Why is the word "education" often synonymous with the word "school"? Aren't we always learning while living life? How can we make the most out of opportunities to learn from the world around us? And how can we show others that they can do the same? These are some of the questions we've asked as we dreamed up The Wise Routes Project, the impetus for this group.

This is a unique study/working group as it is linked with a project that we (Claire and Brandon) created, called The Wise Routes Project, which is attempting to collaboratively build a framework for self-designed exploratory learning journeys. To run the pilot project, we will be cycling down the west coast this summer to create our own dynamic/traveling curriculum and explore the tools, resources, ideas, questions, activities, etc. that others might need to do something similar. We then intend to turn the framework into a book that we can share widely.

While cycling together will be fun, it's important to us that the design of this project is collaborative and open-sourced, to include the insights of many wise people that are already working in this self-designed learning space. We hope to involve a community of P2PU-ers that can help us think through some of the tricky questions, share with us their insights, and help us do research on ideas or issues related to the project along the way.

So we want to be upfront that it will be kind of impossible to make this a completely 'horizontal' group. Two of us will be moving down the coast on bikes, and tapping into the interweb periodically, while others will be contributing online through the SoSI platform. Participants will be able to discuss topics of the course, help us think through our ideas, and share their own experiences and thoughts. 

We want to invite everyone interested to participate in the group. We also want to create a smaller subset working group to participate in phone calls with us every 2 weeks or so. We will be a little selective about which participants are part of this group to get a diverse set of perspectives and experiences.

We encourage other participants to form their own teams and organize meetings to discuss the topics and any ideas/tasks that we post that the team finds interesting.

Participants will be able to contribute to the creation of tasks and assess each others' (including our) contributions. The group will begin in July and end in late September (exact dates TBD).

Please help us spread the word about this project by directing anyone interested to our Kickstarter page. We're aiming to raise $2,500 by July 31!