There was a great post a couple of days back over at Jarche Consulting titled Re-mixing the Cluetrain for Education.

Basically, Harold has adapted the The Cluetrain Manifesto (a must read) for education. Well, actually, Harold has added to a post by Scott Adams to the same effect. They both do a great job of thinking outside the box here. I think that any written word that can inspire people about one subject is great, but a work that can inspire many further applications and insights such as these is really what got to me.

I am really impressed with what Scott and Harold have to say. Here are some of Scott’s ideas, although I highly encourage you to visit his post to read the very very thorough look into this issue (yes, all 95 are remixed):

· Education is about conversations.
· Schools consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.

· In both internetworked schools and among intranetworked learners, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.

· These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.

· As a result, Education is about getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.

· Educational Institutions do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, Schools sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.

· Schools need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.

· Schools typically install intranets top-down to distribute HR policies and other corporate information that workers are doing their best to ignore.

· A healthy intranet organizes workers in many meanings of the word. Its effect is more radical than the agenda of any union.

Here are a few of Harold’s further ideas:

-What’s happening to education is also happening among learners. A metaphysical construct called “The School” is the only thing standing between the two.

-To traditional educational institutions, networked conversations may appear confused, may sound confusing. But we, the learners, are organizing faster than they are. We have better tools, more new ideas, no rules to slow us down.