An update on thinking and doing at Dadamac.net July 29, 2012
Hi Steve, readers of my open letters at http://dadamac.posterous.com, and Learning From Each Other friends
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Steve.
You asked how things are going, but we didn't have long and as it's all so mixed in together all I could do was a quick mention of Fast Tractor.
I've been thinking about what I might have told you if we had more time. As you will see - it's an impossibly long list. It's as much about what I'm thinking (as a result of what I'm doing) as it is a report of what I've been doing (that has stimulated the thinking). I have found it helpful to think about what my long answer might have covered - so thanks for asking the question. I've limited myself to the things that have been most important to me this month - mainly this week - and I've left out quite a lot. The list itself serves the purpose of giving you an overview. The detail was more for me. At some point we might pick on one or two of the topics to look at further. I might also want to share bits of this with other people - so I'm posting it to posterous and LFEO as well as to you.
1 - Alternative academia
2 - Communities and cultures
3 - Coursera
4 - Visibility of Kenyan project on Dadamac.net
5 - New clarity
6 - Fast Tractor, Collage-network and Dadamac.net
7 - Motivation and direction
8 - Fail Faire and Dadamac's value
9 - Need for balance
10 - Making the invisible visible
11 - Gems of information
12 - Ecological imagery
13 - Posting this
1 - Alternative academia
I got feedback for my draft chapter for the e-learning book. The editors were looking for more examples of learner-directed learning, which is where I come in. They seem to like my approach of describing my reality as “alternative academia”. This is a device I adopted to make it easier to compare my experiences with the reality of the editors, most other contributors, and the target audience. I describe their reality as “established academia”. I thought if I placed myself firmly outside “established academia” it would help to free things up. It would save the academics from asking themselves questions about supervision, course structure, assessment, accreditation and other stuff that is important in their world and absent in mind. I wrote a draft according to a structure that the editor suggested, and put in lots of references, and it seems my unconventional contribution as a DIY e-learner is welcomed. However I now feel a strong pressure to redraft it is if I do belong in established academia, which is not my cultural home.
2 - Communities and cultures
You and I have touched on issues of zapping between different cultures. On Thursday I read a useful paper relating to communities of practice and their boundaries. It had some good insights about the richness of diverse communities and about chaos at the boundaries. It made a lot of sense regarding my continual dance between focus on diversity and my experiences of emergent groups, convergence, separation and all that stuff. It tied in well with the links George Por sent us following the discussions we all had at the RSA.
3 - Coursera
I've started my history of the Internet course with Coursera. I'm very interested to see how it works. It's assessed, which I was not expecting, and find highly demotivating. I don't really want to “master” the cource materials. I just want a familiarise myself with what it covers, and how it does it. However assessment and a final judgement of having passed or failed brings in all kinds of new dynamics. I feel a need to demonstrate to "the powers that be" that I'm not a failure, but I didn't enrol in order to prove anything to them. I enrolled to take what I wanted from the course. Only a few hours in and I feel pushed towards jumping through hoops. I think they have only three categories “pass”, “fail” or “dropout”. I can understand why they're doing this. Obviously a lot of students do want some kind of certification and the course providers are trying to satisfy that need. Tthere's a quiz at the end of this week, and next week the assessment is peer assessment. I'll be interested to see how that works. Then maybe I'll decide to be an early dropout so I can stop thinking about passing or failing. Though that would be a shame as the course content is interesting. I like the quick questions along the way too. They are very useful to jolt me back into a better level of concentration. I can see that the course designers want to track the replies as well, as that is such useful feedback for them on how well we are learning. But there is a different between questions as devices to support learning and being sorted into success/failure/drop-out.
4 - Visibility of Kenyan project on Dadamac.net
I've had a couple more long, Skype, typed-chats with Ken Owino. We're exploring how he can make use of the structures that we've set up for John Dada for his group - Nafsi Acrobats. The main difference with Ken is that he will have to write the blogs up himself. Ken and I are also going to try and help Samwel Kongere to make his project more visible. We discussed the extra challenges involved in that. Julliet says she wants to do something similar as well. Together those three projects could make a very interesting Kenyan presence on Dadamac.net. Each one is interesting in its own right. I'll give it a try until Christmas and then think again. Lessons learned would also help me to decide about trying to include additional projects that I know from elsewhere.
5 - New clarity
I'm starting to make it clear that there are different kinds of initiatives on Dadamac.net
- Initiated by Fantsuam Foundation and visible because of Dadamac UK-Nigeria.
- Initiated by Dadamac UK-Nigeria and implemented through Fantsuam Foundation
- Initiated by people outside of Fantsuam Foundation and made visible by Dadamac UK
- Initiated by Dadamac UK
6 - Fast Tractor, Collage-network and Dadamac.net
In a way it is thanks to Fast Tractor and Collage-network that I have got around to some new thinking about Dadamac and my relationship to different parts of it.
It is odd. I now realise that although Dadamac is so named because of John and me I have only made space on Dadamac.net for “John” and “John-and-me” but not for “me”.
The lack of a visible “me” presence presented a problem when Nikki and I started College. We could see how Collage grew naturally from our work together in Dadamac, but there was no obvious connection for “outsiders” to see. Then Fast Tractor came along. Given my role in that it makes sense to pull Dadamac.net and FastTractor closer together. At first I hated that idea. I thought greater visibility for FastTractor at Dadamac.net would reinforce the false perception that I'm a fundraiser. That's not true, although obviously John does need more funds. One of the outcomes of my previous work is that, within Dadamac, we have a mechanism whereby people can easily raise funds online, as you discovered with FastTractor. However we do not have a donor base, or income stream, or other financial foundation–and I'm not the right person to build them.
7 - Motivation and direction
You already know something about my relationship with Dadamac and its various manifestations - although I have only told you in a rather incoherent way. I now see some parallels with my ambivalent relationship to the Coursera course. I won't try to explain properly to you, but it's something about hoop jumping, and other people's expectations. (Ref "I won't try to explain properly to you" - by this point I know I'm really writing this to help me to understand. You may not even read this far - and if you do it will be a quick scan-read).
I don't mind doing the things I don't like, I don't mind doing the things I'm not good at, as long as I see them as being part of the “something else” that I'm really working on. The mundane and tedious has to be done, or the rest is not possible, but it is like any life-work balance. If the mundane and tedious outweighs all the rest, something is gong wrong. I am allowing myself to be overburdened with the mundane and tedious.
I need to check what it is that motivates me to do any of the mundane and tedious chores - and make sure I nurture that motivation, or that I simply let people know that i am going to stop doing the mundane and tedious, so they won't be surprised or feel let down. For some bizarre reason I do see (or have seen) value (or potential value) of some kind in what Dadamac offers . I must do, otherwise I would not have worked to patiently for so long on the mundane and tedious, I need to re-examine what I see as valuable and nurture it, and also see if I can make the supportive mundane-and-tedious any quicker and slicker (Hmm - I've tried that often in the past and to date have failed).
8 - Fail Faire and Dadamac's value
As explored at the Fail Faire I have failed to interest any one else in that "value" that I see in Dadamac. Why then continue? I guess for the same reason that John comes to the Dadamac UK-Nigeria meetings every week - because it helps him to take a longer-view, to see things from a new perspective, to escape from the immediate and urgent. In theory he comes to the meetings to update us (Nikki and me), so that we can tell others, but even if no-one else listens to what we tell them he still comes. We bring him information too sometimes, but it is far more the other direction. Somehow it is enough for him that he tells us - even if - until Fast Tractor - there was no evidence of anyone ever listening.
At one time I thought the value of our meetings was because John also brought his Fantsuam Foundation team online with him, and so there was a kind of weekly Fantsuam Foundation planning meeting (with Nikki and I from Dadamac in the UK listening in). Dadamac-UK organised the meeting, set up the agenda, chased up people to be there, then handed over the chairmanship to John. We provided occasional information, but more often we asked for clarification, and we found another chairman if John's connection dropped or he was called away. We also added some kind of extra dimension because of being online in the UK. However since the post-election violence and Boko Haram and the resultant loss of staff and other issues John has not been bringing a team with him in the same way. But he still comes, and from what he says, this is largely because by telling us he gives himself a chance for reflection.
9 - Need for balance.
I need to get that same balance for myself. What I do for the online space which is Dadamac.net is my 'immediate and urgent". I've always recognised that my "field work" is partly on the ground and partly online (which includes what I am doing in Dadamac.net). The thing about field work in Africa compared to fieldwork online is is that with African fieldwork there are the obvious phases of preparation, implementation (which always has a big "reality check" component) , and return. On return there is the culture shock of returning, and the related need to reconstruct internal views of reality.
With ongoing field work conducted online there is not the same simplicity and separation. I therefore need to build in for myself a mechanism for reflection, which is similar to John coming to the weekly Dadamac meetings.
If I am going to become visible at dadamac.net then I need to somehow fit myself into the structures I have set up there (or maybe set up some addtional structure or structures). That is the challenge I am currently addressing. There is something about dadamac.net visibility that has a certain required element of collaboration to it. It has to do with the fact that I set it up to help make other people visible. Somehow I don't know how to go there "for myself, on my own"(whcih is why i usually finish up "meeting" people elsewhere. If I am making everyone else visible, but not myself then I will become resentful. However everyone else is doing visible things. My stuff (depending on how you look at it) is either invisible - or so visible that no-one sees it.
10 - Making the invisible visible
My true interests have to do with “invisible stuff”: information flows, knowledge creation, knowledge sharing, deep structural change, emerging 21st-century systems are learning, cross-cultural collaboration techniques online, and other things you can't capture in a photo.
- If we need to make FastTractor visible – and we do…
- if I don't want Dadamac net to be dominated by a fund-raising appeal – and I don't…
- Then I must find a way to illustrate the learning, thinking and analysing that I do – if only for the sake of my own sanity and self-respect.
Yes, that is it! I need to do an audit of my work,even if it is only for myself.
11 - Gems of information
I know I have amazing rich seams of information. I thought others would see the value of what I brought to the surface, but they don't. Maybe what I see as gems they only see as rough diamonds, or less than that, chunks of ore, or simply bits of worthless rock and rubble. Perhaps it's time to sift through it all and start to his point out some of the rough diamonds. I guess that's why I'm adding “learning issues” to the headings on my new write-ups of initiatives on Dadamac.net. Maybe later on I'll go through the learning issues and start right up learning outcomes i.e. what I have learned. If I write in that way then I will have a structure and foundation – reference points – clear connections between analysis and actuality. I will be able to do some mapping of emergence.
12 - Ecological imagery
Hmm, as I wrote that I was seeing an image of a deep rooted tree (maybe the influence of your economic food chain diagram). I'm reminded of David Mutua and our use of analogies about gardens and gardening as we worked on the Information Centre in Ago-Are. I think too of Andrius Kulikauskas calling his “laboratory” Minciu Sodas (Lithuanian for Orchard of Thoughts) and most recently George Por's references including gardens of knowledge (hmm -and so much of my knowledge coming from grass-roots experiences and connections). I think I like ecological analogies better than mining ones. They are less destructive and reductive, more spontaneous and fruitful. Enough already (far too much, long ago, for you to read properly) but useful for my thinking. I will go back to Dadamac.net next time with that new analogy in mind, to do more weeding and replanting.
So, all my experiences, the people I know, the things I've done etc, they are the rich compost, topsoil, leaf litter etc that my thoughts and ideas have been planted in. My “lack of specialisation and focus” maps to a lack of “monoculture”. Of course ecological analogies make more sense. Analogies of mining and gems relate to our mindset of scarcity. Analogies of gardens and growing things relate to fruitfulness and abundant reproduction – seeding, replicating, cross pollinating, adapting.
13 - Posting this
I plan to post this before our next phone call. Then if you repeat your question of how things have been going over the past couple of weeks I'll be able to tell you that I've sent you this e-mail about it. I think I'll go back and number the subheadings I've been putting in. I'll copy them at the top like a contents list. You can take a quick look at the headings and ask a couple of your probing questions and my thoughts will be comparatively well ordered now in readiness to reply.
I'll probably publish it as well, in case I want to refer to any of it publicly later.
Talk to you "shortly" - in both senses of that word - now that I've written at length.
Pamela