Speaking of ICT and open teaching in Africa... May 23, 2010
First to join up the dots, and how we connect with each other. Maria and I already know each other through Andrius Kulikauskus and Mincius Sodas. We met F2F in Lithuania a couple of years ago (I think March/April 2008). We also both connect with other people within Minciu Sodas - Ken Owino of the Nafsi acrobats springs immediately to mind. We try to catch up with each other now and again on Skype - but have not managed that for a while.
Maria - how do you connect with Michel? I imagine it is through P2P. I cannot remember how I first came to subscribe to P2P, but perhaps through Andrius because of his interests in everything being in the public domain. I confess that I only dip into the P2P emails occasionally. There are so many. There are areas of overlap between P2P and some of the things I am interested in (but I am not quite sure where the overlap begins and ends).
Maria and Marco - Michel has kindly reposted one of my blogs on P2P and invited me to write again - which I certainly hope to do sometime. However at present I am having to get on with so many practical tasks that I am only allowing myself to write open emails like this (ie no reflective writing unconnected with correspondence).
Marco - I recognise your name from P2P but have not read enough there to be familiar with your thoughts and ideas, so thank you for the links you sent:
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my home page: http://mfioretti.com
Some of my recent Open Education articles:
http://stop.zona-m.net/education/olpc-paraguay-educates-both-little-kids-and-teenagers
http://stop.zona-m.net/node/133
http://stop.zona-m.net/node/35
http://stop.zona-m.net/node/36
Something I teach:
http://stop.zona-m.net/digital-culture-online-course-parents-teachers-and-everybody-else
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I am quoting the links because I am not including your complete original email (as it was sent privately), and I am copying this email to dadamac's posterous. I publish some of my own emails there as it makes it easier for my key contacts to "look over my shoulder" from time to time.
It does seem that you and I have a lot of overlapping interests related to ICT in education, open learning and developing countries.
I was particularly interested in what you wrote about Plan for Universal Basic Education discussed in Kathmandu http://stop.zona-m.net/node/36 which began:
According to OLE, QUBE means being able to:
- Read local newspapers, magazines and books,
- Complete job applications,
- Write letters to friends and employers,
- Manipulate numbers and keep accurate financial records,
- Engage in productive work
- Improve agricultural, nutritional, health and environmental practices,
- Participate in art and culture
- Promote cooperation and manage conflict effectively, and
- Contribute meaningfully to one's family, community and nation.
That discussion in turn relates to issues which I have been investigating in theory and in practice for many years, such as:
- How the Internet alters the traditional roles and relationships of teachers and learners
- The role of the teacher as "manager/enabler" or "learning guide" rather than "source of knowledge"
- Learning as a collaborative experience and the role of communities of interest
- Individual learning journeys
- Flat-world/spiky-world and how we find each other in order to learn together
- Cultural issues of cross-cultural learning groups
- Social dynamics of online collaborations
- Learning and teaching in 21st century - the educational equivalent of e-bay and suchlike.
- Essential roles in Internet-enabled cross-cultural learning-by-doing
- ....... and so on
I wonder what Michel said to you in the email that prompted you to contact me. I ask, because I am not sure what you already know.
I would like to be able to say that if you go to a particular part of my website you will see what you need to know about my work - but so far the website is more about ICT enabled collaboration for development (rather than systemic change in education in the 21st century and new opportunities for education in developing countries as a result of the Internet) At www.dadamac.net I have been trying to demonstrate how John Dada and I connect with each other, to tell about the community development work that he does in Nigeria (and the UK connections with that) and to highlight our structures and strategies for effective UK-Nigeria collaboration.
I have been doing that as my priority because I want to enable a new approach to development (and research about development) which actually involves people at the grass roots. I want to break the mould of 20th century top-down development initiatives and create a 21st century model where there is two way communication and mutual respect - a situation where "development" is done "with" people not "at" people, where the Internet enables collaboration (as it does for the Dadamac UK-Nigeria team). I want to see people at the grass roots valued for their local knowledge and seen as "consultants" in the development process not "supplicants/beneficiaries".
I need to find people who share that vision and will help me to make it a reality. They do not necessarily have to focus on Nigeria, I can connect them with activists in other African countries too (who can gather local information), but for some practical projects there are benefits in starting in Nigeria, in collaboration with Fantsuam Foundation, because of how much is on the ground there.
Because of the emphasis above I have yet to step back and write up my side of things, in an analytical way, regarding ICT enabled collaborations; Internet enabled learning and educational practice etc.
Perhaps that is something that you and I will cover a bit more as we explore overlapping interests, looking for a win-win way to share ideas. Maybe we will have some discussions that will be useful for both of us to publish in our chosen online spaces. Who knows. Perhaps we could do a series of open letters as we try to define areas of overlapping interests. I am just thinking out loud here - just ideas - not definite suggestions - a starting point for better ideas.
Thank you for writing, thanks to Michel for the introduction. Let us explore further. What suits you best to do that? Would a skype chat be useful (type or talk) or do you prefer more emails to start with?
Pamela