing about publishing, but what he says about the network pressure to unbundle describes the principles behind the sluggishness so far of knowledge sources put online in the name of “education.”

My new thought that inspired this perhaps too whimsical asparagus metaphor is this: Schools bundle kids together and teach to the group. The group interfaces the same bundled subject material at the same time. The bundle of kids gets the same textbook assignment, the same class lecture, the same test — together at the same time as a bundle.

When a kid browses knowledge on the internet using his individual mobile, the handschooling he experiences is “out of the bundle” and completely individualized to him. Knowledge nodes he finds will link to others following his thoughts and forming dynamic idea patterns mirroring with his learning mind.

so, ‘re-bundling’ is the act of handschooling scaling to the needs of each learner, the personally-curated, evolving learning space/environment that each enduser recombinates as she/he goes through organic growth….