SOCRAIT: If they build it I will come

By Dr Chris P. Jobling

Those of you who are regular readers will know that I spent 10 weeks from September to November immersed (almost literally) in the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Personal Learning Environments, Networks and Knowledge (PLENK2010). As already reported, one of the highlights for me was the guest appearance of Maria Andersen and her intriguing proposal for developing SOCRAIT, a Socratic questioning layer on the internet consisting of a Learn This button, a social gaming-like motivation and reward system, and channeled expertise designed to provide a personalized learning for the masses. A disruptive technology indeed!

Well, a pre-print of Maria’s paper The World is My School, due to appear in the January-February 2011 issue of The Futurist, has just been posted (http://bit.ly/socraitpdf) and Maria is looking to spread the word virally using the twitter hashtag #SOCRAIT.

I invite you to read Maria’s paper and use the comments to answer these questions:

  • Could a system like SOCRAIT work?
  • Would you use it?
  • How would you implement it?
  • Could you see yourself using it in your own learning?
  • Could you adopt it in your teaching?
  • Would it be disruptive?

I’m pretty certain that if someone builds SOCRAIT, I will use it.