Our explorations, mistakes, and experiment which we make when learning deserve much more privacy than we get online these days. This course puts you back in control of how you learn, teach, and lead online. The guide + workbook approach lets you build your privacy based learning - from first principles, through recommended apps, and on to practical projects. 1. Why does this course exist? There are many ways to learn. But most of them involve being vulnerable. You explore. You experiment. You discover opinions which are very different from your own. You play around with new ideas. Play the devil's advocate. Walk a mile in some pretty strange shoes. You debate, win, lose, fail. And several failures later, you build something which works for you. Until it doesn't, which is when you learn again. This works for philosophy and physiology, for learning to ride a bike and for learning to bake a brioche. However you learn, you need the space where imperfection, failure, unfinished identities and unbiased feedback are all encouraged. Now imagine Jeff Bezos in the kitchen with you as you try to bake your first bread; he's making notes of all the gadgets he could sell you to "make you a better baker". Imagine Mark Zuckenberg looking over your shoulder as you delve into French 1960s post-structuralism; he's coming up with the cheapest way to connect what you just learned to the content pumped out by his Breitbart advertisers. Imagine your government going over your teaching notes; they're wondering which parts of your lesson plan to censor, and when to invite you over for a chat about terrorist inclinations. This course exists - because often, instead of imagining one of these scenarios, you're made to live them. 2. How does this course work? In everything we learn, it's good to have a nice working balance of theory and practice. I tried to make this course as approachable as I could, but there was still some important work I needed to include. I wanted us to focus a little bit on why privacy matters, and why we're not as private as we think we are. The first few chapters are a brief discussion of these areas. We will try to tackle some common privacy myths ("nothing to hide" crowd, I'm looking at you!), and we'll see how fixing your online privacy when learning can become as simple as making a sandwich (I'm literally taking the sandwich metaphor as far as possible here. Don't go through this part on an empty stomach). After the theoretical part, we're moving on to solutions. I wanted us to look at tools which every learner, teacher, and manager can consider using right away. These apps and programs will make a huge difference to how you explore, document, meet, communicate, and share things online. Best of all - many of these won't cost you a penny, and they should be simple enough to try straight away. The final part of the course contains a list of questions which you can ask every time you want to bring more privacy to your learning or teaching - and a big list of other tools and resources you can try. These haven't made it to the main body of the course, but often, they will suit your particular needs better. Check them out! After most chapters of this course, you will find a workbook scenario. I wanted you to get the chance to put the ideas to work straight away. For the theoretical part, these scenarios are an invitation to think freely about the things we discussed, and to record your opinion on them. It's important not to follow the crowd here - the best privacy setup for your learning is the one you'll feel most comfortable with. This is how you work it out. For the practical chapters, the workbook scenarios look a lot more like checklists. I wanted to bring a bit more structure to how you work with the privacy tools we discussed. If you go through the checklist as you explore the apps and programs, you should be able to carry out some simple practical tasks while using these programs - hopefully you'll see that they're just as easy to use as the non-private, non-free alternatives! 3. Who is this course for? I wrote "Privacy based learning" with a keen rookie punk learner in mind. At the same time, though, I was determined to make it useful for those of us who teach - and to those of us who mentor, manage, and lead teams, in learning organisations and beyond. The practical chapters contain separate sections for learners, teachers, and managers. The way you approach the tools we talk about will vary, and the possibilities are different, depending on what role you play. Even if you're mainly a teacher or a manager, though, I will encourage you to start from the learner's perspective. Going through the projects and programs makes more sense if you connect it to something you are trying to find out for yourself - that way, the exploration is more meaningful. The workbook scenarios are built for anyone who's keen to give the solutions a try, in a project based way. Some of them are best left until a good moment arises - when you next set up a group chat, for example, or when you next want to phone your loved ones. But they're for everyone, regardless of their role. Finally - I hope that even seasoned privacy advocates will find something here for them. We may know how privacy works, but find ourselves at a loss when it comes to introducing others to our thinking. Or we may sometimes focus a lot on one area of privacy, while ignoring a blind spot in another area. This is always a process, and it's useful to learn more - especially when we already know a lot. 4. How can I get "Privacy based learning"? The course is available now in the Punk Learning shop. The download package contains several formats: - PDF - good for printing, computers, phones, etc - PDF (OpenDyslexic) - a PDF version of the course with a dyslexia friendly font - epub - good for ebook readers - epub (OpenDyslexic) - an epub version of the course with a dyslexia friendly font - OpenDocument - a free and open text standard, good for copying, pasting, editing, and remixing - OpenDocument (OpenDyslexic) - as above. You may need the OpenDyslexic font installed on your machine. - txt - a free and open plain text format. No formatting whatsoever. Good for absolutely everything. "Privacy based learning" is a pay what you can course. You get the same package if you pay $10, $100 or $0. The course is yours to keep forever and use as you please There is no DRM on any of the files. Feel free to share it with anyone, and use it in your work. Please don't re-sell it, or pass it off as yours, though. 5. Conclusion: get "Privacy based learning" today It was exciting to write a course on such a big and important topic. It was also pretty challenging. The end result, I hope, is a guide to making some new choices in the way you learn, teach, and lead. Each step in the direction of enhanced privacy can mean much more than you originally imagine. It encourages a level playing field, helps develop braver conversations, and can lead to more valuable insights. I hope you download and enjoy "Privacy based learning" and that you get lots of good value out of the course. Happy learning! Vic