Foo Camp: ad-hoc learning

Imagine turning the traditional conference or classroom sideways--blurring the line between presenter/attendee or teacher/student. That's the model behind O'Reilly's FOO Camp, an annual gathering/camp-out at the O'Reilly campus in northern California. (See the CNN write-up on the original Foo here.)

Breaking the traditional barrier between The Ones Who Know (the presenter/teacher) and The Ones Who Listen (attendees/students) was surprisngly easy to implement... there were NO pre-arranged sessions. There was, however, a giant board that looked like a conference schedule--complete with rooms and times--except the session topics were blank! It was up to the campers to fill them in. A self-organizing learning experience.

This photo shows the board (it's hard to see, so just go with me here...) where the rooms are across the top and the time slots (hours) are on the left side.

In the green circle, you'll see the origin of this blog... it all started with three words I scribbled on the board, "Creating Passionate Users". So I owe this blog, the talks, and the (coming) book to my decision at Foo Camp to "pay my foo dues" by coming up with a topic I could share. Which is just one example of the tangible new things that can come from the self-organizing format.

I had originally planned to talk solely to the O'Reilly editors about the lessons learned from applying these principles to the creation of the Head First series, but at the last second, I decided that since most of it could be applied to virtually anything for which the notion of "passionate users" makes sense, I would give it a more generic title. If I'd scribbled, "Lessons learned from Head First", this blog would not exist. But because of this format -- which motivated me to try to contribute something to the campers--something new emerged.

I would love to see this self-organizing model (which some are calling the unconference) applied more often in as many settings as possible, from K-12 schools to college to corporate learning.

(No, of course I don't mean that now all teaching should be done by the students, and yes -- some of you were TOO poised over your keyboard ready to send a flame comment about how lame this would be.)

A lot of adult learning environments (including colleges) do have scenarios in which the students/learners are asked to help evolve the course itself... including taking turns presenting some of the material, but these kinds of activities are the exception, when they should be a key component. I've argued with instructors for years over this--as they claim, "Students didn't come here to be taught by other students who don't know anything--they came here to get the facts from ME, the expert."

Oh really? If you drill down, you'd find that most of the students/learners are there to learn. They may have been conditioned through tradition that this means the student listens (and does the occasional "lab exercise") while the expert dispenses facts and knowledge, but that doesn't mean it's truly what most learners want. They want to learn.

And surprisingly little real, deep learning comes from sitting in a chair listening. Think about it... you often learn best (or at least, most memorably) when you're suddenly thrown in the deep end of a situation where you must figure something out in order to keep going or fix a problem. We learn from doing, and we learn from interacting and discussing with others.

But we often learn best that which we have to teach.
It's only when you have to explain something to someone else that you really find out how little you understand. And that realization motivates you and points to the right direction for getting the rest of the story. Imagine this (based on a true story) scenario:

Two groups of fourth-grade kids in an inner-city school:

Group A has a formal semester presentation on programming.

Group B does NOT have a traditional semester on programming, BUT the students are asked to create an interactive multimedia program that teaches fractions to younger kids.

That means Group B must learn--somehow--how to program and develop a teaching game, and at the same time... understand enough about fractions to teach fractions through that game. With Group B, the students had to work in teams and the teachers were there solely as mentors, offering ad-hoc learning to the "developers".

Who tested better for their programming skills at the end?

Who tested better for their knowledge of fractions? (The fact that I'm posting it here is a big clue ; )

You might want to check out this (old) fascinating book by the very cool Yasmin Kafai on the MIT Media Lab's "Game Design Project".

Most importantly, if you're a programmer, teacher, parent, learner, I strongly encourage you to check out the video on the project! The quality of the video is poor, and it looks like it was compressed with circa-1994 single-speed CD-ROM drives in mind, so the sound is off too. But... it'll definitely give you something to think about.

So, teach to learn, learn to teach. If we can stop drawing those hard lines between Knowlege Giver and Knowledge Receiver, everyone benefits. And the Foo Camp model is a great implementation of this. Of course... some of those who weren't invited, disagree. Apparently Foo Camp has indeed hit the Koolaid point. With the exception of Robert Scoble's message, some of these "I wasn't invited and now I'm MAD because I'm too important to have been left off the guest list" folks sound less mature than the 11-year old programmers in the video.

Having said that, I was one of the randomly-selected lucky ones invited back this year, so I'll be blogging for y'all from there this weekend. (The fact that they put me on the guest list again should COMPLETELY dispell the myths that this event is just for the "elites" or the super smart. Although having checked the guest list, I think I'm dramatically bringing down the average IQ score of the campers).

In the meantime, please consider ways in which you can run a Foo Camp-like self-organizing gathering of your own -- whether as a conference or a smaller user group meeting, a classroom, or even a dinner party. And there's a very interesting podcast about unconferencing on Johnnie Moore's blog. Definitely worth a listen.

Think: participation.

If you're at Foo, please say hello. And as of tonight, less than 24 hours before Foo, I have no idea what I'm going to write on that board. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them!