In the Hotseat October 23, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : pratodialogue , add a comment(This is a continuation of my reflections after the Prato dialogue which I began in a previous post.)
Saturday concluded late in the evening with an informal demonstration by Etienne Wenger to the four of us occupying the upstairs appartment, of a useful little personal aide memoire program called “The Brain” (windows only) It displays information about people, organisations and documents using network diagrams, in way which is conducive to a connectivist and visual learning style. It was fun to discover that all of our names were already present in The Brain together with links to downloaded documents, in my case to my 2nd year paper about Introducing a Wiki to a Cop
I didn’t sleep well due to a pestering mosquito so I wasn’t quite with it in the morning, but needed to be aware of the time of my flight home. The suggested plans for the morning were still on the flipchart:
We decided there was just enough time to hold the hotseat right after breakfast, then walk to the river to see the “ponte vecchio” one of Europs’s last remaining inhabited bridges.
A ‘hotseat’ is really just a way of focussing a conversation on the experience of one guest while in the context of a host community. This had been mentioned by Derek the day before, as an alternative to the model of the expert addressing learners.
The practice seems to have been in use within Higher Education professional development for some years, and the structure can also be contrived in an online environment. We held many asynchronous hotseats during the time at Ultraversity, with some more useful than others, depending largely on the willingness of guest experts to engage with questioners and on the topic. One of the bones of contention was my suggestion that, rather than taking place outside of the learning communities in a separate “hotseat tool”, it would give the guest more context if they were invited into the usual platform for the period of the hotseat so I’m pleased that my first experience as a hotseat guest took place within an extended dialogue event which I was actively involved in.
Questions were asked to me (of those I recall) about the nature of the online degree course I recently completed, about the technology used to support learning communities, about Distributed Action Research, and about Barn raising for the development of Wikis. Remember this was a sitting around the table in real time type of hotseat, and so the only record is perhaps on Marc’s sound recorder. I don’t what happens to all of that audio but I wouldn’t want the job of trying to edit it into a useful form.
I found that I tended to use the questions as a starting point to try and tell stories which, I hope went some way towards answering and then went on to explain other ideas as they occured to me. Sometimes conversation would continue directly between others but then after a while, even without any formal chair, another question would be put to myself. The short time available went quickly for me, and we were still clarifying the idea of a COP convenor having the skill to identify a ’supersaturated solution’ type scenario as we walked down the grand staircase and out onto the streets to indulge in a short bout of sightseeing.
Reference sites:
Ultraversity Degree
Distributed Action Research
Charles Darwin online October 19, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : edublog , add a commentWELCOME to the largest collection of Darwin’s writings ever assembled:
The complete work of Charles Darwin
PERHAPS no one has influenced our knowledge of life on earth as much as Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882). His theory of evolution by natural selection, now the unifying theory of the life sciences, explained how all of the astonishingly diverse kinds of living things are related and how they became exquisitely adapted to their particular environments. His theory reconciled a host of diverse kinds of evidence such as the succession of fossil forms in the geological record, the geographical distribution of species, recapitulative appearances in embryology, homologous structures, vestigial organs and nesting taxonomic relationships.
November 1-3 Wikis and Nonprofits Online event ¦ NetSquared October 19, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : online facilitation, Wiki , add a commentHere’s an online event which I shall try and devote attention to.
Save the Date: November 1-3-Wikis and Nonprofits Online event | NetSquared
Well I can make the middle day at least, and since it’s about wikis I assume there will be a wiki which persists afterwards. Looking at it, the time-specific event seems to be taking place on a forum within techsoup but there’s a wikispaces wiki as well now.
http://nonprofit-wikis.wikispaces.com/
The Big Questions October 17, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : pratodialogue, distributed research, Wiki , add a commentHere’s an interesting process. A long list of “Big Questions” generated from the face-2-face CIRN conference at Prato has been placed on a wiki for anybody to get involved with contributing towards answering. Why not get in there and have a go at one or more of them?
In the morning session of the first conference day, participants were asked to write down the questions they would like to see answered, and stick their sheets of paper to the “Wall of Ideas”. On this wiki, each of the questions gets its own page. Please help to answer these questions by editing the page and add your bit of wisdom, excerpt, link, or anything else that might help in the weaving of our collective knowledge web.
A password is asked for prior to each edit, and the word is: prato2006. Please also include your name at the end of your contribution.
How to Save the World October 17, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : blogs and community, tools, Wiki , 1 comment so farNumber 3)
Some weblog tools could morph into full collaborate environments where groups of people with common interests, practices, projects or purposes could co-develop information and entertainment ‘products’. So-called ‘groupware’ has not been very successful largely because many groups lack sufficient shared passion, or a shared sense of urgency, or sufficient motivation to develop competence in using online tools. Co-development of a world-class compilation of ideas or expertise on a particular subject, or shared software or multimedia products (music, films, or books), on a shared space, would not suffer from this lack of motivation, and could produce collective wisdom and genius that is far more exciting than weblogs (even group blogs) can hope to offer. And there’s no reason why the tool to do this couldn’t be built on a blog wiki platform, a composing environment that a lot of people have become comfortable with.
Forums from WordPress October 17, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : tools , add a commentbbPress ยป bbPress 0.72 is released so if you want to implement free, simple and spam resistant forums in a style which is familiar to users of WordPress blogs then this could be for you. It’s very basic though, so you will not find avatars, user posting counts and many other features which may be present on major bulletin boards, but this is being promoted as a feature in itself.
I don’t think I have any need for bb/forum software right now, but I wanted to download and install this one just to see if it works. I’m also just a tiny bit intrigued by the notion of integrating blog and forum functionalities, but as far as I can see this comes down to little more than allowing the same user logins to be used for both installations. My testbed installation is here. The possibility of navigation through a forum via tag cloud could be a runner.
Don’t co-conspire October 17, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : online facilitation , add a commentDiane Miller presents some good tips for facilitating online collaboration in an article humourously entitled
We have ways of making you collaborate
for example:
Don’t co-conspire
I worked on a big, complex project with a team of instructional designers new to online collaboration. For the first couple of weeks I felt like I was herding cats answering the phone, responding to email and keeping track of what I said to whom. And then I realized that our project space was getting seriously underused. So I started saying “no,” to my team when they would call or email and began answering questions in the space itself - and only there. The project space took off pretty quickly after that, and my time was freed up because I could answer the questions one time for everyone to see (and I didn’t have to wonder if I was losing my mind - all of my decisions were there for ME to see as well).
Homemade Scratter for a cider press October 12, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Community, cider, Wiki , add a comment
Buy books about real cider making on a small scale and homemade apple cider press plans at the ukcider bookshop with Amazon
A ukcider member who calls himself “Ni. (Marches Cyder Circle)” has created a great new page on the cider wiki all about his homemade scratter, dubbed the “codling grinder”.
I just love these kind of low-tech, practical and cheap solutions, and so do plenty of potential cidermakers around the world it seems. A similar page by Ray which shows how to make a home made apple press out of bits of plywood and four-by–two has received a phenomenal numberof page views ( > 12,000) and regularly comes up in the most popular searches. The accompanying discussion page also gets comments and questions which the author happily answers.
Recently a new member arrived on the mailing list having built the press from Ray’s instructions and made their own cider the year before. They were so pleased with the results they wanted to learn more about it. I’m sure that Ni’s scratter will be similarly emulated around the world, because you do actually need both machines in order to make apple juice or cider.
There are also some images and description of a home-made rotating “scratcher” for
milling apples included in the book: “Success with Apples and Pears to Eat and Drink” by Alan Rowe ( available from the cider bookshop) but I bet they’re not as much fun as Ni’s page with his codling scratter for a cider press.
Designing for Civil Society October 11, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Community , add a commentOne phrase at the end of a post by David Wilcox caught my attention.
Designing for Civil Society: Tories (and Google) embrace DIY TV
At one time political parties offered people an eco-system of goodwill, some shared values, debate, stimulation. Now we look elsewhere.
That could be almost be a formula for providing the environment for a successful online community. First there’s the word ‘ecosystem’ which resonates with my contention that technology provides an environment in which community may occur. Then there’s the idea of humans being naturally gregarious and seeking to fulfil this need for a group to belong to. Modern nuclear families are not sufficient, and people seek out clubs and societies, evening classes, keep fit, bingo, social clubs, campaigns and political parties, anything to provide the opportunity for social interaction, and sometimes whether consciously or not, to find a mate. The young conservatives/socialists/liberals etc were all famous for that, so were the Young Farmers for that matter.
My point here is to contend with the notion that communities of practice only occur when a group of people gather with the express intention of learning together. In my experience, the motivation for gathering does not need to include a conscious desire to learn as the main purpose, although learning within peer groups will undoubtedly occur, but more naturally as a by-product rather than the central concern.
An eco-system of goodwill, some shared values, debate, stimulation are indeed some of the most sought after things and if we can find ways to build such ecosystems, then positive communities may well flourish within them. Learning is not always primary.
After the Prato Dialogue October 10, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : General , 1 comment so far
I returned from Florence on Sunday afternoon, lacking of sleep and travel weary, but stimulated by the discussion, people, and experience. Then it was straight back into the routine for Monday morning, with just enough time to upload my photoset to Flickr, and relate glimpses of my weekend to family and friend.
Joining in with a new group of friends who already have some common history and traditions can be a bit daunting at first, 
but I’ve done it before with other groups and only once found it impenetrable. And when there has been online interaction beforehand then sometimes you can hit the ground running, because you are in fact dealing with people you already know to some extent, with ongoing issues and debates, so there is never any shortage of things to talk about.
I gather this was CPsquare’s third such event, roughly, following dialogues in Setubal and Milan. It says on the ‘about’ page of the Prato Dialogue blog that “For many of us, where a social perspective on learning is the subject and the means of inquiry and the rallying point that brings us together these events are works of love. They are produced in moments stolen from our jobs, families and friends.” I only managed to steal enough time to attend for about 36 hours, and it was touch and go right up to the last minute whether I would be able to make it at all. In the end the feeling that I would somehow regret not making the extra effort to find a way motivated me to overcome obstacles and I’m really glad about that.
On Saturday morning the discussion began over breakfast and just carried on all morning. I noted that the conversation kept returning to the subject of blogging, which I don’t at all mind weighing in on, but it slightly puzzled me as the hot topic for a group of Communities of Practice people. 
It turned out that there had been some debate before I arrived, with recent convert bloggers contrasting against reluctant non-bloggers. I was reminded that we had that same tension in discussions about blogging at Ultraversity. At the lunch table, we were each formally responding to two set questions about our own paradoxes, boundaries, and trajectories, written up on a flip chart parked close to the table. A continuous series of camera flashes went off just a few feet from my eyes whilst I was trying to listen. Derek and Patricia were both keen to hear about the radical Ultraversity online degree course which I have recently completed, and that took up a fair chunk of my speaking time.
Then an adjournment to an internet cafe, where I bought 20 minutes time without any pressing need. Peter Jones commenting on this blog confirmed that it doesn’t display properly in Internet Explorer 6, and I could see that this was true in front of my own eyes. I’m going to upgrade to Wordpress 2.0 and find a new skin when I find some time…
Back in the grandly adorned but not always comfortable venue, the afternoon session 
began without any suggested theme or topic. Since we were in a room with walls covered in post-it notes from the previous day’s excercise, there was felt to be a need to explain the process which had led to them, and the conversation drifted on from there. I had little to contribute at first, and admit to feeling perplexed as to what the purpose was. I’ve never attended an Open Space event, nor an unconference so I would sit back and try to see how it works. In some ways it did allow some important topics to arise, and in other ways it may not have used valuable time as constructively as could be. At the other extreme, I wouldn’t want to be subjected to a series of mini lectures - monologuing - but I feel there is still a place sometimes for a prepared lead-off to initiate focussed dialogue. Etienne Wenger provided this in his own way by speaking of the concept of Knowledge Citizenship and his proposed research into Learning for a Small Planet.
And so on to a nearby restaurant where the conversation continues unabated and free wheeling. Some of the more peripheral topics which arose during the day included the world technology divide, politics of language, how open source developers earn a living, current world issues, Etienne’s original vision for CPsquare, group blogs, public and private, moral obligations of knowledge, um, and lots of other stuff.
When we got back it was late but somebody still wanted to discuss tomorrow’s agenda. Having spent all day indoors in rainy Florence I hoped if the weather was fine to at least see a small part of the famous city, particularly the bridges. There was also a suggestion to hear a bit more from me since I was having to leave before midday, so written on the flipchart were the words “Andy in the hotseat” which I thought at the time was just humour…
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
