Drumbeat Festival snapping into focus

Just six weeks and counting until the Drumbeat Festival for Learning, Freedom, and the Web kicks off. What’s going to happen there? The festival team, together with a fantastic squad of radically disruptive educators and technologists, are putting the pieces in place for an awesome program.

On an ever-evolving wiki, we’re chao-ordinating nine spaces (aka tracks) plus a main stage, each filled with activities and problem-solving sessions based on cool themes and outcomes.

Participants are invited to move about the spaces and sample what’s going on throughout the festival, or you may just find yourself falling in love with one topic and staying there the whole time.

Here’s a taste of what’s ahead:

  • Local Learning Incubator — Explore, build, and play with projects that mash up cyberspace with your neighborhood. Take a city walkshop to visit info-rich parts of the city and analyze the data’s openness and share the process online. Test DIY pollution sensors that teach kids how to become advocates for their community’s environment.
  • Webcraft Toolshed — Pick up a shovel and dig into standards-based web developer courses. Experiment with the W3C’s Interact curriculum and hear feedback from real teachers bringing the open web to their classrooms.
  • Badge Lab — Drive and critique badges and other tools to recognize informal online learning. Help code a secure, online backpack that puts students in control of their credits, degrees, and learning materials.
  • Hackerspace Playground — Take over a Barcelona plaza with 3D printers and lasers. Learn how to bring a hackspace to your own city and how to make cool stuff with 10EUR or less. Mentoring and project ideas from Bre Pettis (MakerBot) and Massimo Banzi (Arduino), plus courseware for teaching open hardware and Processing in schools.
  • Open Content Studio — Make it easier for teachers and self-learners to find educational material that they can modify and share. Develop a global course catalog and design content remixing hackspaces.  Help people behind the most commonly used open courseware platforms improve their software.

We’ve also got an excellent track on how open learning and peer-to-peer assessment to transform traditional higher education and formal learning principles at Storming the Academy, not to mention remixing galore at the Video Lab, Wikimedia Lounge, and beyond.

The program is still growing, and we really want to hear your ideas! Take a moment to visit our wiki and add your suggestions.

Image: hackbus.info by monochrom

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  1. Pingback: Brief updates & announcements (too much going on)

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