“Edupunk” sounds kind of like the kind of term an instructor might come up with to make their job feel that-much-cooler, but recent stories show the “concept of Edupunk has totally caught wind, spreading through the blogosphere like wildfire.”

If I am reading the (very little) information correctly, there’s an unresolved problem (beyond capitalist co-optation) pushing this movement: commercial educational technology software simply cannot hope to keep up with the pace of innovation.  Commercial educational software lately seems like a poor ripoff of successful online technologies.

The rip-mix punk spirit, to me, is embodied by the instructor who will seek the combination tools that will best meet the needs of their students.  Perhaps taking a rif from a commercial Google product with a strong open source Moodle backbeat will help students meet the objectives of a given course.  This scenario doesn’t necessarily have to be against the mainstream…

The most important thing would be to foster this educational and technological creativity.

Edit: I never said whether I saw myself as “edupunk.” I’m drawn to tinkering, which may bring me to some punk tools, but as a geek and a violinist, it’s hard to call myself “punk” anything.