Our Commons takes one more step

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Last night, Sackville Town Council approved a budget that included financial support for our Commons. The details have yet to be discussed and coordinated, but the Town is going to help us secure a site on which to build. We are far away from breaking sod, but it’s amazing to see an idea that started just over a year ago take on a life of its own (my first post was in October 2005).

For anyone who has not been following this story, here is what our Commons is about, in as few words as I can possibly use at this time.

Our Commons (no official name yet) is a physical space in which we can build our community. It will be outside the official places, such as municipal buildings, schools and churches. Our Commons is neutral ground where all are welcome. Our Commons is based on paid, individual memberships and focused on three areas – culture, environment and entrepreneurship. Members will have shared access to workspace, teaching space, meeting rooms and common areas. This will be an attractive, trusted space in which to have meaningful conversations about what is important for us. The Commons will also offer space to non-profit organisations, giving a focal point for much in our community that is unseen, especially in the environmental and cultural areas.

The lead agency in this project is the Atlantic Wildlife Institute, but the interest of dozens of other organisations and individuals shows that this is an idea whose time has come. Here are some previous posts:

There is also a lens on the commons theme with links to other initiatives, and I’d like to invite everyone to join in the conversation here or elsewhere.

Hockey meets social networking

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Your Team Online is a free social networking service for minor hockey coaches, parents and players. The secure site offers each team private and public space. Sign up is simple and the tools are easy to use. This Saint John company allows anyone to sign up, and:

Share game plans, schedules, statistics, photos, videos and information with your hockey team within a private Team Zone. YourTeam is an ideal tool for minor hockey leagues, youth ice hockey teams and all of amateur sport.

I’m convinced that building community is a good business model for the Web, even though making a profit is never that simple, just like in any business. If the community grows and the service offers a trusted space, then there is a good chance of success. Currently, there are a couple of hundred teams online and even one signed up from Italy. It’s great to see this kind of Web business bootstrapping out of New Brunswick.

There is also a Your Team Blog if you want to follow what’s going on.

[Disclosure: I’m currently advising Your Team Online, via a third-party]

Update: Check out their new site, The Hockey Zen

Sheepwalking

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Seth Godin calls it sheepwalking. I remember a non-job I had at defence headquarters, where I had to go to work but there was nothing to do most days. I could go on leave but I would use all of my allotted days and then I would still have to ‘go to work’ for the rest of the year. It didn’t matter that I had nothing to do, for I had to be at my place of duty. I was a sheepwalker, but within a year I was able to plot my way out and start my new vocation in the learning field.

Godin discusses how easy it is to develop sheepwalkers:

Training a student to be sheepish is a lot easier than the alternative. Teaching to the test, ensuring compliant behavior and using fear as a motivator are the easiest and fastest ways to get a kid through school. So why does it surprise us that we graduate so many sheep?

And graduate school? Since the stakes are higher (opportunity cost, tuition and the job market), students fall back on what they’ve been taught. To be sheep. Well-educated, of course, but compliant nonetheless.

Hugh MacLeod succinctly describes the situation that we all face, “The price of being a sheep is boredom. The price of being a wolf is loneliness. Choose one or the other with great care.”

Ever since I became a free-agent, there was no doubt which path I would follow, and I’m much happier today than I was as a sheepwalker some 15 years ago. Life still has its challenges — what I call the financial rollercoaster of working for yourself — but you’re alive and awake all of the time. The challenge now is to get some sleep when new ideas are spinning all around me.

One of the reasons I’m all fired up about the potential of informal learning on the Web is that it can let us be wolves in our learning. We have the means to connect with other members of the pack all over the world. We don’t have to revert to sheepdom so that we can be scheduled for the next course or workshop or whatever the all-knowing organisation has decided is best for us — “I don’t need your course, I’ll learn it on my own and I’ll find others who are willing to help me”.

In reading Jay Cross’ recent article, Stephen Downes basically asked what’s the underlying theory of informal learning. For me it’s clear — informal learning is linked to critical thinking and that is to question authority, seek the truth, and question our own perceptions of reality. Thinking for yourself may be subversive for the organisation but it is necessary for individual growth, as with any child growing into adulthood.

Like raising children, fostering independent learners may not give organisations their desired results, but it will give society the best results. Who knows, perhaps democracy may come to the business sector some day.

Teaching Defiance

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I had the opportunity to listen to Anne Bartlett-Bragg’s podcast with Mike Newman, author of Teaching Defiance, while traveling last week. This cover note is what caught my attention:

This is a book about choice. It urges activist educators to help people break free from their pasts, take control of the present, and make deliberate, defiant choices about their futures. A true polemic, Teaching Defiance offers an exciting antidote to some of the formulaic writing in the fields of adult education, organizational learning, and human resource development.

Teaching Defiance sounds like the perfect book for any learning revolutionary. I made some notes while listening to the podcast and saw a clear linkage between critical theory and informal learning. Newman discusses three steps in the learning/teaching process. The first is Rational Discourse, which seems similar to traditional teaching. Here you get the facts and establish some common understanding. The second is Non-rational Discourse where learners gain non-teachable insight through various methods such as play or metaphor. The last step is Choose Action Well. This is where the learner exchanges stories and finds other people. I would also call this seeking meaningful conversations or networked learning. You have to seek out those who might shake your cognitive tree a bit, but you need a moral or philosphical framework from which to decide who you seek to converse with. Critical theory requires that you constantly question authority, including your own.

I have yet to pick up the book, but it’s on my list and I look forward to reading it. So far, there are no reader reviews on Amazon or Wiley.

By the way, I made these notes on my Moleskine notebook while on the plane.

Making sense of the Web

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How do most people keep track of the growing amount of information that they receive? I’ve developed a personal knowledge management system, that works for me (for now, though it needs an overhaul). Managing information and keeping track of everything was a topic of conversation when four (now five) bloggers enjoyed a beer tasting and dinner in Las Vegas last week. Tony Karrer wondered if I found my Moleskine of any use, since he prefers entering notes straight to the computer. Since I type so slowly & poorly, a notebook makes more sense for me, and it’s quite portable. I admit that transcribing creates an extra step.

There was little doubt that two tools are critical in managing the information flow of the Internet Age – RSS aggregators to track blogs & news; and tagging to keep track of interesting things you find on the Net. I, for one, regularly search my tagged items and find this online database more flexible than browser-based Bookmarks or Favourites. Tagging is growing in popularity, as a recent PEW report shows that 28% of people on the Internet have tagged or categorized content.

Also, I think that there was general consensus amongst us that our blogs were great tools to help us make sense of all of this information, through writing and conversation online. Blogs give you a permanent location for your conversations and connecting with others. A blog can also be an online business card and introduction service.

Though blogs may not be for everyone, I would recommend, as a minimum, getting started with an aggregator and tagging (aka social bookmarking). These are the basic tools for self-directed learning on the Web, suitable for students, teachers, trainers, professionals and life-long learners.

Draw your ideal library

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Our local public library and the advanced methods class from Mount Allison University are circulating a paper requesting input on how to make our town library better.

What would you like your new Sackville Public Library to like inside and out?

On a piece of white paper ranging in size from 4″ x 6″ to 11″ x 17″ draw your ideal library. You can use any medium (crayon, marker, paint, etc.) Remember to be creative and original. If possible, please provide a brief explanation of your drawing.

I’m not crazy about the format or the limitations given, but I know that there are a lot of good ideas about libraries, library 2.0, etc. floating on the Net. I also know that some great designers and innovative librarians visit this site from time to time, including; Joyce Valenza; Christian Long; Ryan Deschamps; and maybe even Jenny, The Shifted Librarian (I read her blog).

I have some ideas, but it’s not really my field of knowledge or experience, so are there any great ideas that you’re willing to share?

Update: I’ve created a Library 2.0 tag to bookmark web sites related to new perspectives on libraries in the 21st Century.

New Personal Creativity Management Device Launches

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Local company, Sackville Industries, has just launched a revolutionary personal creativity management device that may herald a new era in information technology. Podcasts are so “last week” when you can have the i-Think (patent pending). Graham Watt, President & CEO of Sackville Industries says that this product has been years in the making and has undergone extensive R&D and user testing. “This will make the iPod look like a rounding error”, he said at the product launch, held this morning at The Bridge Street Café in downtown Sackville, New Brunswick.

Here is a sample of the product information, currently available:

i-think
USER’S MANUAL

Directions:
Put i-think’s ear phones in place.
Fondle button.
Think.

Important:
Batteries not included because there’s nowhere to put them.
Ask about our comprehensive lifetime warranty plan.
If button falls off, glue it back on.
Not responsible for depth or quality of thinking.
If voices heard on earphones see clinical psychiatrist.

Accessories:
Genuine imitation moose nostril hide i-think holster
with belt clip available on special request: $2300.

i-think.
therefore I sort of am.
i-think.JPG

More to follow on this amazing technology and I hope to have a complete product review as soon as possible, so stay tuned.

Urgent Update: I’ve just been informed that Sackville Industries was bought today by the Dollar Store for $2.00 and 55 fluffy pillows. Here is the new company brand:

brand.jpg

A new model for society

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Jon Husband refers to Constellation W, a website in English & French that covers some interesting territory around the forces influencing our development as a society in the 21st century. Jon notes that, “This next era will create a society of knowledge; its principal tool will be the Internet 2 while its principal handicap will be too-large amounts of information that is not in context.”

Too large amounts of information is what the whole notion of PKM is about. I’ve noticed a real interest in personal knowledge management whenever we discuss it during the informal learning workshops. People are overwhelmed with information.

The Constellation W site is a wealth of information with great diagrams, though I still find navigation a bit confusing, and it’s too bad that you can’t make comments on each page. Perhaps this will change over time. Take a look at the principal diagram, showing the three waves of technology, economy and society. Here is the summary of the conclusions on the Knowledge-based Society:

  • The challenge is not any longer to install the Internet everywhere or to modify the economy, but more fundamentally to change our society in all its aspects. What are the human sacrifices that the knowledge society risks reclaiming ?
  • Because of the ubiquity of the Internet, millions of individual decisions may become collective actions. How do we tame or shape this extraordinary power of the collective which is beginning to make itself felt ?
  • It will be the young people who will inherit this new society. What will be the values which will influence their decisions, thus their choices about the societies of the future ?

Lots of food for thought and many more conversations. Thanks to Jon and the rest of the team for the great work.

The means of production

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Social media on the web (blogs, wikis, podcasts, videos) have given the 1 billion connected people on the planet the basic tools of production in a knowledge economy. We can create mental abstractions that represent our knowledge and then share them with the world for validation. For the first time in history, the workers own the means of production of the valuable assets of the current economy – intangible goods. We know that intangibles are valuable because that’s what our stock markets tell us. For example, the S&P index is over 85% intangibles.

This ability to be the means of production makes informal learning on the web very powerful. We have always learned informally; in corridors between classes or when interacting on the job. Now we can have many more of these interactions and we can find people who are as passionate about an issue as we are. Informal learning in our networked society is not something that you inject into formal training nor is it something you add to your favourite mix of “blended learning”. Informal learning is a paradigm-shifting phenonomen that has arrived because we are now connected, we have cheap technologies and we need to increase our knowledge due to the complex challenges we face in our economies and societies.

As we become more connected, I think that informal learning may become the only way that we will learn in the future. We will need individual, customised experiences and we will decide what these will be. Formal, standardized training & education will become second class. Standardized jobs will be the lowest paying ones, so who will want standardized education? Not anyone who has a choice. The choices will be various and many will be free. They already are.

How can organisations take advantage of this? Create a compelling reason for workers to want to advance the purpose of your enterprise and then give them the means (unfettered access to tools and other people) to learn on their own. If your organisation deserves it, then your workers will figure out what’s best for them, their organisation and our society. Sound radical? It is.

masssocialmedia.jpg
Diagram by Dion Hinchcliffe

Update: and then I come across Chris Sessums’ blog post on Read, Write, Mix Burn … where he refers to a paper written by Robbie McClintock seven years ago:

“In a world in which each individual can pursue most any personal purpose in most any place that suits him, all on his own initiative, the habit of relying on authoritative institutions, which operate through commands enforced by penalties and inducements, may sharply diminish. With the change of phase in the opportunity factor, people need less and less to rely on formal institutions for a chance to fulfill their personal purposes. And as more and more people become aware of the unlimited choices that they have in their personal lives, sanctions and incentives will become ineffectual means of administering authoritative commands in government, society, business, and education.” (para 101)

Informal Learning at TechKnowledge 2007

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I really enjoyed presenting at TK2007 this week, even though our session was moved to a new venue and it was at the end of the day. Being that the topic was informal learning, the session was – informal. The next day I reviewed the participant evaluations with Jay, who has already noted several of the comments. Needless to say, there was a wide spectrum of opinions. Perhaps the best comment was, “They didn’t have the presentation down – too informal for me. I like the irony.”

I too, liked the irony. Perhaps it’s the difference between entertaining and facilitating learning. Sometimes you need to have your cognitive tree shaken a bit. I also noticed that those who have been following the blog conversations were ready to jump in and add some more.

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With the opening-up of the informal learning unworkshops, I hope that more people jump in to this flowing conversation. Informal learning is obviously not new, but the Web has opened up some fascinating new ways of conversing, collaborating and creating meaning.