Interesting stuff popping out today around the net on social tools and face to face. On the OSLIST, there was a little discussion on using twitter and facebook and the pros and cons. I posted these thoughts:
I love the social tools because they allow me to connect with and get to know people in far flung areas who are closer to me in thought and spirit than those who are nearby. For me, twitter, facebook, skype and blogging are a means to an end, and that end os sharing open face to face conversations with folks that are in disperate places, but with whom I learn a lot.
And something to think about intergenerationally is that there are teenagers now who have lived their entire lives in a world with blogging, skype, and facebook. Think about that for a minute. These people don’t consider these technologies to be old at all. They consider them the default setting.
In a time when intergenerational conversation is becoming more important (how do we talk to the people with whom we have saddled with a trillion dollar debt, to explain to them to follies of our excess?) knowing a little about how these technologies enable self-organizing behaviour among digital natives is very important. And learning to use them I think is as important as employing other powerful social technologies like, say, Open Space.
So I don’t begrudge the unwillingness to particiapte in the collective monkey mind (thanks Karen!) or the pining for real contact, but I do encourage people to learn about and play with these tools, just like we have with OST and see what happens…
And then today, a couple of posts in the feed. Wendy Farmer-O’Neil dives back into blogging with a piece on “Web 3.0” and my neighbour and friend Emily van Lidthe de Jeude offers a lovely reflection on working with real world intimacy and global connectivity.
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We’ve explored very interesting, extremely challenging conversations using amazing tools, related to climate change and what we are to do about it. But the most engaging and mind blowing of all conversations was in a small circle, with the right people, sharing in an intimate and trustful environment, our dreams and expectations of this journey, sharing stories (Oh! The power of stories); and preparing ourselves, yet once again, this time as a collective, on what awaits us, an experience which will significantly have an impact in all of us as individuals, in our collective consciousness. And while connecting with words such as generosity, love, wisdom, and native ancestral knowledge, possibility is what emerges.
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For many years on this site I have kept a page of facilitation resources that is my working library. I haven’t updated it for a long time, and so today, I went through folders and bookmarks and old emails and blog posts and revised the page.
For your edification, my renewed library of Facilitation Resources, free for the taking. The best links and site to partcipatory process I have found.
Enjoy.
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The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation is working on a project to set a number of principles for public engagement. Here are the seven they have identified so far:
The Seven Core Principles
1. Preparation – Consciously plan, design, convene and arrange the engagement to serve its purpose and people.
2. Inclusion – Incorporate multiple voices and ideas to lay the groundwork for quality outcomes and democratic legitimacy.
3. Collaboration – Support organizers, participants, and those engaged in follow-up to work well together for the common good.
4. Learning – Help participants listen, explore and learn without predetermined outcomes — and evaluate events for lessons.
5. Transparency – Promote openness and provide a public record of the people, resources, and events involved.
6. Impact – Ensure each participatory effort has the potential to make a difference.
7. Sustainability – Promote a culture of participation by supporting programs and institutions that sustain quality public engagement.
I like these, and I like the deeper elucidations of these. It would be a failry simple thing to make a deep workshop structured around these principles. Read more at Public Engagement Principles Project – Version 2.4: Core Principles for Public Engagement.
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I was thinking the other day about how to teach kids in school Web 2.0 skills, prompted by my friend Brad Ovenell-Carter’s blog post on figuring out how young is too young,
Now my kids, don’t go to school, but they work actively in non-technological settings with collaboration. They spend a lot of time together co-creating games, scenarios, worlds and activities. My daughter, at 11, is helping out in a friend’s store and she helped train other workers on the inventory system the other day before taking inventory with her new trainees. She has also been working with another friend to start up an Amnesty International group on our home island.
The discussion on Brad’s blog has been about critical skills in reading, learning how to read content that is user produced on the web. To me Web 2.0 is about co-creating, so responsible writing is a key piece of the work, so in thinking more about how to teach this I thought about what a Web 2.0 based exam room would look like.
What if we tested kids on collaboration instead of individual achievement? What if a class of 30 kids was given an exam one day but instead of every student getting a test paper there would only be six papers in the whole room. The class would need to divide into groups of five and complete the exam together. The Pass mark would be 95% and they would be allowed to talk to each other, steal ideas, look in books, phone a friend, whatever. Each team of five would be responsible for the overall quality of their own answers, so they would also have to make quality decisions. If there were several long form questions, essays and the like, they could divide the work up, or have a couple of kids draw up an outline and bring it to the group for polishing.
In most school settings, this would be called “cheating.” In the real world this is how it works.
It’s not just about critical reading or accurate writing…it’s about providing real opportunities to practice collaborating and noticing that when you work together, you get a better result than if you work on your own.
Anyone know any teachers out there that have tried something like this?