Boing Phonar Boing ds106

Image credit: The awesome John Johnston’s “Ripping Up a Shredder Head”

Major kudos to Jonathan Worth and  Alan Levine whose cross-course re-mix assignment was picked up by BoingBoing. Alan and Jonathon have been synchronizing and collaborating on certain assignments between Phonar and ds106, and the assignment to remix Corey Doctorow portraits taken by Jonathon himself put Phonar on the BoingBoing map.

What’s more, the BoingBoing article oh so generously mentions that little open, online conflagration known as ds106. The Dog continues to take ds106 to new heights! And now that corporate MOOCs are just retooled for-profit vocational classes and big data metrics for student success packaged as proprietary software are not what they seem, perhaps people will start paying attention to the real innovation happening in Phonar and ds106 when it comes to open online classes. And look, Mom, no venture capital!

It’s a proud moment to see so many amazing people in the open edtech community refusing to get sucked in by the hype, staying the path, and calling the silicon suckers on their bullshit hype. Fact is, in the end the corporate players lack any notion of an educational ethos or a vision of social justice. The only philosophy they can worship is the one that turns the learner into a commodity.

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4 Responses to Boing Phonar Boing ds106

  1. Alan Levine says:

    I was privileged for a chance to visit Jonathan and sit in his #phonar class earlier this month- this remix project has been 6 months in the plotting with UMW ds106 students doing the first round last Spring. We really owe a thanks to David Kernohan for making the match maker intros.

    You know as well from meeting Jonathan at MIT that he is a Force of Open Goodness. He’s got some bigger plans that I sure hope we can be part of.

    O hope to shake off the blog rust soon and write up more about the behind the scenes for the Cory Doctorow Remix — the target link is http://fortheremix.wordpress.com/ The phonar students are taking on the task this week as well as it goes out to the #ds106 headless folks too (if any are left sitting).

  2. It was awesome finally having Alan onsite and yes its really important not to forget the enablers like (but not limited to) David Kernohan , Philipp Schmidt and wasn’t it Brian Lamb or Grant Potter who dragged the Reverend Keynote and possee into a mumbled and rambling phonar OpenEd talk in 2011? These people are still enabling hard and the mood feels like we’re headed toward a ‘tipping-point’ of our own – where the making of something significant and joined up is the natural next step.

  3. Matt says:

    Wasn’t it just a year ago that the corporate MOOC lovers were telling us that we were just seeing a “valley of disillusionment” with xMOOCs and that they would rise victorious in the end? To quote the prophet Homer: “Doh!”

    • Reverend says:

      Exactly, I am sending the Thron article to UMW’s president today just to let him know his faith in liberal arts, organize experiments in tech-enhanced pedagogy is actually the most valuable thing a university could invest in. So much noise, so much money wasted, so little value. It is truly a shame.

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