In one of my former lives, I managed a non-profit community radio station and later became President of the National Community Radio Association, a position I held for a couple of years.  Community radio in Canada includes a variety of non-profit stations with a variety of programming themes with the defining feature being the majority of the programming was produced by volunteers.

Participatory radio is magical, where individuals and groups produce programming by and for their own communities, not to make a profit but to share their eclectic cultures and build understandings.  While almost all stations have a full-time staff member or two, their role is to train, support and guide the content producers – the volunteers who invest their time and efforts – and not to produce content.

It strikes me that this is exactly the model we need for learning.  The full-time staffers – teachers – support the learning while engaged, passionate learners create and share their learning content. It’s the passion for the content – much like the radio producers are passionate about their content, that makes students but into the learning.

This will require a huge shift in mindset, as we move away from a hugely centralized and controlled curriculum, and allow students to direct and even create their own curriculum.

Participatory learning anyone?

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Photo Credit: Board, Uploaded to Flickr on June 2, 2007 by Observe The Banana, Creative Commons, Some Rights Reserved