Update (video)

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I am also taking part of the II ABCiber Symposium (Brazilian Association of Cyberculture Researchers) at PUCSP, covering a variety of related themes, studies and propositions on how these new technologies are impacting our daily lives, uses, best practices and threats.

Though severe brainfry has set in after listening to so many people speaking, I am also having some difficulty in following the tempo of this generation C – (connected, creative and click).  So, I have forced myself to sit down this morning, set some time aside, concentrate and focus on some of the common traits I have noticed during these events:

• the possibility to join the debate, witness knowledge being constructed openly and being shared (from many and with many) through social tools and platforms like mobiles, Twitter (+ all mashups), Flickr, blogs, livestreaming, tagging;
• a tendency of academia and traditional journalists to monopolize the conversation, engage in a navel gazing monologue instead of encouraging and partaking a dialogic relation with the guest speaker and audience.
• a contradiction between innovative theoretical discourse and conventional institutional practice;
• a difficulty in bridging the gap between hope and happening, structure and agency, the material and the ideational;

As Jimbo mentioned at some point, the challenge does not really come from the technology itself, which is continuously being improved to facilitate connections, networking and working together. The real obstacles to an open culture of collaboration are deeply imbued economic/social/educational processes, practices and the need to control,  which hamper these conversations and the possibility of exchange and sharing.

Off to one more afternoon and evening at ABCiber and tomorrow a whole day with Práxis members at BIT (Bradesco Institute of Technology) in Campinas for a meeting and lunch with Mitchel Resnick, from  the MIT Media Lab,  with whom Bradesco partners.

As Natalie Udina (the organizer of the event in Moscow) and some of the presenters were not very familiar with the Elluminate platform in Learning Times, we set a number of rehearsal times for people to test and ask questions.

On the day of the event (October 24th) I almost missed the session because of the heavy traffic on the ring when coming back from the countryside, but fortunately I managed to arrive almost on time. Among the people present at the conference in Moscow, there was Dr. Anastasiya Atabekova, a representative from the culture section of the US Embassy in Moscow, some members of the local government, the University Dean, the pro-rector in science and other participants from different countries from Eastern Europe.

As my sound quality was poor and the wifi connection uneven, I have decided to record it again. While the original raw footage is archived and a bit difficult to retrieve inside  the Webheads in Action room at Learning Times, the polished and interactive recording is here for those who do not want to log in.

This was a challenge I set out for myself . It was the first time I sent my work to a Brazilian university . Ironically, what I have been doing at school was first shown and recognized abroad instead of inside my own organization (school) – which does not even know about this paper…so closed it is inside its own processes.  The web and networking was an outward movement.  I am now coming back and trying to find my place in the local educational environment. Not easy.  Second challenge (minor and fun), believe it or not  – I had never made an academic poster before.  Incredible how fussy some people can be over standard, form and norm and how anxious you can get for fear of not being accepted if you do not “conform”.

I had already written about my experience in Portuguese for Praxis (a 30-page ) but needed to condense it twice  – first for the submission paper: “Ferramentas Sociais, Redes e Interação”  (webcurriculo – (thanks Neli for lending me a hand) and then later for the poster. In spite of my lack of experience in this field, I managed to make one after after a quick search on the web. It was a good exercise in synthesis and visual distribution/impact.  Once it was printed, and hung,  I immediately realized I should have done it totally different.  This how one learns – set yourself a challenge, go for it, do your best, verify results, adjust, lather, rinse and repeat…or is it the other way round? 

As I listened to the various presentations, I compared the reactions to mine and was reminded of the steps I have made these years towards trying to find a balance in my courses. At the language institute I first worked,  I was just an instructor, training people to develop their communication and linguistic skills in a foreign language, not really engaged in any reality but the service I was delivering.  However, when I moved to the secondary school, although the job profile was the same as before, I increasingly became an educator and as such, gradually much more aware of the social engineering  we are subjected to through the uniform, over-structured, inflexible and centralized programs imposed . While trying to implement these new technologies in the classroom , I was constantly confronted with the unresponsive wall of institutional bureaucracy.

While writing this post, I dug up this drawing made by the Time Project team and compared it to a sketch late Lee Baber asked me to check some time ago. There is so much talk about different curricula.  Education surely involves some amount and  quantity – skills and competencies -  but I’d say it is mostly about quality – values and a better understanding of action and knowledge in time – Chronos and Kairos. How do you achieve it on the Web?

1. Core Subjects and 21st Century Themes

2. Learning and Innovation Skills

* Creativity and Innovation Skills
* Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills
* Communication and Collaboration Skills

3. Information, Media and Technology Skills
* Information Literacy
* Media Literacy
* ICT Literacy

4. Life and Career Skills
* Flexibility & Adaptability
* Initiative & Self-Direction
* Social & Cross-Cultural Skills
* Productivity & Accountability
* Leadership & Responsibility

and four 21ST CENTURY SUPPORT SYSTEMS:

1. Standards and Assessment of 21st Century Skills
2. Curriculum and Instruction
3. Professional Development
4. Learning Environments

]]> http://beespace.net/1st-web-curriculo/feed/ 4 http://beespace.net/impressions-and-presentation-at-cparty/ http://beespace.net/impressions-and-presentation-at-cparty/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:50:13 +0000 Barbara Dieu http://beewebhead.net/2008/02/13/impressions-and-presentation-at-cparty/ Continue reading →]]> This is my 2nd day at CParty, interacting with mostly youngsters from different tribes (gaming, bloggers, barcampers, open source geeks, robotics, digital divide activists, greens), who are camping and mingling at the Bienal building. A show of cameras, journalists, ego massage but also sharing and lots and lots of conversations. I have documented some of it in Flickr.

A young journalist, in search of news, expressed his astonishment when he asked me for an interview “What are you doing here? Do you have to be here?” When I dutifully explained, he couldn’t contain himself any longer and fired: “Do you think you are discriminated against?”, Jeez…I stared at him dumbly. “What do you mean?” He was in turn disconcerted…I mean…your age…you being a woman and a teacher…”

Hey! I did feel very educational dispelling the dualistic digital immigrant and digital native stereotype. Here is a pic of another interview (in Spanish) which shows me with the barcampers (notice the reference to age/gender/job here again: Barbara tiene 54 años,/los chicos de barcamp). Can’t a 54-year-old teacher feel like a “chica de barcamp”? They have so much to teach me!

UPDATE: An interview for Nova Escola which highlights key points.

and here is a mix, remix and re-use presentation on blogs…and communities of practice…

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