Alliance for Self-Directed Education

Self-Directed Learning Ecosystem

Commodity

Making Smarter Employees with SDL
Current trends impacting SDL (presentation slide):
- Today's workplaces require constant learning, new skills, and faster knowledge transfer
- Formal classroom training is costly and time consuming
- Online tools provide a more effective and individualized delivery of continuous training

Experiential Learning Model
(David Kolb, 1984)
- Applications mainly in business and management
- Influenced by John Dewey and Jean Piaget

Experiential Learning Model
(David Kolb, 1984)
- Applications mainly in business and management
- Influenced by John Dewey an

Garrison's (1997)
three dimension model
(lecture slides, 11/13/18)

Garrison's (1997) 
three dimension model
(lecture slides, 11/13/18)

Necessity

Seymour Papert
(Constructionism)
- Project and discovery-based learning
- Teacher as facilitator
- Invented programming language for kids (LOGO)
- "No one understands my ideas as well as Papert." - Jean Piaget

Discovery

20% Time in Education

Online Learning
Six Principles
1) Learning sequences
2) Instant feedback
3) Mastery-based learning
4) Learn at your own speed
5) Gamification
6) Peer learning

Learning Management Systems
Ex. CourseNetworking

MOOCs 
(lecture slides, 11/13/18)

MOOCs
(lecture slides, 11/13/18)

Simulations/VLE

Google Cardboard/Expedition

Toys that Make Worlds (Will Wright)

Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality

Blended Learning

SDL Learning Fundamentals (Peter Grey)
1. Education is the child’s responsibility
2. Unlimited time to play [to develop a passion]
3. Time to play with the tools of the culture
4. Caring adults that are helpers not judges
5. Free age mixing of children/adolescents
6. Immersion in a democratic community

How We See SDL (Akilah Richards)
"We trust that children are naturally driven to acquire empowering knowledge and skills, mostly through play and exploration...Choice and natural connection are our focus, not curriculum and comparison.”

Unschooling/Worldschooling:
Children do not attend a specific school location

Student-centered democratic schooling: School exists as a place, but students have choice and agency over what they do and learn and over how school is run (Ex. Sudbury Schools)

Community-centered (learning coops): Physical space, but children have freedom to do and learn what they want; community is involved and might work together with students to fill a need community has or work on a project

Accelerated Learning (Jonathan Levi)

Steps for SDL
1) Set goals
2) Make a plan
3) Monitor your learning
4) Seek help if needed
5) Reflect on progress

Motivation

Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic

Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic

The Revolution in SDL (Sean Bengry)
“We are the catalysts for our own knowledge gathering—and through that, our own performance...We used to think that knowledge was in the head of a learner; now we know it’s in the network. We’re becoming a hive mind.”

"[Jailhouse lawyers] are self-taught, spending long hours in the prison law library. With no access to the internet, they read outdated law books and case law on CD-ROMs. 'The reality of being a jailhouse lawyer is it takes intensive legal study, just the same way it does for lawyers on the outside'...'It’s an incredibly difficult endeavor.'

Four Thieves Vinegar Collective
"Laufer has spent the last decade working to liberate life-saving pharmaceuticals from the ma

Four Thieves Vinegar Collective
"Laufer has spent the last decade working to liberate life-saving pharmaceuticals from the massive corporations that own them. Laufer has no formal training in medicine and he’ll be the first to tell you he’s not a doctor."