Enjoy Some Educational Anarchy

I want to take a break from talking about The Voluntaryist to let you know about a wonderful opportunity coming up this weekend. It’s a free, online “unconference” perfect for freedom-minded individuals.

From the site:

Agora I/O is a new un-conference where you’ll find the greatest people, ideas and tools for advancing liberty. Agora I/O happens online, so anyone can participate. Plus it’s free! Our first conference, “Étienne,” runs from March 25th to 27th, 2011.

There is so much I could say about this idea, but I won’t because I’m too busy, having gotten myself into trouble. See, I jumped in and offered to do a presentation. It will be broadcast Sunday March 27 at 3:00 and is titled “Unschooling: Educational Anarchy for the Whole Family.” I will talk about the philosophy of unschooling and relate stories and examples from my family’s life.

If you’ve read the page on this blog titled My Journey, where I posted the article I wrote for The Voluntaryist titled “A Self-Educated Chicken,” you know how much of a cheerleader I am for unschooling and lifelong learning. You also know that I think freedom to follow your interests is a vital aspect of learning.

This conference is all that! People deciding they have an interest and information to share and people attending who are interested in the topics offered. Matching up interests and people in this way means everyone is guaranteed to learn a lot.

If you check out the list of speakers, you will see names of people you’ve heard of before and some you haven’t. I have interacted online with some of them, like George Donnelly (presenting on "Open Source Peaceful Evolution for Fun and Profit" and more), who has been working hard to make this project happen.

And two others, Pete Eyre (presenting on “Effective Activism: Foundation to Impact”) and Jason Talley (presenting on “Being the Media in Your Community”), I have met in person through their previous projects, The Motorhome Diaries and Liberty on Tour.

Those two even came to visit me at my home out here in suburbia. Which means they can say they spent the night with The Suburban Voluntaryist. But I’m not sure they would.

This conference itself is Unschooling in Action. Check it out.

(The anarchy symbol in top pic is courtesy of wikimedia)