Mark Narayn

Mark Narayn WQ7

Personal Information; Mark’s LinkedIn Profile and a blog on my website that I will be setting up later in the year.

My background has been in the music industry as a performer, manager, musical director and recording engineer. I have also run my own business. During my spare time while working for the BBC in 1989, I tried some teaching “for fun” one day a week, and loved it.  This was a totally unexpected epiphany.  Over the last 23 years I have become more and more involved in education and it has developed into a deep passion and my career.

I believe that there are serious, fundamental problems within the current educational system, and wish to contribute to the development of ways in which learning systems can become more relevant to the 21st century, and the current revolutions in communication, communities, and participation.  I believe that any significant change will need to come from the ground up. These are likely to be self-organising groups of learners using free resources.  I call this “disruptive education” because I see it working in a similar way to Clayton Christensen’s “disruptive innovation”, in that much of it is inherently “disruptive” to mainstream education.  I see myself as a catalyst in starting these off within my local community.

WikiQuals Aim;

To set up disruptive education initiatives in my hometown (Norwich, Norfolk), which will explore learning spaces and different approaches to learning and funding, and make the journey and findings as accessible as possible.  The detail of how this will be done is unknown – this is a voyage of exploration, without a defined end point, and will involve a lot of improvising, learning by taking risks and trying things.

I am not a researcher, I am a practitioner and communicator…. my ability is in taking theories and ideas, and opening them up to as many people as possible.  I intend to use as many communication channels as I can to do this – I want it to be a dialogue which allows people access to other possibilities in education, beyond the current mainstream.  I will use a synthesis of ideas from a wide range of disciplines – everything will be on the table to try.

This will be a work in progress, and follow-up reports will detail what seems to work in practice (in this context) and what doesn’t – these will act as an open resource.  The idea is to allow others to build learning spaces in their own communities, by looking at what is achieved here and then adapting anything that they may find useful, to their own situation.  So, rather than create an organisation that will become large and hierarchical, I want to become part of a developing collective of organisations that are independent, open and part of a forward thinking community.

In particular, I want to find ways of engaging and encouraging those who are most remote from these ideas, to take control of their own learning journeys.  A bit of a hippie agenda perhaps, but with business and political savvy, mixed with intellectual rigor and experience!

WikiQuals Activity;

Research into:-  alternative ways of funding; learning spaces; education and learning; communities of practice; internet tools and platforms; etc.  In addition, adapting ideas and approaches in other disciplines and industries.

Use a wide range of communication channels, (face-to-face, written word, moving/still images, sound, etc) to make this accessible, and allow the wider community to engage with it and use the bits that suit them.

To learn from this and feedback to the community.

WikiQuals Publications;

Ongoing blog; book; video; photos; audio; and any other media that is workable for this.

Wiki Quals Support;

The WikiQuals community; the “Everything Unplugged” community; colleagues in other disciplines/industries; ongoing interviews with others who may have useful perspectives.