Free learning

A. S. Neill, founder of Summerhill school in 1921. Summerhill school provided students with a wiki-like learning environment.

Welcome to the A. S. Neill School of Free Learning.

Content development project

The School of Free Learning promotes efforts to develop Wikademia learning resources for learners who are encouraged to explore their personal interests while participating in a self-governing learning community. This style of education was developed by A. S. Neill at Summerhill School and is well suited for Wikademia, where learners are free to come and go as they please and make use of the collaborative wiki environment for exploration of their personal learning goals. See: the Wikademia learning model.

Special content development efforts

The School of Free Learning is a central hub for coordination of more focused content development projects.

One focus area for content development in the School of Free Learning is the development of learning resources about Wikademia itself. Wikademia provides learning opportunities that are strange and unfamiliar for most learners. The Wikademia content development project coordinates efforts to help new Wikademia participants become familiar with using wiki technology as a tool to assist them in their pursuit of learning goals.

Wikademia is one of the family of education-oriented wiki websites of the Wikimedia Foundation. It is important that Wikademia participants understand the cooperative relationship between Wikademia and its sister projects. Wikimedia is a content development project that coordinates the development of learning resources about Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikimedia Commons and the other Wikimedia Foundation wiki projects.

Wiki websites are just one type of website that characterizes the growing trend of websites that support online communities of participants who are engaged in the creation and sharing of digital files. Web 2.0 is a content development project that coordinates the development of learning resources about Web 2.0 and supports Wikademia participants who want to make and share digital media files such as podcasts.

Learning Resources

• Learning fun - exploration of how to have fun while editing Wikademia webpages.
• How to use wiki technology as a free learner - strategies for how to explore personal learning goal by making use of wiki technology.
• History of free learning - Historical review of A. S. Neill, Summerhill School, Unschooling and related educational philosophies.
• Composing free and open online educational resources - The course reading and the assignments will familiarize the participants with the main concepts related to open education resources and to the historical and philosophical ideas behind them. The participants will also carry out hands-on exercises and will this way learn to create and participate in projects producing free and open educational resources.
• Ivan Illich: Deschooling Society/Learning Webs