Peer To Peer Education - The Netcohort Institute

It's time to turn the page.

The Netcohort Institute does not just require a better user interface than BFU - it requires a whole new approach to education. The time spent developing the current platform was not wasted, we successfully found many approaches that will not work.

Lets start from bare ground and put out a few ideas of what we think is needed.

A way for creative project teams to form, self-regulate, and manage reputation for future projects. To really have value we need a web 2.0 approach - let the students develop the courses they need - let all students vote their projects up or down.

What we need is

• An open system like Wikipedia or Mozilla

• A community / communications organization like an online poker room with a general lounge and breakout rooms

• A reputation measurement similar to what e-bay had

• A voting system like Digg employs

and a lot of stuff we haven't thought through yet. Maybe that is your job also.

You have the audacious dreams - you can make them come true.

What sort of resources can a P2P educational network offer? As a start look at this Squidoo lens on the Royalton Raid created by Evelyn Saenz as a course for unschoolers. While not college level, it sure is interesting, and provides a compelling picture. To adjust to a college level course you could take the frame work at the BFU lens under the heading Create Your Own College Course.

In fact Squidoo is a resource we may want to use for course creation. It is easy, enjoyable, and you can actually earn a little money with it.

Think of thousands of students creating courses, thousands of students voting on what is most valuable, you deciding on what is most valuable to you.

Then think of thousands of students joining on project teams and creating value for all of us.

The rest of the institute will not be so easy - it will take visionary volunteers that want to shape the future of education.

This is just the start, the reputation you build within your teams will qualify you for inclusion in serious start up projects - within a Netcort Institute incubator, or on your own.

Want a first assignment?

Make a lens, Put a BFU or Netcohort stub onto Wikipedia - or add to one already there. Put a comment here, or on Evelyn's lens.

This is too big and too important for just me, The Netcohort Institute needs all of us.

Allan

Universities Similar To Bastiat Free University

Someone found this journal by googling: "similar universities to Bastia [sic] Free University."

There could be lots of reasons for the search; they may hope for something better than BFU, or want to start their own university, or want information before they make a college donation, or many other possibilities. They may even have been thinking of free lunch rather than free speech, while we are most attuned to the second meaning of free.

The short answer to their query -- yes, there are universities similar to BFU.

I have a list that includes a couple of them on my distance learning vs. brick and mortar lens under the title "Schools On The Edge." I also have a bit on a discontinued MIT computer science program (ADU) that still has materials available, at the end of the School For Entrepreneurs page.

I get an occasional e-mail from a new college with a fixed program of courses on liberty that sounds interesting; although fixed and required are not really compatible with BFU philosophy. If you are interested leave a comment and I'll try to remember to post a link here the next time they solicit a donation.

You can even self teach yourself by reading sixty or more related non-fiction books and doing an in depth review of each one in a blog. Put the blog's URL net address on your resume. Adapt the BFU course directions if you want a bit more structure. To consider yourself a knowledgeable renaissance person in your field, keep learning.

There are also journal comparisons of BFU with Thunderbird International Business school and with the South Harmon Institute of Technology.

There are several other alternatives, most of them are industrial age educational institutions that are trying to adapt to a new age. As shown by Tony Lopez in The Manila Times, MIT is trying very hard.

As I wrote in the distance learning lens:

"Brick and mortar colleges are where leather bound encyclopedias were a few decades ago - highly respected - unable to gracefully adapt to the information age." - Allan Wallace

Do you remember the transitions of encyclopedias as they went digital? First one, then others, sold inexpensive CDs of their materials. Increasingly encyclopedic materials became available on-line. Then ventures such as user supported Wikipedia and advertisement financed search engines offered additional resources.

Today even Wikipedia has several promising challengers. The old line leather bound encyclopedias still have value, but they seem needlessly cumbersome and expensive - and are therefore increasingly rare.

Cost appropriate knowledge is becoming virtually free. Cost appropriate learning will likely travel the same path.

That some brick and mortar institutions offer better programs than BFU currently offers is beyond doubt. Bastiat Free University and The Netcohort Institute belong to the future, and that is where they will excel.

Formal college programs are handicapped by restrictions and expenses that limit their flexibility and hence their future - we have no such barriers to overcome. BFU will survive to make mistakes and adapt as the future unfurls.

The original free universities were founded centuries ago by self-directed learners that hired respected mentors to teach what those students wanted to learn. This is an interesting educational model that BFU plans to pursue when able; freelance educators mentoring self-determining students.

All of the original free universities have vanished or been melded into formal platforms. There was a bit of a revival in free universities during the 1960s protest era, those seem to have vanished also.

BFU may be unique in some ways, but our desire to continue in liberty is probably the most important. That is why, while there are many universities similar to Bastiat Free University, there are as yet no viable replacements for Bastiat Free University

We were born free, we want to remain free, we want to help others become free.

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BFU is not nearly as good as we want it to be

Just as we advise our students, we dream big dreams.

In reality though there are limits to our capabilities. There are only so many steps toward our ambitious dreams that can be accomplished with our current resources and staff.

"We knew that Google was going to get better every single day as we worked on it, and we knew that sooner or later, everyone was going to try it. So our feeling was that the later you tried it, the better it was for us because we'd make a better impression with better technology. So we were never in a big hurry to get you to use it today. Tomorrow would be better." - Sergey Brin

We are improving BFU, but progress seems slow when compared to the need of generating leaders for the netcohort age; leaders of character, persistence, and vision. We have maximized what we have, but there is still so much to be done. Even what we have already accomplished needs to be improved.

Choices will have to be made between forging ahead with needed initiatives such as the Netcohort Institute and re-visiting early efforts that now seem so naive. It has to be even more frustrating to a student encountering our limitations than it is for us.

I have discouraged students from taking the paid BFU college degree track, I do not feel comfortable with the value offered. Without income though we are unable to improve the courses to where they offer sufficient value. We have received a couple of college donations, (thanks Matt) those have been gratefully applied toward improving what we offer our students.

This current slow growth period will be overcome, just not as soon or as smoothly as we wish. We know that the existing educational bureaucracy is not preparing the adaptable leaders the Netcohort needs. We also know that we are not yet producing those leaders either - but we do have a clear path toward the needed tools.

For now leaders are individually self taught by trial and error within a very tough internationally networked environment. Far too many entrepreneurs are lost or have their feasible dreams destroyed before they come to fruition. Many of their projects are needed - the path is however strewn with their broken shells.

We can not and will not quit, but we must apologize that we have not yet created the resources you need.

The Netcohort Institute

The Netcohort Institute is scheduled to start offering services in 2008.

This is a change for Bastiat Free University. All of 2007 has been a sabbatical, not just to renew the contributors to BFU, but to consider ways to renew the educational services we offer and make them more relevant.

The BFU you know will be changing a bit next year, but the services will continue to expand through the entrepreneurial Netcohort Institute. The plan is to enhance opportunities for those who have become the core of BFU's student body -- passionate knowledge workers united in flexible teams based on relationships and reputation - The Netcohort.

The Netcohort Institute will also offer a new series of college level courses expected to round out the knowledge and skills of the creative netcohort. Many of these new courses have been suggested by BFU students. Of perhaps equal interest will be a form of networked learning -- relationship based systems and tools for facilitating mutually profitable learning interactions.

Our netcohort students will be able to creatively interact with internet centric knowledge workers on real world projects. While not all tools and services will be offered at once, there will be a continual process of improvement as we move toward our goals.

Join us in the adventure - bring your dreams.

Mankind is finally ready to leave the industrial society. The information age has not yet dawned, most of the wonderful technologies to this time are used to enhance old processes. Think Google search, a nice service, but it is in essence a very fast and intuitive librarian. Each tool that allows individuals to shape their own reality is a step away from the "too big" organizations that have metastasized to dominate society. A reality of choice may still be far in the future, but for members of the Netcohort, they can start rearranging their lives toward personal freedom right now.

This is a quick look at TNI, there will be more information soon. While BFU's limited finances will not allow quick growth, we will start laying the foundations of truly useful relationship structures early this next year. The mission of The Netcohort Institute will be to enable student's creative and audacious dreams.

Our goal for The Netcohort Institute is simple: to be the relational focal point for internet entrepreneurs.

The entrepot facility for these new netcohort interaction tools will be The Netcohort Institute.

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Your Local Support Group For BFU

A sunset is even more spectacular if you can share it with someone else.

The learning offered at Bastiat Free University is valuable, it will have even more value if shared.

Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend. - Proverbs 27:17

If there is a serious fault to be found in self-directed distance learning, it is in the lack of interaction with like minded individuals. You can remedy this yourself, find others that would benefit from BFU courses and meet with them regularly. This does not have to take the form of a debating society or a Toastmasters meeting, although those are good. It can be as simple as meeting for breakfast or lunch once or twice a week.

It will help to have a talking point or two for focusing the conversation, but the informal support of like minded students can also reinforce your education. I'll offer some suggestions, but remember this is you group - do as you wish:

• Discuss courses you are taking

• Discuss the BFU summary

• Talk about a business you would like to start

• Talk about problems dealing with BFU (let me know about those)

• Discuss anything that has changed your opinions recently

You get the idea. This is simply a forum for local students to support each other.

There are two large bonuses from participation in a local student group. You will learn more by hearing other's viewpoints. You will be more likely to complete your education if you share the excitement and tribulations of being a student with others.

I would suggest that you not limit the group to just paid students or no-charge monitoring students. If the primary goal is to learn, that is more important than if a college degree from BFU is also a goal.

As there is value in continuing your education both to yourself and to BFU, we will offer a discount to local support groups using the subscription college format. Contact us with the details of your group at "localgroup at silentpc dot org."

As society changes so is the definition of local changing. In 2008 we plan to establish trans-world "local" groups through The Netcohort Institute. Join us in the adventure - bring your dreams.

You will learn more and you will be more likely to complete your education with a local support group. Form your local support group today.

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Disruptive Technology & Disruptive Innovation

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Disruptive technology and disruptive innovation are both well described in Wikopedia. Joseph Schumpeter presented a well developed economist's view of the same idea in the 1940s, he called it creative destruction .


Regardless of origin, the idea that new technology slowly overtakes and then passes entrenched methodologies, to everyone's benefit except the old tech, is a sound concept. A new disruptive technology is frequently just a niche play at first, but as it develops it is found to be an improvement of the prior designs.

"Don't let schooling interfere with your education."
Mark Twain

Bastiat Free University employs a potentially Disruptive Technology. The Docebo open source learning system used at BFU fits many of the potentialities for disruption as outlined in Clayton Christiensen's books about disruptive technology. Your own Bastiat Free University hopes to become a Disruptive Innovation and inspire change within the traditional, inefficient, expensive, snobbish, and archaic government supported and regulated universities.


Whew.


Let me say that again: traditional, inefficient, expensive, snobbish, and archaic government supported and regulated universities.

An even stronger disruptive education format is being developed for the Netcohort Institute; think peer to peer education, P2Pedu.

OK, back to the post.


BFU has an article that performs an ad hoc comparison of distance learning and brick and mortar schools. Currently B&M is ahead. This article does not mention disruptive technology, but the arguments raised support the concept.


Our working premise is that the bureaucratic age is ending. The rise of the information and miniaturization age is itself disruptive. Economies of scale are reversing. In the Industrial age large organizations and centralized decisions were efficient and pushed out smaller enterprises from all but niche markets. Today a new Netcohort is creating customer centric small and adaptive groups that are surgically appropriating the most profitable sectors from the industrial age dinosaurs. They do this using disruptive innovation to satisfy their customers.


The cost of centralized vertical management, in time and money, is causing the implosion of bloated bureaucracies. Organizations based on the economies of large size dwarfing the needs of the individual are falling as the individual finds personal satisfaction elsewhere. Disruptive information technologies will substantially reward the small efficient netcohort as they freely associate and collaborate based on reputation.


Bastiat Free University is participating in this individual centric disruptive innovation. The fact that archaic education will need to be replaced is already apparent. The current system stamps out machine part graduates to fit in industrial age social machines; just as the industrial age grinds to a halt.


BFU is not even noticed by B&M as of yet, and honestly may never be a threat. There will however be many such technologies launched. One of them will be effective at inspiring and training the reputable entrepreneurs needed.


The new network society needs a netcohort; disruptive innovators that will replace the vanishing middle class of the industrial age. Education needs to create independent, knowledgeable, action oriented graduates that enjoy learning. They will want to find pleasure in learning; as change accelerates learning will become an everyday, all life experience.


BFU offers Renaissance education, looking back to move forward. This new age is likely to be more like the Renaissance, individualistic and creative, than like the industrial age that has just past. Discover how to be a disruptive innovator by using Bastiat Free University's disruptive technology.


Rediscover the pleasures of self directed learning.

Allan
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