Wednesday, April 27, 2011

April 28 - Dale Stephens on "UnCollege"

Join me Thursday, April 28th, for a live and interactive FutureofEducation.com webinar with Dale Stephens, who has received a great deal of public notice lately for his launch of UnCollege - a "social movement supporting self-directed higher education."

Date: Thursday, April 28th, 2011
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am GMT (next day--international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tr.im/futureofed. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event at the event page.
Event and Recording Pagehttp://www.learncentral.org/event/154671

From the Uncollege website:

Hi! I’m Dale.  I was unschooled from 6th until 12th grade and enrolled at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas following ‘high school.’  I was frustrated with some aspects of my college experience and spent much of my first semester thinking and writing about what could be done to address my concerns.

Over winter break, some unschooled friends and I — namely Rebecca Goldman (attending Dartmouth) and Demetri Sampas (attending Pacific Lutheran) — were conversing about our frustrations with higher education.  We found that we had precisely the same frustrations about college, even though we attend different institutions.

After pondering this conversation I came to the conclusion that our frustrations with higher education stem not from the specific institutions we attend but rather from what we had in common: unschooling. We threw around some ideas via email, and Rebecca suggested “we should just start our own college a la the movie ‘Accepted.’”

I loved the idea.

Unschooling provided an excellent education.  As unschoolers we were free to learn whenever and wherever we pleased.  We researched areas of interest, sought out mentors, and connected with other learners.  We took our knowledge from theory to practice by starting organizations and creating internships.   We learned for the sake of learning — not to pass a test.  We found innovative ways to apply what we learned.  We were forced to think independently and analytically.   We learned how to interact with our peers and function in a classroom setting by taking college courses.   By serving as both teacher (planning our courses) and student (doing the coursework) we practiced goal setting, self-evaluation, and created an unconventional yet vital leadership experience.

I decided that as a former unschooler I could make Rebecca’s homeschooler college a reality.

I launched UnCollege on January 21st, 2011.