Because crowdfunding takes place on the internet and journalism effects more or less everybody its easy to get carried away with the importance and potential impact of things.
There are also already considerable attempts to use the crowdfunding model of revenue generation within education. They can be broken down in the following ways:
1. Crowdfunding could ......Sponsor an existing, charitable research project, e.g Givology:
https://www.givology.org/giv-now/?gclid=COuHyc_nqckCFdgaGwodwYUCHA
or perhaps the biggest loan/project creator site: Kiva.org.
http://www.kiva.org/
2. Crowdfunding could...... help your own personal project: Hubub.net
https://hubbub.net/
or : Experiment.com
https://experiment.com/
3. Crowdfunding could ...... create funds to pay your way through education.
Whether this be individual students trying to raise funds for the spiralling cost of higher education or for teachers trying to find a way to pay for equipment there is potential here for the people within education to find and access funds they need. Students from poorer backgrounds, state schools that need to compete with the private sector etc. It seems like a pipe dream but if teh student loan system in England for instance allowed students to crowdfund their student loan i bet you would see a lot more web presence for this sort of idea.
http://www.donorschoose.org/
4. Crowdfunding could ..... help education in marginalised areas. Or allow education in smaller communities to bridge the funding gaps they face in their local communities or state funded network.
I recently gave a few dollars to a girls photography project in Tijuana, Mexico which was eventually funded through the 'fondeadora' site.
5. Crowdfunding could ...... teach students about entrepreneurial activities. This is something I will expand on a separate post but it could be a great way for students to learn how to run their own projects independently. By using case study crowdfunding examples students could be introduced to the ideas of building networks and audiences, using the media collaboratively and creatively to engage in projects of their own design.
6.Crowdfunding could ...... Increase student engagement. Running a mini crowdfunded project where students have to gain votes/donations for the project of their choice whilst in competition with their fellow pupils is bound to increase participation and engagement. Using crowdfunded approaches to topics at hand by allowing students to design and pitch the different elements and themes that they want to study within the framework laid out by the teacher could also be a successful avenue to employ.
7. Crowdfunding could...... remodel the curriculum. More on this later as well but with the recent changes to Media Education and other curriculum subjects from a political and clearly ideological right wing viewpoint isn't it time that the education community found a way to fight back. I have signed more online petitions and been on more strikes in the past few years than i care to remember but it hasnt changed some of the most backward and sweeping changes to education in 20-30 years. Could teachers not crowdfund a change? A free school for students of parents who can see through the malaise of the current curriculum? Is this possible or am i just dreaming??
8. Crowdfunding could.... give my students something to talk about in their exam! Well and all students of the Media really, especially those that will be answering the OCR A2 media exam around We Media and democracy as this could make excellent case study material.
9.Crowdfunding could......lead to crowdlearning. Students could collaborate and raise funds for a set of materials and teachers to be delivered to them via an online MOOC (massively open online course) around a topic that wasn't available to them in their local environment. This opens up a huge potential change in the way education is conceived and delivered.
An excellenet research document on this theme can be found here:
http://conference.pixel-online.net/NPSE/files/npse/ed0004/FP/1550-SERA935-FP-NPSE4.pdf
Are there any more? Answers on a crowdfunded postcard please!
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