Let people be who they are

I see everyday how blindly we spent lot of energy trying to get from people what they cannot provide. And they cannot, since it’s not on their nature, backgrounds and expectations.

I see parents trying to see a personal desideratum projected on their loved children. Teachers fighting for get pupils all the same through a unified type of education. Managers expecting the same type of performance from so different people. So different characters. Could ever parents, teachers and managers ask to them: is this really of your interest?

Ok, you could say: obviously it is easier to put all together in “the same bag”. Just give few chances to choose, otherwise it would be a mess to manage. But what if we try the opposite. Maybe...it's exactly in the chaos where the best from people do arise.

Read this sparkling idea around motivation and learning, by Roger Schanck (Socratic Arts’ CEO):

“Students try to please both teachers and parents. Teachers give grades and employers give money, both to motivate learning. Are there better ways to motivate learning?

Yes. There is one much better way. Letting people be who they are. So often we try to train people for things for which they are really quite unsuited. We try to train employees to do what they aren't particularly good at doing. I never taught my daughter to write. My mother never taught me to do what I do. What my mother did do was revel in my abilities. And, I, in turn reveled (and still do) in my daughter's abilities. This is what you can do as a teacher or trainer. Revel in what your student can do. Encourage more. Be excited by accomplishments. Put them in situations where their eyes light up and help them achieve the goals they want to achieve”.

Sustainable development: the reliable profit

Making the best profit for main stakeholders: customers in holidays and local communities in Africa. I’m happy to know and collaborate for such an special business initiative: Africadventure, now Zed&Away, a tour operator providing eco-tourism, volunteer work and support to conservation projects and local communities in several countries in Africa. What is more interesting to me is the idea of sustainable development behind the product. Please, do visit:
http://zedaway.com/

Created in 2005 (yesterday!) by a small group of friends seriously committed in development projects in Uganda, Africadventure rapidly became a wide virtual enterprise linking together people from several countries and one common interest: to build a unique business experience based on the philosophy and practice of sustainable tourism for local communities in East African countries.

What does sustainable tourism means in Africa?

Ivan D’Ambrosio, managing director and founder, explains that sustainable tourism “is a form of tourism that promotes integration with local communities and helps to finance local projects in full respect of local traditions, way of living and conservation of resources and environment”.

It means that local communities receive support on specific projects for self development by the tourist experience. Thus, main features of sustainable tourism based on local development projects are mentioned on Z&A website such as:

-Local communities set a community project in which all the money coming from the tourist activity will be invested on the project. Activities can be visits to local communities to learn their way of working, time spent with local fishermen or cattle keepers, visits to schools where children will teach some basic words in their local language, collaboration in any conservation project respecting the local community, etc.

-The entire community should have a long term benefit from the project and actively get involved on it.

-It must be an ethical project without any link to politics or religion.

-The sustainable tourism activity shouldn’t have to interfere with the local communities in their way of living, conducting business and their own incomes.

-Local communities will have to use the money coming from the sustainable tourism activity as an extra income to their normal activities to develop a project that otherwise they could not achieve.

- Travellers must be clearly informed on the sustainable tourism activity and must show interest and sensitivity towards the activity proposed and the way he/she will contribute towards the development of the local community.

Ivan had the ideas quite clear when designed the itineraries of Africadventure. To offer a wide range of possibilities for customers enjoy, experience and even get humanly involved with African people, communities and nature. Africa wouldn’t let you indifferent as a traveller, but neither travellers and tourism is now indifferent to Africa.

Both parts of the tourist experience, travellers and local environment, do give and receive, learning from each other in an ecological and humane approach. Ecological since everything done comes and returns to each part involved. This is a more sensitive, integrative and fertile thinking, rather than aggressive, causing exploitation and unnecessary resources consumption. It is humane as well, because the experience helps people to get better knowing and understanding of themselves… through
the other.

I believe in this project, now a profitable business experience, in which people, customers, local communities and nature, do matter. It’s an interesting initiative causing -maybe a small-, but definitely an important change on the way tourism and benefits are understood. Not from a depredatory approach, no caring about history, environment and communities, but as an educative, ecological and more intelligent experience. I want to see it growing up.

Open communication networks > social based learning processes > creating knowledge

Fundamental ideas about how knowledge truly occurs; why delivery and storage of information should not be confused with knowledge; what’s the critical importance of communities of practice in helping learners “to be” real practitioners (e.g. a physicist, social scientist, historian, etc.) rather than people just knowing about such professions...all are essential concepts in a John Seely Brown’s article: "Learning in the Digital Age" [1].

I can’t find the original date from this paper, but I guess is about 6 years ago or so (!!). Therefore, here there are the underpinning ideas of what is now a hype new organizational field such as Knowledge Management and its linked strategies on e-Learning.

Seely Brown is enthusiastic about opportunities ICT brings about in changing education system from a very constructivist approach: learning as a situated action. He defines the features of digital learners, the way today kids learn to manage new contents and multimedia possibilities, and some pioneer directions observed in higher education.

Essential literature.

[Tag]Seely Brown: Learning in digital age

The mobile learner

One of the main features of technology affecting life is mobility. Today more than ever human beings are nomads, not only physical nomads but mental ones as well. Change is not only inherent to activities, places and work practices, but it also relates to lifestyles and therefore the way we organize our mind according to uncertainty. Technology determines, but also facilitates this: the fast and ubiquitous human being, the quick change and therefore, the way we approach to the world.

Young people can tell us a lot about this: new generations learn quickly since their early years, they are hyper-connected and don’t stay for long time on one fixed issue. This is not an Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (although it could seem), they just solve problems in a quicker fashion. They write fast, shorting words and messages, encoding languages and creating new ones. They have shortcuts of thinking.

I don’t intend at all to go into psychology or neurosciences. Just to give a thought over the new way we are, some different from our parents and their traditional way to learn and communicate. Technology is fostering this deep difference. From the personal computer, until mobile phones or GPS and the intelligence behind these gadgets (the communication networks), all together is affecting our understanding and elaboration of the world.

m-learning

Mobility. Ubiquity. I think the acronym “m-learning” shouldn’t be a simple trademark from the mobile phones market. It’s not at all. It is to me an interesting approach to understand learning. But learning for working, problem solving, for life.

Although it is originally inspired on the given possibilities of mobiles phones, I think m-learning could be extensive to every electronic device which makes possible creating knowledge and understanding anytime, anyplace. I’m not talking about delivering information and reproducing old-fashioned traditional teaching. The key aspect is on cognitive processes that help people to take useful advantage from communication networks, and therefore, for building their own knowledge.

I recently found out an inspiring quote by M.I.T. researcher, Seymour Papert, who thought educational technologies should be more like Brazilian samba schools than traditional teaching machines [1]. He meant that in samba schools, "a community of participants gather daily to have fun and teach each other steps and costume-making skills in preparation for Carnival. The samba schools are social centers, where people go to socialize, and they are environments in which novices and professionals mingle". Here is the original idea behind Papert’s constructionist learning theory, where people learn their best from a social based approach, constructing something meaningful to them.

It would be interesting today if we’d have the opinion of Papert about new technologies which are extraordinarily enhancing human being possibilities for mobility and connection. I think an underlying principle will prevail: mobile new technologies should help people to explore and discover knowledge on real scenarios and above all, they could be powerful cognitive tools for problem solving in a collaborative manner. It means a situated and contextual learning, outside any classroom or any scholar center. And new teachers behind so expanded communication network are experts (more experienced people) and novices as well, sharing their own pathways of knowledge. The "laboratory" is now outside, in the real world.

The circumstances of learning

I think the most interesting approach on m-learning are the possibilities of co-operative problem solving methodologies. How and where learning occurs is key, not only "what" is to be learned. Can we imagine "the circumstances" of learning, more than the subjects themselves?

Following this approach, teachers (or instructional designers) should think about devising situations for helping learning to happen, exploiting the opportunities given on mobile devices for co-discover knowledge and co-operate in problem solving.

The way we organize our minds to understand the world could be in this way quite influenced by ubiquitous interconnection and networking, and therefore, reciprocal help and collaborative work.

[Tags] Seymour Papert website, ”Building Fun Online Learning Communities” on Howard Rheingold’s website, Lifelong-Learning Support by M-learning: Example Scenarios , Proyecto Wapeduc: la escuela nómade

Passive into active: fostering deep changes in learning, working and life

A pioneer voice in the field of Knowledge Management, John Seely Brown wrote an enlightening paper published six years ago, which still shed light on many actual approaches on the use of the Internet as a platform for learning processes and deep transformations in work, education and life.

“Growing up digital” (2000) was written when JSB was the chief scientist of Xerox and director of Palo Alto Research Center (California, U.S.). In this work, JSB announced underpinning ideas of KM and networks-based communication and learning processes, some of them are about:

- Learning to be something, beyond learning about something. More palpable today, as the Net is allowing people a significant interactive participation in building knowledge together and putting it on practice. For example, "thousands of kids learn what it means to be a computer programmer by joining an open-source community such as Linux" -JSB mentions. Another example we can find: thousands of people learn to be agents for social change by building together a virtual community (wiki pages, forums, etc.) for demanding fair housing policies and conditions (e.g. www.viviendadigna.es; www.housepricecrash.co.uk), or even for creating world wide movements such as the World Social Forum (the first one at Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2001, had strong roots on an Internet based movement).

- The concept of digital bricoleur learner, beyond the abstract logic learner. Based on an former concept studied by Claude Lévi-Strauss almost a century ago, "it has to do with abilities to find something -an object, tool, document, a piece of code, etc.- and to use it to build something you deem important" (Idem). JSB says judgement is inherently critical to becoming an effective digital bricoleur. We do good judgements from a social-based learning process. The Internet tools (Web 2.0) have the potential to foster users' own pathways of learning and social elaboration.

- Two dimensions of knowledge: explicit and tacit (additional fundamental idea on this paper, which is still prevalent in KM). The first dimension is about understanding abstract concepts (at an individual level) and sharing best practices by storytelling (at a group's level). The second one is about intuitive skills and know how (at individual level), and learning styles of work and practices (at group level). JSB talked about the "knowing communities of practice" as a social "fabric" emerging from sharing tasks and knowledge, but mainly, from the shared concern about how to learn.

- Learning ecology, as a consequence of diversity and adaptation in a system such as the Internet, mainly featured by openness and equity: many authors interweaving different "knowledge niches".

What prevails in these ideas is the power of the Internet for allowing users to have a more participative social role: they are shifting -or combining- passive into active, readers into writers, learners into knowledge creators, consumers into producers as well.

What has all this stuff to do with management + ethics? Maybe nothing, maybe everything.

[Tags]: Growing up digital, John Seely Brown web page, New Learning Environments for the 21st Century

Removing learning and learning again (2.0 II)

1. What does learning mean in a new information environment fostered by Web 2.0?

• Essentially it could mean new social patterns of behaviour, related to openness and sharing contents.
• Users find out they can be publishers of their own contents, and take advantage from this possibility.
• Users want to share information and any kind of content (images, sound, music, texts, etc.) among people with common interests.
• Users are interested in reshaping and repurposing contents, offering their own version, which means developing their critical and creative thinking (welcome Creative Commons!).
• Each user is a powerful node in a open network of knowledge sharing.
• Characteristics of the user experience in this new knowledge environment determine (and reflect) the way people communicate and learn: it’s a continuous process embedded in work and life.

2. What does it mean in terms of users empowerment?

• Users don’t need intermediaries for accessing, selecting, filtering, cataloguing and building new knowledge (Wikis, Blogs, RSS, Podcasting, and so on… are features of this hyper-connectivity).
• Traditional roles in education, information and even entertainment systems are transformed: teachers and journalist could be best understood as “moderators” (or e-moderators) facilitating ways for users to manage the informational chaos, rather than being the unique authorised voice about any issue. Teachers should be more than ever “the guide on the side” rather than the “sage on the stage” into communication processes addressed to foster learning.
• Users have a new understanding of power in terms of information and therefore, knowledge. This is no more a restricted field for authorised and licensed professionals. Everyone can have their say…although those people writing on a wiki page, for instance, are exactly those users that really knows an specific issue. The knowledge network naturally weaves itself.
• It’s an empowering phenomenon, since it breaks down a unidirectional model of information and knowledge transmission, giving users a wide range of possibilities to relate events, information, history, and therefore, allowing a self elaboration of those events.
• Introducing web 2.0 resources and philosophy into the field of teaching and learning, could mean turning many things upside down, among them, the instrumental use of educational system for indoctrinating purposes, where learners only know the institutional version of things, taught in order to perpetuate the establishment. What could be the scenario where learners have their own media to create and deliver contents and works, having free access to all sort of sources and also, offering free access to all kind of readers as well? What if the new role of teachers in schools and universities is to help students to weave history from different threads, contrasting peers opinions and opening minds -by means of the Internet open resources-, instead of talking alone in classroom in a traditional transmission of knowledge?

3. Who are these learners / users?

• The interesting thing is that these learners will be / are consumers and employees, cultivating new approaches towards the consumption and working practices.
• But users will be / are employers and producers as well, transforming their approach on working relationships and their understanding of consumers expectations.

2.0

I found an inspiring article by Stephen Downes, from the National Research Council of Canada, about e-Learning 2.0, in accordance with the new movement Web 2.0, where users are becoming more and more the centre and main agent of what is happening on the web: they are acquiring the properties of communication networks.

I think maybe Tim Berners-Lee –the world wide web creator- could visualise this very nature of the web, from that original intention to create a collaborative medium for academic researchers working together at a distance. The Internet is achieving now its proper and unavoidable shape and nature. It shouldn’t be seeing as a medium any more, but just as a network –a "platform", Downes prefers- of interconnected powerful nodes. And every one of these nodes are users themselves, talking and listening and therefore creating, sharing, repurposing, distributing and even cataloguing contents. No intermediaries seem to be necessary. Who needs a journalist anymore? And even more...who needs a traditional teacher for getting access to knowledge, for building new knowledge with others, rather than blindly follow up a course topic or any assigned subject. That knowledge which is useful and meaningful to "my interest", right now, and for actual and immediate purposes.

Downes goes further when he says that we are at a social revolution, where openness is not only technological but even attitudinal: "sharing content is not considered unethical; indeed, the hoarding of content is viewed as antisocial...Information is something meant to be shared", he says. We could wonder if this is only a "trend for openness" due to and derived from innovation and fascination on the technological possibilities. Could this trend stay the same for longer? Well, the answer is as long as innovations on a natural open network itself are coming out...

I agree anyway with Downes: there is a revolution in the way we access and work with knowledge. I don’t know whether it is a social revolution yet, but some important impact is making on the way people understand power, since power more than ever is on their own hands. I connect with Downes when he writes: "In short, the structures and organization that characterized life prior to the Internet are breaking down... Consumers are talking directly to producers, and more often than not, demanding and getting new standards of accountability and transparency. Often, they inform the productive process itself, and in many cases, replace it altogether. Passive has become active. Disinterested has become engaged. The new Internet user may not vote, but that is only because the vote is irrelevant when you govern yourself".

All this stuff sooner or later, in more and more places, will become unavoidably true.

New challenges are in designing and using methodologies to help communication processes on this network to be meaningful rather than disperse or chaotic. I see such methodologies not only on virtual communities, but also in applications like weblogs, a "personal learning centre", where content is reused and remixed according to the user’s own needs and interests (as my original intention when creating management + ethics for e-learning purposes).

Related links

Stephen Downes on E-learn Magazine: E-learning 2.0
Stephen Downes weblog: OLDaily
[Tags]:Web 2.0,Controversy about our "Web 2.0" service mark (O'Reilly version),Web 2.0 trademark (George Siemmens comments),IT@Cork version (Tom Raftery's comments)