Illustrations by Amanda Lyons.

Hello and welcome!

The peeragogy project was kicked off around the time of Howard Rheingold’s January 23, 2012 Regents Lecture at UC Berkeley on Social Media and Peer Learning: From Mediated Pedagogy to Peeragogy.  We have put together a handbook about peer learning: you’re reading it — maybe on our website, or in your hammock with the beverage of your choice and our print on demand paperback.  Or maybe you grabbed our free PDF or some other remixed version in some other format or flavor from some other place (which would be cool!).

But: there’s still more work to be done.  We created this page because you might be interested in getting involved in improving the book or furthering the project in other ways.  If so, we’re happy to have you aboard!

What you do here is largely up to you.  Asking questions is actually extremely helpful: there’s almost always someone in our Google+ community who would be happy to try to answer them, or refer you to someone else who can.  Or email Howard and ask for a login on our Social Media Classroom, and browse through the orientation material on the SMC Wiki. Say hi in the forums. Or just poke around the public pages on peeragogy.org and leave a comment or two.  Better still, find an area where you feel knowledgeable — or are willing to learn — and start writing (or filming, dancing, drawing, building, etc.).

The goal we have in mind for our book is for it be a useful guide to peer learning! To achieve that goal we have in mind multiple opportunities for peers to contribute:

• Once we get to know you a little bit we’ll be happy to give you a login on peeragogy.org and you can start editing and improving this.
• You can go right ahead and post some links to relevant resources, either in comments here, or in the G+ or SMC.
• Write the text for a new sub-section (this page was once “new” — but it’s been revised many times by now!).
• We’re particularly interested in case studies about Peeragogy in Action!
• Organize a team to tackle a larger section or topic.
• Make a video (like these on our YouTube Channel),
• Take notes of live meetings, or grow concept maps,
• Organize a newsletter for your group or the whole team,
• Add general purpose bookmarks to this Diigo group, or post comments and editorial notes about peeragogy.org in this one; and
• Discuss peer learning matters and this handbook informally with us and with others!

It’s up to you. Instead of worrying too much about the rules, join our conversations, take advantage of the digital memory of the forum to rewind the conversation all the way to the beginning (if you want to go that far), listen in for a little bit if you want to, and jump in whenever you’re ready.  We won’t know what you’re up to until you speak up. You can have a look at the outstanding tasks and teams that are listed on this Google Doc: our roadmap is a useful shared resource too.  You can add to these at any time.

We regularly use Google+, Google Hangouts, forums, and email to communicate asynchronously and pretty much continuously. We also meet irregularly as a group for synchronous audio-video sessions. Further details about all these methods of communication can be found below.

In short: here’s how it works:

Summary: Ways we Communicate

FORUMS AND WIKI - The project got started in the Social Media Classroom hosted by Howard at Howard Rheingold University. To use this resource, you’ll need to contact Howard via the email address above, and he’ll create a login for you.  This system is asynchronous (you can participate whenever you’d like).  There are lots of old conversations in the forums that you can read to see how the community of peeragogy handbook creators formed — and you can add your own voice.  You’ll find extended discussions of issues and decisions raised in live sessions.

GOOGLE+ COMMUNITY – We created the “Peeragogy in Action” community as a place to gather stories about how people are applying peeragogy techniques.  We’re also using it to coordinate work on the Peeragogy Project itself.  Feel free to join us!

LIVE SESSIONS - We meet synchronously at agreed-upon times, using audio, video, text chat, slides, screen-sharing. For groups of ten or more, we use Blackboard Collaborate, for which Howard has a 50-seat-at-a-time license. These sessions are recorded. For information about scheduling, and recordings, see the forum topic. Participation requires a fairly fast (broadband) Internet connection, a microphone or headset, and (if you wish), a webcam. For groups of ten or smaller (usually for project teams), we use Google+ Hangouts. Individual teams do their own scheduling.

TWITTER LIST – Follow @Peeragogy & to get added to the Peeragogy Twitter list please post your Twitter name here. Stephanie Schipper will then add you.

TWITTER HASHTAG: #peeragogy

We even have a FACEBOOK PAGE.

Questions?

If you have questions, that’s good!  Use Google+ or the forums, post a comment on this page, email the team energy center if you know who that is, or email howard@rheingold.com.