Steve Wheeler, a while back, highlighted one of Ivan Illich’s ideas from Deschooling Society: peer-matching:
The operation of a peer-matching network would be simple. The user would identify himself by name and address and describe the activity for which he sought a peer. A computer would send him back the names and addresses of all those who had inserted the same description. It is amazing that such a simple utility has never been used on a broad scale for publicly valued activity.
Steve asked if the notion of peer matching can be achieved within the constraints of the ‘rigid curricula and control freakery’ of current education systems. Rightly, he was positive, and asks:
.…how radical can we get with education? What if every child had their own device to connect to the world of knowledge and what if it was actually fun. What if they could search for any topic they wanted to know about and find complete resources on it in seconds, on a screen right in front of them? What if children could match their interests and knowledge needs with others who they could link with around the globe? What if children could learn from each other in this way using social networks and massively online role playing games? What if each child could create his own personal learning environment using tools that were free, scalable and open for all to use without any concerns about personal safety? What if this kind of learning was formally accreditable in such a way that employers would recognise it? What if the learning webs that Illich dreamed of were actually a reality, brought to us through easy to use personal devices, connected anytime, any place, and totally free to use?
Steve finished with the question:
So why aren’t we doing it?
Why, indeed?
Illich’s notion of peer-matching, and his concept of the ‘learning web’, would have been difficult to achieve in any meaningful way when he wrote Deschooling Society — but with the networking and social technologies we have today, both are highly realisable (as i have discussed on this blog before).
And the fact is, these same tools can be used to create learning opportunities for teachers beyond the confines of the official professional development offerings sanctioned by the formal system– in other words, much of what Steve suggests we can do today can be, and indeed is already being, infiltrated into the system from outside, through social networks and other informal means, whether virtual or face-to-face.