 |
The peer production and education panel, organized by Anne Huang, is moderated by Andy Carvin and features Jennifer Corriero, Saskia Harmsen, Steve Midgley, and Jac Stienen. Liveblog, courtesy of Jason Pielemeier, after the jump.
Update: See the wikipage on this panel.
Andy Carvin, Coordinator of Digital Divide Network
* The emergence of the WWW 2 – the “we write web”
* Lots of people are scared of this, but others are excited
** Ex: Educators response to MySpace
** New blog coming next week @ [http://www.pbs.org/learningnow
learning now]
* Introduction of panel
Jennifer Correiro, Co-founder and ED of “Taking it Global”
* Starting taking it global at 19
** Mission is to use internet to allow young people to build their own
capacity and create community
*** Focus on ICT literacy
*** Thinking of “experience based”, interactive education
**** focus of talk today
* Addressing digital divide by providing meaningful content, context
and community
** [http://takingitglobal.org Takingitglobal.org]
*** Seven languages
**** Translation done by community itself
** Million hits per day, 3 million unique visitors over past 5 years
** Average length of visit is 30 mins
** Key areas of site:
*** “Make connections”
**** Real process in creating moderation criteria
***** Balance respect and openness
*** “Take action”
**** Anyone can post
**** Verification is a challenge
*** “Express yourself”
**** Global Gallery – over 10,000 images
**** Using creative commons license
**** Contests
**** Workshops
*** “Browse Resources”
*** “Understand Issues”
*** “Exploring the World”
** Actions:
*** Youth media is a growing area
**** Student created film festival
** Educational programs
*** Informal
**** Big effort to help US kids learn about the rest of the world
*** And formal
** Class room communities set up on the portal
*** Student voices – online consultation findings
Steve Midgley, Stubski Foundation
* Talk about openness and public education
* Say some promocative things to start
** Anecdote from "Education with an Attitude"
*** 3rd grade classroom in US, one newly arrived Pakistani student who
doesn't speak English; another student is African-American who is a
little behind in reading. As we follow these students through to 8th
grade the Pakistani student is very proficient, well educated and
looking forward to college, while the African American student is 3
grades behind and not interested in further education
*** Question is why?
**** There is no 'physical' reason
**** Not a question that we ask ourselves very often
**** Poor and minority students are often actually 'rejecting'
learning as it is currently delivered
**** Many teachers have learned that "these students don't want to
learn" and as a result they "teach around" these students to focus on
other students in the classroom
** Public education is stuck in a process of "negation"
*** Many of these students see mainstream america as unjust and
discrimintory
*** As a result they are justifiably skeptical to "access" to
mainstream knowledge
*** Access itself is not sufficient
** My work on open systems
*** Peer production has great potential but in my experience niether
availability nor cost are critical barriers
*** Systems fail to engage students with reasons to learn
*** Providing greater access won't solve this problem
** Some context and data:
*** 4th grade white students are competitve in math w/ the
Netherlands, while minority students are competitive w/ Armenia
**** Student is differentially broken
*** Achievement gap is more than 50% is many regions
*** Teachers work alone with the door closed and receive very little
support
**** Partly defense mechanism, partly fault of the system that seeks
"not to interfere"
**** Integrated data system to help these teachers have failed to
appear
**** Even electronic transfer of transcrips from highschools to
colleges doesn't exist
** On technology itself:
*** I have a bias that primary barriers to org change are more about
culture and systems than about access
**** Based on research on districts that have been successful in
turning around patterns of low achievements
**** Have done this by changing how they operate as educators
**** Norfolk, VA
**** Used elbow-grease and have only slowly adopted tech solutions
*** Currently working on adequated, inadequate data systems and see
them as a barrier to cultural change, easier to change data systems
than cultural systems
**** If educators have access to effective technology (tools that
build effective communities and allow for focused educational choices
day-to-day) they can do a lot more
**** Only useful w/in context of an educational culture that values
colaboration and participation
** How can we create these tools and secure their implementation?
*** Public policy is important - but don't want to wait for gov'ts to
change policies
*** Focus on peer production and open content to change the market
places around these institutions
*** Strategies that we might develop in these area will apply in other
educational areas
*** Specific tools and catalysts that we're toying around w/:
**** Open communities of practice and support (at student, teacher and
administrative levels)
***** Includes open support systems (build up from there)
***** Open resources for decision making (under-represented in market
place), particularly in better decision making for products and
services (cnet for education) - create reputations and accountability
for providers
***** Model contracts
***** Open-source technology to move data amongst systems
** Going back to the story at the beginning
*** Teachers and students are not soley to blame
*** Culture of failure and apathy
*** Majority of k-12 schools don't have environments of learning and
collaboration but desperately need them
*** Well intentioned approaches fail b/c out of touch w/ rapid change
w/in culture - viscious cycle
Saskia Harmsen & Jac Stienen from International Institute for
Communication and Development (IICD)
* Jac, Managing Director IICD
** Intro to IICD
*** Nonprofit founded by dutch ministry of foreign affairs in 1996 w/
staff of 33 located in Hague
*** Mission: help devping countries w/ implementing ICTs in: ed,
health, evn, governance and livlihoods
**** Linked w/ Millenium Development Goals
*** Goals - make local orgs aware of possibilities of ICTs for sust
devp't and enabling them to use to meet their own demands and to
stimulate knowledge wsharing about ICT & devp't b/t local orgs and w/
int community
*** Profile
****Process - local ownsership, capacity building, monitoring &
evaluation
**** Partnerships - public, private & not-for-profit
**** Perspective
*** Working in 9 countries
*** Approach
**** Country programs - dont have officers in these countries, work
fully through local partners (round-tables, cap building, knowldge
sharing, monitoring) in 5 sectors
**** Thematic networks to share knowledge in field of ICT for devp't
*** Results
**** 100 pilots and policies mostly in 'livelihood' and 'education'
*** Conclusion: ICT is an effective tool for poverty reduction,
challenge is to achieve MDG 8
* Saskia, Capacity Devp't Officer
** Educational Support Network (Zambia) - SNet
*** Teachers are tired of ministry to provide them w/ content
*** Lots of teachers notes out there, less than perfect but what is
important is that they are 1. phrased in tried and tested language; 2.
use examples that speak directly to pupils; 3. directly related to
local context and culture
*** How?
**** 1. Sensitization, identification, write-up; 2. Improve teachers'
own resources and texts; 3. Creation and adoption of enhanced
materials and formats; 4. Sending back edited text; 5. Approval by Min
of Ed
** [http://www.globalteenager.org Global Teenager Project] - solving
problems collaboratively, in communities and wider networks
*** Int. Learning Circles - 36 countries participating
**** Students pose each other ?s
** Farmer-to-farmer - ICTs for exchange of farmers' experiences in
ecological agriculture
*** ICTs and training made available for farmer groups to document and
exchange their knowledge
*** Documentation & validation of experiences & indigenous knowledge
** Some answers to the panel ?s
*** Information networking
*** Thematic netowrking
** Partnerships w/
*** [http://itrainonline.org itrain.org]
*** [http://capacity.org capacity.org]
** Lacking: University Research Partnerships
Questions & Comments
* Q: (Helen King) Two ?s: 1. about type of delivery mechanism, what is
role of FLOSS? Especially in devp'ing world context; 2. On capacity
building - lot of proof that as soon as you build capacity in
education, as soon as funding org leaves those trained leave and go
into private sector where salaries are bigger?
** (Saskia) Delivery mechanism - itrain.org uses cds to reach people
who are not online, keep things low-bandwidth (less images), sNet is
running on OSS, also support training orgs that service OSS in
devp'ing countries
** (Jac) Regarding cap building, we are training the trainers - we
train at least 2 orgs per country so as to not depend on just one. We
know that 50% leave, but as long as they stay in the country hopefully
the knowledge doesn't leave w/ them.
* Q: (Amos, Univ of Ghana) Two questions for IICD: 1. For Jac, can you
explain point about 'embedding' ICT and the extent that this is a new
direction for IICD; 2. For Saskia, on Bolivia example - is there a
place for the 'mobile platform' in this type of peer-to-peer
interaction
** (Jac) Embedding is to address sustainability. We look for doners
who will take over after, we do this by making our projects policy
related so that ministries get involved, as well as other orgs. First
have to prove that it works and that you have critical mass in order
to imbed.
** (Saskia) On mobile platforms - we don't have a lot of project
experience w/ it, but what we have found that these projects are
strenghened by a central coordination unit. Farmer's orgs for
example.
* Q: Interested to hear about specific measures instituted to avoid
the 'if we build it, they will come' pattern, how do we avoid imposing
solutions?
** (Jennifer) we build things incrementally and its built by the
people who it is for. Often we wait until there is enough interest
and pressure in order to initiate efforts. Build w/ people not just
for them.
** (Steve) Contract commons - need-based project are difficult for
example where the issue is contracts. Admin support tools help people
learn what they don't yet know, have to build appreciation of the need.
* Q: Ask Steve to come back to your story, want to understand where
OSS come into play in terms of kinds of systemic change that you're
talking about?
** Conflict b/t open and closed source models is a false choice.
Relationship b/t them is that they reside in an economic context. We
can build tools, business and markets on multiple licensing formats.
OS can crack open and make more effecient these markets. Data tools
that move data from open to closed is CRITICAL.
In closing Andy poses his ?s:
* Why is peer production important? whatever happend to relying on
curricula?
* How would you describe literacy in 21st C?
* How does open courseware fit in all of this?
* WHat is role of gov't, media, and public access centers?
* WHere do wiki's fit into all of this?
* What about where educational technology is controled by
technologists?
* How does education change when students know more about technology
than their teachers?
|
|
 |