Holidays are drawing near! And as an antidote to all the cheer (and maybe just to keep your brain going while the rest of the world seems to be losing theirs) we’re serving up a steaming platter of peer learning goodness, just for y’all:

Writing HTML By Hand
When you write code (instead of having software to do it for you) it is referred to as “coding by hand”. In this challenge we’re going to take that phrase literally. To complete this challenge you’ve got to complete three tasks. It should take you about half an hour of your time. You’ll need a sketchbook or paper, a pen of some description and some means of taking a digital photograph.

How to Teach Webcraft and Programming to Free-Range Students
Right now, people all over the world are learning how to write programs and create web sites, but for every one who is doing it in a classroom there are a dozen free-range learners. This group will explore how we, as mentors, can best help them. Topics will include: What does research tell us about how people learn? Why are the demographics of programming so unbalanced? What best practices in instructional design are relevant to free-range learners? What skills do people need in order to bake their own web? How are grassroots groups trying to teach these things now? What’s working and what is not?

Edu-Toolkit
We will investigate the concept of ‘The Networked Teacher’ and find out more about ‘Networked Literacy’ in education.  The course is based on ‘Social Networking’ and ‘Open Education’.  The participants will receive ‘Badges’ as recognition for their achievements.  Find out more on http://edutoolkit.wordpress.com

Dignity in the Workplace
A collaborative approach to develop a ‘harassment and bullying in the workplace training programme’ that can be used freely. Corporations are charging too much for such learning material which, in effect, should be available for nothing.
If you’re interested in these, or any other P2PU courses, just head over to p2pu.org and jump right in!

By now, you should all have had the chance to check out the post-Berlin blog post summing up our amazing workshop. This week’s diverse and fascinating featured courses are a brilliant reminder of what makes P2PU such a special community – where anyone can learn just about anything. Y’all are amazing, and we wouldn’t be here without you…

Japanese and How to Learn It
Ever wanted to learn Japanese but found those courses too slow and expensive? Join this group and pick up some of the “real world” Japanese! This group is for people of all levels of Japanese to practice and share their experiences, and to teach those who are just starting.

Get Involved

• Want to create a study group? It’s easy, just create a P2PU account and follow the prompts
• Got a question about P2PU? Have a look at our FAQ or join the to P2PU Discussion List
• Join our open source software project on Github

Happy Friday, good people…

In case any of you are contemplating a weekend with nothing to do, we thought we’d let you know about some of the fantastic new courses on www.p2pu.org, which are open, ready for sign-up and just waiting for you join and start learning with your peers. We think they’re pretty exciting…

• Breaking Language Barriers
  A study group to determine the best method of using P2PU to break the language barriers many people face in today’s changing society.

• Evidence-based Parenting
  A reading group for anyone interested in child development and parenting.

• Learning from the World in Motion
  How can we create a framework for self-facilitated learning based on lessons from the world around us?
• Microeconomics: An Introduction
  A beginning level study of economics, this group will ask ‘What is it’, then go on to explore supply, demand and markets.

• Social Good and a Profit
  A project outside of Nakuru, Kenya that is working to help people help themselves and provide a safe and authentic place for visitors to stay.  In this project work with the others involved to ask questions, brainstorm ideas, and help to create a low start up project that both serves the social good and is able to be profitable within 4 weeks.

If you’re interested in any of these courses, or want to see some of the others we have on offer, head over to www.p2pu.org and take a look!

Welcome to the new look P2PU Weekly update. We’ll be sending you all the news about site developments, new study groups and courses, and general P2PU news, once a week, straight to your inbox.

• Want to see what’s happening on the new P2PU Beta site?
  If you haven’t yet had a look at the new P2PU site, head over to our home page to learn about the project and see the study groups and courses on offer.

• Hang on – 2 sites? What’s the deal?
  Yes, we’re so good, we currently exist in 2 different places. But not for long! While the old P2PU site is still up and running, a brave team of pioneering organisers and coders have been working away to build a wonderful new site, with some fantastic new features, and equally exciting new courses. We’re going to be migrating to the new site really soon, so keep an eye on your email for news about the move.

In the meantime, take a look at the Help Desk group on the new site for answers to any questions you may have, and regular updates about the new site’s features.

Have a look at some of the inspiring new courses on P2PU Beta

• DeSchooling Society – An Open Book Group
  Join the group who are reading read Ivan Illich’s DeSchooling Society, a critical discourse on education.
• Formal Reasoning in Computer Science
  A Self-study course on proofs and algorithms examining mathematical proofs, theoretical arguments, probability theory and randomized algorithms. Content has been chosen to complement graduate-level work in computer science.
• Blogging and Writing for the Web
  A study group to support people wanting to develop confidence and better writing habits for blogs and websites.
• Getting your CC Project Funded
  Find out to write a project proposal, and how to get it funded to raise money for a Creative Commons project.

New groups have been created – can you help develop them?

There are some great new topics under development on the new site. These groups still need tasks, resources and learning plans outlined before they can be opened for sign-up.  If you’d like to help get these groups get ready, please contact the group’s organiser.

• Dutch Grammar
• Science of Collaboration
• Fractal Geometry

Get Involved:

• Do you want to create a study group?
  It’s easy, just create a P2PU account and follow the prompts.
• Got a question about P2PU?
  Have a look at our FAQ, if the answer is not there, just ask it!
• Join the P2PU Discussion List
  To participate in ongoing discussions about P2PU, sign up here
• Dying to just hack?
  Have a look at the Contributing to Lernanta group on the beta site
  Submit a bug on the tracker
  Contribute to the code at Github
• This (and all P2PU mailings) are licensed under CC BY-SA. Please feel free to translate it into Tagalog and share it with your friends!

// Co-produced by Bekka & Philipp (Do you have news to report for the next update? Send them to bekka [dot]kahn[at]gmail.com)

Bonne nouvelle – La domination du monde a une nouvelle langue. Yes, we’re embarking on building some courses in French (we obviously need it) – so anyone who is interested can connect via this discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/p2pu-community/browse_thread/thread/93ffccb723786312#

Good news – The number of new courses and learning groups that will kick off in April is growing steadily, and we’re dead excited to see how they shape up. From introductions to poetry, educational cybernetics and the language of music, we have something for just about everybody. This is a critical time for new courses – future facilitators need all the feedback they can get on their draft courses, so please head over to the course list page (http://p2pu.org/course/find) look at the drafts and give feedback, P2PU style!

Really good news – In addition to supporting Philipp’s fellowship, providing ongoing feedback and advice, and making available fellowship grants for P2PU as a whole, the Shuttleworth Foundation has agreed for their CFO Karen Gabriel to fill the role of Treasurer at P2PU. She will help us set up the systems and process to make sure we always know how much money we can spend on community workshops in places that start with B. This is a big deal – thank you Karen!

More very good news – The Hewlett Foundation continues to support P2PU and awarded a 2 year grant (200k USD / year) for work on tracking learning achievements in open social learning communities like P2PU. The key question they (and we) would like to answer is – what is someone learning at P2PU?

Not so good news – Finally, here is the blog post (http://blogs.p2pu.org/blog/2011/04/04/p2pu-the-machine/) that nobody has been waiting for. A long and dry overview of the inner administration of P2PU, including an update on incorporation, but with cool photos. Let’s party like it’s 501(c)(3)!

Awesome news – The http://new.p2pu.org is alive and kicking. It’s still bare bones and pre-beta, but the first brave P2PU folks have started playing around with it. Here is a blog post that gives a little update on web site development plans (http://blogs.p2pu.org/blog/2011/03/29/a-new-website-for-p2pu/)

Have a great week!

Last week’s newsletter was painful. I needed a break. We all did. So let us return to the simple things, to bread, tomatoes and cheap red wine, to black and white. To suspenders. And to Google Translate, which turns out to be the perfect complement to Adriano Celentano, one of my dad’s favorite singers (yes, it has come to this).

In the most beautiful dream you’re only you > But how do you know it’s a dream, and how do you know it’s only you? Well, you need research to find that out. And thanks to Erin and Nathan from UC Berkeley, there will be a lot more research coming to P2PU, helping us to keep the dream beautiful.

You are like a shadow that will never return > But it appears that you are returning, to run your courses again. The list keep growing, but Delia is currently activating her global network of lawyers, Larry will once again offer to help people run election campaigns, and Laurian and Nadeem just stated they are bringing back the crowd favorite Cyberpunk course. Hooray. All courses: http://wiki.p2pu.org/New-Courses

Sad are the swallows in the sky as they go to sea > But sad are not the T-Shirts as they go out to the overseas. And we will only be sad if the t-shirts get lost on the way – which is very possible given the South African postal service. Fingers crossed. Photo: http://bit.ly/9XbsJ1

I will not go anymore, when we finally … > When we finally what? It remains unclear, at least in the English translation. But maybe he is saying that he will not go away from our website, because the course home page is finally starting to look AWESOME. Sneak preview here, but it’s all on one page now, it’s clean and sleek, and you can send the course description into the twitter sphere with one click (tempting, but please don’t click yet). http://bit.ly/bvoYfr

Now that I’m thinking my tomorrow > I don’t know what that means, but Alison is running a kick-ass orientation seminar not tomorrow, but today (right now in fact). We already had a tokbox session on Tuesday, and the new course organizers are great. Join the very lively discussion about new courses if you haven’t already: http://bit.ly/bvfGHX

But this song fly to the sky > Fly to the sky everyone. Have a great weekend!