In order to think about this school’s tools, I started by jotting down quickly what learning process it would support. Reading what I just wrote, I realize that creation and learning are becoming harder and harder to separate to me –it looks just like a description of the creative process:
0) Find an environment that gives you an excuse to follow your interests without an external justification/validation.
1) What stirs your curiosity these days? Why? Discuss. Read. Watch. Listen. New things. Old things.
2) Define a frame. Or several frames. Choose one. Think of projects that address each corner of the frame. Share them.
3) Who else is interested? Talk to them. Start working together.
4) Share the process. Share results. Find new questions.
5) Repeat.
So now I’ll think about these phases from the admin point of view –how will the school support them? From there, I’ll see what site functionality can support the process and, finally, how they can be provided quickly with existing tools (wordpress, google docs, etc.).
First, more details on the phases, from the admin point of view:
0) Find an environment that gives you an excuse to follow your interests without an external justification/validation.
The homepage of the school should convey its philosophy. People will probably self-select.
The application process should encourage honesty (how?). Clear questions, conversational tone. Maybe ask about three specific projects that the person would like to make (maybe one small and one big. perhaps ask this way: a 20-minute project. a week-long project. a two-year project.).
The staff tries to find common threads among projects. Tentative class names are proposed to address the themes that emerge. People who have been working on them might be invited to teach/facilitate the course, or simply someone who has been through the school and is interested in the subject.
Applicants can also propose classes and teachers (this, btw, will say something about them too).
1) What stirs your curiosity these days? Why?
This was answered in the application. Perhaps part of it should be open, so that people can read about each other’s interests, and also keep their own initial interests in sight (even if only to see how they’ve changed).
Discuss. Read. Watch. Listen. New things. Old things.
Once the classes are published (should the school even use the word ‘class’? workshops+forums might be better?), participants are prompted to do some research and find related materials that seem relevant (lectures. videos. technical online courses. syllabi.). They make lists, tagging them with the situation in which they’d better take advantage of them ––I just saw someone propose this in another post 
. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and even had the same categories (active/passive, group/solo). I suppose it’s a good idea! In another post, someone mentioned time frames. I’d add that, too. Thinking whether it would help to be more specific about the state of mind / situation in which to go over materials? Daydream, Production, Small study group, Discuss over food/drinks, …? what else?
The volume of gathered material will always be more than a person can go over in a whole year (or even a lifetime). How to make lists that are not overwhelming? Time frames help (people might drag their own activities to their calendars and see what they can do being realistic). And maybe there should be a “someday/maybe” category, like on some time management software. But the school shouln’t get into it’s students time management. Or should it? Where’s the line? It might be a key aspect of teaching. Knowing what ground there is to cover, how much effort/time it takes to understand/master some skill or concept, and therefore what the expectations should be for the course. If we open up the curriculum this much, if there is no teacher with that role, the system should help. Advisors might be the answer. [think more about this]
Workshops meet once a week, in person. Their goal is to provide some structure to the development of projects (which addresses the previous issue to an extent), and to make sure people are aware of what others are working on. In the research phase, people share the most inspiring ideas they got from the materials they chose to go over (videos/books/etc). But it’s not assumed that everything happens there. There are other, spontaneous activities going on –the small study groups, brainstorming walks (?! I don’t like the term brainstorming. But walks are great for ideation…).
…Ok, if I don’t start thinking of tools I won’t have any functioning part in this site before tomorrow. So I’ll leave the development of the rest of the points for later.
TOOLS
0)
- A form for applications. Some answers only available to staff, some to all (accepted) students. Staff can comment –and perhaps vote for an applicant? Maybe Google Spreadsheet works for now.
- Somewhere to propose themes for classes and discuss possible teachers. Could be a post per class proposed.
- The same for students (but tagged as ‘proposed by student’)
1) Read. Watch. Listen. New things. Old things. Discuss.
For each student, a place to post something to read/watch/do later and tag with ‘state of mind’, as discussed before.
A calendar / one of those scheduling app helps coordinate the group activities. The idea is that any given day, the person can see their commitments (group activities), but also filter their activities by class and state of mind.
…And, of course, I didn’t get too far with the actual implementation of the site: http://www.luisaph.com/hacking_higher_ed/