Just by following and engaging with a few of these activities could certainly keep your mind intellectually stimulated for a whole lifetime, and i’m sure many people do. If you were to say top this off with setting up a community group, with shared access to people and resources, and a shared interest for the same subject area (say filmmaking, photography, fine art, writing, history etc etc). The thing is this is already happening, and has been for a long time. Precisely because these are often needs that cannot be met by the education machine.

Back in early 2008, and at a time when I was only just getting to grips with the whole digital ‘thing’ myself, I came up with the idea of viral education and made this video to ask some key questions about the nature of education in relation to emerging participatory technologies:

Originally made as part of a presentation for my own institution, the video has been used by a number of educational organisations to open up conversations about the way that education is using new viral possibilities enabled by the open web to change the way we think about what education can be. It’s been cited on hundreds of blogs and in a number of reports. Many of the comments have helped to shape my own ideas about education in relation to technology. Here’s just a few of the places it has been used over the last 4 years:

http://sydneyinstituteonline.net/blog/2010/05/25/viral-education-2-0/

http://www.joewilsons.net/2010/10/viral-education-20.html

http://civitaquana.blogspot.com/2009/02/viral-education-20.html

http://www.archive.org/details/ViralEducation_123

http://edteck-lms.org/viral-education-2-0/

http://aewallace.wordpress.com/2009/08/06/viral-education-2-0/

http://epicmarketingvideos.com/2011/07/viral-education-2-0/

http://blogs.netedu.info/2009/11/06/viral-education-2-0/

http://www.washingtondcupdate.com/uncategorized/viral-education-20

http://lonewolflibrarian.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/viral-education-20022409/

http://www.mikemccready.ca/blog/2009/03/weekly-video-viral-education-20/

http://www.veted.net/video/112-viral-education-20–coventryacuk