LearnByDoing

Learning - by doing the website

2009-07-26T23:00:00.003+01:00

I realise my LearnByDoing blog has been badly neglected of late. I certainly have not stopped learning by doing, and I have not stopped reflecting on what I am learning - but at present I cannot prioritise blogging about what I am learning. However I want to make a few quick notes about what I am doing - even if I cannot also write about what I am learning in the process.

I am working with Andy Broomfield and Ryan Cartwright on Dadamac's webpresence. This isn't "just a website". It is also an attempt to pull together all kind of things that are currently scattered across the internet. These are things that relate to work John Dada and I have done in the past, and are doing now (together and separately).

In my mind the Dadamac website will be the virtual equivalent of a reception area in a physical building, and the physical building in question would be the head office of our organisation - Dadamac. I want this "head office" to connect up with all the things related to Dadamac elsewhere on the Internet - all the Dadamac online meetings and emails and so on that relate to present and past projects. So the "front end" of our website will need to connect up with the new structures we are gradually putting in place behind the scenes for our present projects, and all of this will help us to be effective and able to grow with confidence. If all goes well it will also bring in new people, and help them to choose defined areas of work where they can work as independently and proactively as they choose. When that happens it should mark the end of me being an information bottle-neck. I look forward to widening my areas of interest and active involvement again in all kinds of related activities that have been neglected of late while I have been focussing on structure rather than new ideas and interests.

In a way all the Dadamac interactions and archives currently scattered around the Internet are a bit like the work done in annexes or in the branch offices of an organisation. In fact much of the content I put on this blog last year was put here as a tempoarary measure, because "the right Dadamac online space" was not ready. Of course in the physical world there are reasons to spread across various locations, and stay spread out, and it is true that in Dadamac we are situated physically in various places, some very far distant from others. But in the virtual world the head office and branch offices can be located in the same virtual space, so that everyone can easily connect with each other and know what is happening, and it is our virtual space that I am working on. However, just like in the physical world it takes time and effort to create a new space, move into it, and get everything working effectively.

This explanation probably makes little sense at present, but perhaps it will after the webpresence is fully functional in the way I imagine it - probably through a slow, gradual, unfolding at first, then speeding up when it is big enough to interest and attract new people and other resources.

IT46 and the mast at Fantsuam

2009-05-11T13:27:00.005+01:00

Mark Charmer from Akvo has been asking me for more "history" from Fantsuam, so I thought I'd dig around for something about the mast:

I went to the website of IT46 - a Swedish-based IT consultancy company with a vision: knowledge transfer to recipients to promote social change - http://it46.se/vision which enabled the mast to be erected.

On the front page http://it46.se/index.php there was a photo relating to Fantsuam (someone giving a presentation about the mast there). A larger version is at http://it46.se/images/uploads/1240998901_Dhaka_local_materials_skills.JPG where you can see three good photos and these key points

Innovation

Local materials
Local skills

I did a search for Fantsuam and found nineteen search results - telling the story of the mast.

The URL below is a direct link to my search results.

URL: http://www.it46.se/search.php?status=submit&search_option=1&containing=Fantsuam

The latest entry (with photo) was about storm damage on April 24th:
Ochuko Oneberhie from Fantsuam reported that during a heavy rain storm,the wind bent the
tower from the top. In the course of its fall one of the legs was uprooted from the ground with the foundation.
Several buildings including the old network operation center, a Cisco Laboratory and a neighboring building has been seriously damaged. No
human casualty or injury was involved.

http://www.it46.se/show_entry.php?id=374

Partners of IT46 are:

SIDA - The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency	APC - The Association for Progressive Communications
University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania	Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)
Unidade Técnica de Implementação da Política de Informática	International Development Research Centre
The Swedish Program for Information and Communication Technology in Developing Regions	European Commission - IST
DSV -Department of Computer and Systems Sciences	UNDP - United Nations Development Programme
Olof Palme International Center	CICAT - TU Delft
Al Akhawayn University Ifrane	Meraka Institute
Schoolnet NA	Cygate

Africa Gathering report from LIDC

2009-05-10T23:20:00.003+01:00

I failed to blog about Africa Gathering and so I am delighted to find this full report published by the London International Development Centre LIDC

Some fun Internet connections and networking

2009-05-02T23:39:00.005+01:00

The Internet makes for some light-hearted, unexpected networking. The email I have copied below refers to two of Steve Thompson's projects - one on second life, and one that linked UK children with children in Africa and India. I just sent this email to the PRADSA group (where Steve posted his request for help) and to a friend of mine in Italy, a potential helper for Steve. I know the Italian friend and the PRADSA group F2F - but would not have known either without first happening to connect with them through online communities of interest.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hi M - can you help us? This Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRqyO0fBmvY is quite fun to see, it is not long, and it is in Italian. It refers to some community work Steve Thompson did on Second Life with the community at Skiningrove - but he doesn't know what the Italian voice over is saying.

There is a chance you will recognise Steve's name as his People and Place project last year was mentioned on LearningFromEachOther. People and Place linked children in UK to children from places we know (initially just the Children's Computer Club at Fantsuam - then more locations joined in). There were children from two schools in the UK - one of them from the community shown in SecondLife on Youtube. (more about Steve and People and Place from an earlier blog post),

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hi Steve

This is a brilliant link - congratulations!

ref your message to the PRADSA group "I just chanced upon this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRqyO0fBmvY (snip) what are they
saying?"

I am blind copying this to a friend in Italy. I imagine you would appreciate even a brief explanation of who made the video clip, and for what audience.

Pam

Fola, ICT studies and skill survey.

2009-05-02T18:47:00.005+01:00

Fola is a teacher in an exceedingly rural location in Oyo State - a little village in the bush (more about Fola and how we met). We are discussing how to help him continue his ICT studies.

Hi Fola

I am replying to your letter (and Ricardo's) not just through the Self Directed Learner's Group - but also on my blog, so I can easily share some of this ongoing story with other people.

You are looking at ways to continue your ICT studies, and Ricardo has found out about relevant distance learning courses at the Nigerian OU(Open University). I wonder if anyone has experience of Nigerian OU to share? Distance learning is a great way to continue studying.

I have experience of UK OU and recommend it very highly. In fact it was my OU studies which gave me the confidence to be a self-directed learner on the Internet. My own involvement with computers and ICT came as a spin off from the foundation course that I had to do at the start of my OU degree studies.

I am in favour of a SDL approach to developing your skills as well as formal courses. In addition to my formal studies I learned about the use of ICT through practical projects. These practical projects were things that I wanted to find out for myself, with no-one to teach me, or fund me, or to accredit my work. I hope you will do practical self directed work as well as formal studies.

I know that you are already competent in many aspects of ICT use. I know too that you are involved with the Info Centre at Ago-Are and I recall that you and I first met through Pastor David ("PD" - manager of the InfoCentre at Ago-Are) because of the way he and I connect on Teachers Talking and the Info Centre at Ago-Are).

I think you are a man who understands the difference between firm plans and visions/dreams about the way we hope to go. If you do understand this difference than I can share some dreams with you, even though they are not yet firm plans. I mean there is no big money to move these ideas along - it is just hopes and ideas at present! But if we share our dreams it helps us to encourage each other and to take small steps in the same direction.

My hope and dream is that the InfoCentre at Ago-Are will gradually grow (taking ideas from Fantsuam Foundation, the Knowledge Resource Centre, and Dadamac) and that you, PD and I will help to make this happen.

Already there is a good long history of trust, collaboration, sharing of skills and knowledge, etc between us all - you, me, PD, John Dada and Kazanka Comfort (General Secretary of Fantsuam Foundation).

I was first at Ago-Are in 2000 (before the InfoCentre started)
John and Comfort first came to Ago-Are when I was there in 2004. We already knew each other. I remember that I had brought some learning resources from the UK for the InfoCentre and John and Comfort were able to take copies for use at Fantsuam - so there has been overlap of training between FF and Ago-Are for many years!
PD was already closely connected with the Info Centre by 2004.
Later PD attended one of my TT (Teachers Talking) courses at Fantsuam Foundation, and shared some of that knowledge afterwards with teachers at various locations in Oyo State.
You and I met through PD and last year you came up to FF for the Self Directed Learners (SDL) course.

From a resources and skills point of view you and PD have considerable ICT knowledge and experience - especially regarding the practicalities of ICT in rural areas. Your experience is even more valuable because what you have done has been driven largely by local determination! I want to find ways to tell your story and build on it. I know you are working independently but you have strong links with the InfoCentre.

I know that the Info-Centre at Ago-Are had a short taste of being connected to the Interenet when there was the COL/IITA/OCDN project (Comonwealth of Learning, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture and Oke-Ogun Community Development Network project). Before that the centre had the equipment that David Mutua had managed to get through VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas), for off-line training and use. I was not able to get down to Oyo State during my last trip, but I did visit the InfoCentre the time before (as you know because we happened to be there at the same time), and at that time (2007) the InfoCentre was continuing to do the kind of work it had done before the Internet connection. I hope it is still continuing in the same way, but I know there have been many changes in people's lives recently. Perhaps you would update me.

Now - I am wondering if there is some way that I can help you to move on in your skills, that would also benefit the InfoCentre? Is there some little practical ICT project we can think of related to the InfoCentre that would also help you to develop your skills (and PD's too if he is interested) ?

To begin with we need to do a kind of inventory of our skills and resources (the details will not be for sharing on the blog as some of that information may be personal or private).

Something that I want to do with Dadamac Self Directed Learners (SDLs) in future is to improve the way that we continue to work together online, not just F2F (Face to Face). I would like to start by developing a skill survey of all the skills that the Dadamac online SDLs need to have in order to work online effectively. (I'll probably call them "Dadamac Learners" for short.) Personally, I know I do not have all the skills I need yet, so I am happy to include myself as a Dadamac Learner. Perhaps you will help me to build up a list of items we should have on our skill survey. (I might share the outline skill survey on the blog - but not personal skill survey records.)

I hope that later on the skill survey will be a starting point for pople's online learning journeys. I also hope each online Dadamac Learner will have the chance to have a mentor - or learning guide. The mentor will help the learner to consider the direction for his/her personal learning journey and how to take steps in that direction. I know that even though I enjoy being a self-directed learner I find it very helpful when someone helps me to reflect on what I am doing and where I am going.

Perhaps you will be willing to be the first official online Dadamac Learner. Perhaps others in this group will be willing to join in as well.

Let me know if you are interested in becoming a Dadamac Learner and helping me to develop the skill survey. We can also discuss more about your learning journey.

Pam

__,_._,___

Andrius Kulikauskas, COMMUNIA, and Open Knowledge

2009-03-23T14:13:00.004Z

My friend Andrius Kulikauskas Director of Minciu Sodas is staying here in preparation for
5th Communia Workshop: Accessing, Using, Reusing Public sector Content and Data (London 26-27/03/09).

The COMMUNIA Thematic Network aims at becoming a European point of reference for theoretical analysis and strategic policy discussion of existing and emerging issues concerning the public domain in the digital environment - as well as related topics, including, but not limited to, alternative forms of licensing for creative material; open access to scientific publications and research results; management of works whose authors are unknown (i.e. orphan works).

Funded by the European Commission within the eContentplus framework, the 3-years long project expects to provide policy guidelines that will help each stakeholder involved - public and private, from the local to the European and global level.

Andrius and others from Minciu Sodas will also be at the Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2009 on Saturday 28th March. OKCon is back for its fourth installment bringing together individuals and groups from across the open knowledge spectrum for a day of discussions workshops. This year the event will feature dedicated sessions on open knowledge and development and on the semantic web and open data. Plus there's the usual substantial allocation of 'Open Space' -- sessions, workshops and discussions proposed either via the CFP or on the day.

The work of Minciu Sodas is described and continuously updated at the
Minciu Sodas Worknets Wiki

WES - World Entrepreneur Society

2009-03-21T15:31:00.003Z

Yesterday I attended World Entrepreneur Society 2009 Summit
which I heard about thanks to an email from Steve Moore who I met at 2gether08.
My first contact of the day, before I had even taken my coat off, was Trine Moore. We found an instant shared interest regarding issues around "Be the change" and Attachab Eco-village. My last one was with a group of Kaospilots (the 21st century alternative to being MBA students). The day was full of opportunities to meet new people with interests overlapping my own. I expect some of their names will turn up here (or on the gradually developing Dadamac website) as we explore shared concerns and possible collaborations.

There is already lots of information leading up to the World Entrepreneur Society 2009 Summit and as David Wilcox - social media journalist - was covering the event I am expecting him to be putting up good coverage of what actually went on.

Pattern Language and Civil Empowerment

2009-03-19T09:38:00.002Z

On Tuesday I was at a workshop on Pattern Language and Civil Empowerment at the London Knowledge Lab.

The email below from the organiser gives useful links
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Yishay Mor <yishaym@gmail.com>
Date: 2009/3/19
Subject: [Planet-CivicEmp] post-hoc background
To: planet-civicemp <planet-civicemp@googlegroups.com>

Should I have emailed this before the workshop? Maybe. Would you have looked at it?
Anyway, some background on the Planet / Learning patterns approach to collaborative reflection via patterns:

My recent presentation keynote at e-learning patterns, Tuebingen, 2009 (http://www.iwm-kmrc.de/workshops/e-learning-patterns/index.html )
http://www.slideboom.com/presentations/52309/Patterns-for-building-patterns-communities

Video:
http://www.iwm-kmrc.de/workshops/e-learning-patterns/videos/Keynote1YishayMor.html http://www.iwm-kmrc.de/workshops/e-learning-patterns/videos/Keynote2YishayMor.html
Abstract:
http://www.iwm-kmrc.de/workshops/e-learning-patterns/abstracts/patternscommunties.htm

How to write a case story:
http://www.slideshare.net/yish/case-study-how-to-presentation

From stories to patterns:
http://www.slideshare.net/yish/stories2patterns-presentation
__________________________
Yishay Mor, Researcher, London Knowledge Lab
http://www.lkl.ac.uk/people/mor.html

CDE eLearning personalisation seminar

2009-03-18T12:16:00.002Z

Where next with eLearning? A seminar on personalisation

Last week I attended an interesting seminar at London University's Centre for Distance Education. Further details are in the email below
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear colleague,

Following last week’s personalisation seminar conducted by Philip Butler and James Ballard from ULCC, the powerpoint slides are now available to view or download here: http://www.slideshare.net/CdeLondon/where-next-with-elearning-a-seminar-on-personalisation.

Other related sited sites you may find useful:

- Framework Information: http://moodle.ulcc.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=139 (including links to demo sites)

- Portfolio Evaluation: http://moodle.ulcc.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=175

If you have any questions regarding the session, or the CDE please let me know.

Regards

Tom Inkelaar, Planning and Development Officer

Centre for Distance Education, University of London,

Stewart House, 32 Russell Square, London, WC1B 5DN.

T: 0207 862 8404 cde@london.ac.uk

The Centre for Distance Education is part of the University of London External System

Credit-crunch musings

2009-03-15T23:08:00.002Z

These musings were posted elsewhere - I wrote them in response to discussion about the credit crunch
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I want to raise the issue of paid-work (the day job) versus work-for-a-purpose (often, but not always, for no pay).

Many of the people who I most respect consider that their day-job is a necessity but their "purposeful work for no pay" is far more important and valuable (to themselves and to others). I suggest that we might help the newly time-rich to find their own purposeful work through involvement in online communities of purpose.

I was once in a small group discussion where people were talking animatedly about their work. All seemed in agreement until one person commented about his boss not allowing him to follow through on a particular area of interest. Suddenly some previous odd comments he had made fell into place. Unlike others he was talking about work he was paid to do. He wasn't talking about the work that was his passion, the purposeful work that he did in his own time. He didn't have purposeful work of his own. He thought everyone was talking about day-jobs!

I think we should take a lead from the Open Source community (or at least, my understanding of it) i .e some people write code in their own time, others get hired by organisations (like the OU wanting new Moodle applications perhaps). The code that is written all becomes available to everyone. If it is good then it is valued. Money has nothing to do with it. Code is not “better” because someone was paid to write it. No-one feels ashamed that they contirbuted their code in their own time instead of as part of their paid work. Or at least that is how I understand it to be.

The newly time-rich can be like a pool of people on secondment available to work alongside people who are already doing purposeful work for no pay. I am not talking about 20th century volunteering. I am talking about the opportunity for first hand experience of work patterns that are emerging in 21st century: more flexibility; a blurring of boundaries between working from home and working at work; an emphasis on collaborative work; the creation of teams that form temporarily to achieve a given purpose. I know I could find purposeful, interesting and challenging work for people if I didn't have to find money to pay them. I can't be alone in that.

Maybe such involvement will only be a stop-gap for the newly-time-rich during a brief career break. Maybe it will be a new experience for them which will help them develop better skills for 21st century online collaboration. Maybe they will take their experience of emergent 21st century work patterns back into long established organisations and their structures for the
benefit of all. Maybe some people will decide against going back to full-time employment and will choose to develop a sustainable lifestyle that includes doing their work paid and unpaid – a bit like my undersatnding of Open Source development.

The newly time-rich are a national resource. Let's get our act together to make use of them before their skills get rusty, their work habits slide, their self respect plummets and a huge opportunity for skill use and development is wasted.

Go to College, Get a Job, Borrow From the Driver/Tea Girl

2009-03-12T08:57:00.003Z

I'm sharing this great posting from Ugabytes as it gives a wonderful picture of African small businesses (with some interesting lessons for credit-crunch UK perhaps).

--------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sandra Nassali
Date: 2009/3/12
Subject: Fwd: Go to College, Get a Job, Borrow From the Driver/Tea Girl ...
To: ugabytes

Hello people,

Some things take a long time to change. Take the (dis)advantages of higher education, for example. In the 1970s, to be highly educated in Uganda was a risky business. The military government of the day was deeply suspicious of educated people, who were deemed dangerous. Many of those who did not flee the country were killed.

Today, higher education is required for most jobs. That is why, so many people are going to university to earn a degree that will open the doors of employment. But again, this kind of education has its disadvantages. It tends to condemn a person to total dependence on salaried employment, making them vulnerable to sudden destitution should they lose their jobs.

Strangely enough, at the end of the day, when you trace the adult lives of people at most workplaces, it is the drivers, messengers and cleaners who do better as far as individual financial security is concerned. After working for five years, a tea girl will have invested more than the secretary along with whom she was recruited. The driver will be more financially solid than the mid-rank graduate officer.

The tea girl, you see, doesn't just earn a salary. She also supplies mandazis to the secretaries at break time. She arrives at work much earlier than them, to make sure her merchandise is distributed to various agents such as junior tea girls in nearby offices and a few street side vendors.

When the secretaries arrive, she greets them politely and asks what they would like for their break. Since she extends credit, many of her bosses are in her debt. They pay up as soon as they get their salaries, because it would be beneath their dignity to default on a tea girl's money.
Meanwhile, her younger sister, whom she brought over from the village two years ago, is manning their stall in the market, where they sell second-hand clothes. From among these, the elder sister regularly selects the "first class" pieces and sells them at higher prices to the secretaries, who do not want to be seen in the downtown market stalls bargaining for used garments.

Because of spending so much time with educated people, the tea girl has decided that the child, whose birth forced her out of school six years ago, will have the best education she can provide. She puts the child in a good school and pushes her to work for good grades. She will even make sacrifices to pay for private coaching.

As for our driver, he is doing equally well. Extremely humble and obliging before the executives, he is regarded as indispensable. After working there for 10 years, he knows the secrets of the top men in the organization. They therefore tend to let him get away with small sins like those that fuel bills that seem on the high side for the mileage covered.

Unbeknown to his bosses, he is running two or three taxicabs as well as a small shop near his
home. He has a line of one-room rental houses and any tenant who is late with the monthly payment is evicted ruthlessly.

His drivers and wives, who double as shop assistants, bow lower before him than he does before his bosses at work. His children, who are subjected to very strict discipline, will be sent to the
best schools if they are academically promising. Otherwise, they are absorbed into the
family business at an early age. He rules over his small empire with an iron hand.

The tea girl and the driver get salaries that are much lower than those of the secretary and the middle officer. However, because they live close to the ground, as it were, they spend much less and so are able to save and invest.

The young graduate, on the other hand, cannot imagine running a soda-and-cake network in the office. So, he has no income apart from his official salary. Yet he goes to expensive clubs and wears trendy clothes. So, come the end of the month, he has no money left!

Whereas the driver no longer touches his salary, relying instead on his diverse incomes to run
his home. The graduate cannot invest in the places he frequents and the circles he moves in; he cannot build a five-star hotel. But the driver can open kiosks and bars in his slum.

One day, both these people will have to leave their employment. No prizes for guessing who is better prepared for life after retirement. The privatization and downsizing of the public service gave us many sad cases of senior officers who tried to start businesses with their retirement
packages. At their age, it was too late to learn new tricks, and most got cleaned out within a week, ending up as frustrated alcoholics. The stronger ones converted their family cars into cabs, and can be seen touting for teenage passengers outside discotheques. They live in
unfinished houses and are always quarrelling with their growing children, who cannot cope with the fall in their standard of living.

As the driver's and tea girl's offspring join the business sector with ease, the former officer's sons and daughters sit around idly talking about Western film stars and singers. Such are the dangers of an elitist education.

Scary!!

--
Sandra Nassali
Community Facilitator
UgaBYTES Initiative (www.ugabytes.org)
Telecentre.org (www.telecentrecommunity.ning.com)
Plot 2218 Ggaba Road,
2nd Floor Kangave House
P.O. Box 6081 K'la

[nafsiafrikasaana] Kenya -Lithuania Bridge

2009-03-09T23:16:00.004Z

More news from my friend Ken Owino. Copied here for the techie aspect (because they are using a videobridge) and the people aspect (a Kenya - Lithuania collaboration) - and also because anything that Ken does is worth knowing about.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Friends,

I would like to bring to your attention a video bridge event organised by the NGO “Cultureartfact” in Lithuania and “NAFSI Africa Acrobats” in Kenya.

The video conference and concert “Afrik@LT2009” will be on the 21st March 2009, 3pm at Early Childhood Development Centre “Little rock” in Kibera,( Lemule Road Olympic Estate, Kibera P.O.Box 21319, 00505) all the details about this international event you can find on the website:
http://www.cultureartfact.org/index.php?tid=33&sid=223&aid=1026

This video conference and a concert which will be transmitted live on the web: www.internettv.lt and will help deaf children and the children with hearing disabilities from both countries (Lithuania and Kenya) make friends and explore the other culture far from their own world.

Using sign language, the children will exchange their questions and knowledge about the two countries Kenya and Lithuania , exchange their culture program.

Kenyan participants will have a possibility to watch a unique percussion show performed by Lithuanian deaf children group; in exchange “Kivuli” Centre Acrobats will show their acrobatics and percussion show.

To specify this event we are using the Kibera deaf school “Little rock” slogan “Help turn a scar into a star”. and will be raising the awareness of the famine in Kenya to help children from the school like “Little rock” in Kibera and others to improve their living and schooling standards.

This will be a fund raising event in Lithuania ; already confirmed that this event in Lithuania will have a Red Cross representative.

I hope you can Log on to www.internettv.lt on 21st March to share with us this important event.

Thank you for your attention.

Peace,

Ken Owino

Nafsi Africa Acrobats

www.nafsiafrica.org

Tuttle Club. Lloyd Davis and Temporary School of Thought

2009-02-24T23:08:00.003Z

The Tuttle Club is a great place to meet (on a Friday, in Central London, details of where and when). I went there for the first time last week, having invited several people I knew to be there so I could make some introductions. It is a friendly and interesting place to meet up with contacts old and new.

The Tuttle Club is run by Lloyd Davis who I first met at the Temporary_School_of_Thought during a one week programme of events (I had gone to a presentation by Vinay Gupta). Lloyd has written more about that week here. The Temporary School of Thought is now temporarily closed but hopes to re-open in a new location.

Hacking the Recession

2009-02-12T15:09:00.002Z

Tomorrow I'm planning to be at "Hacking the Recession"

Theme - If we can have a Web 2.0, why can't we have a Recession 2.0 — a collaborative effort to make this downturn different – better — than the last one? How can we band together as a community to survive and thrive until the next boom and beyond?

Birkbeck College (WC1E 7HX), entrance off Torrington Square. Room 540.

When: Friday the 13th February 2009
Where: Room 540

Tracks so far are looking like follows:

PHP hacking on Elgg modules for the Social Media vs the Recession project
Python hacking on the Django based website being built for We20 project
Collaborate with other hackers on developing your own crunch-busting and/or social change ideas

9am Welcome and Housekeeping (please arrive early if you need a wifi key):
9.00-10.00: Opening/Introductions/Brainstorming
10.00-12.30: Break up into tracks and groups for hacking
12.30-13.00: Touching base.
13.00-14:00: LUNCH BREAK <- In George Birkbeck Bar on 4th floor (covered by dev8D)
14.00-16.30: More hacking
16.30-17.00: Closing
17.00-onwards: Finding a suitable watering hole and possibly some food.

http://code.google.com/p/developerhappinessdays/wiki/HackingTheRecession for sign up details

Glen at Fantsuam - a Canadian view of Nigeria

2009-02-12T13:41:00.002Z

I met Glen in September 2008 when I was at Fantsuam. He was there with VSO and is a Canadian.

He was writing a great blog about his placement with Fantsuam Foundation, so I asked him to do a session on blogs and blogging for my Self Directed Learners group. As well as teaching the basics of blogging, that session brought up all kinds of interesting issues in my mind about who communicates what and why. Glen was a Canadian blogging to Canadians back home about his experiences at Fantsaum - in distant unfamiliar rural Nigeria. To my Self Directed Learners there is nothing unfamiliar about rural Nigeria - for many it is the only reality they have ever know. They were interested to see Glen's photos simply to find out what he was doing when he was away from the main campus. They were also very interested to find out about blogs and the possibility of writing comments on them, and having one of your own.

This blog entry (batauri-bye-bye.) is what Glen wrote on leaving Fantsuam. It give an excellent balanced account of rural realities, cutting through the images of starvation, desperation and corruption that many of us see most of the time through the media. Earlier entries include photos and are a good resource for anyone wanting to know about real life in rural Nigeria.

Yoghurt and the bull - long term planning

2009-02-11T23:24:00.005Z

This is a story of how ideas spread and get adapted.

Last year when I traveled out to work with John Dada at Fantsuam I took copies of Mohammed Yunus' book "Creating a World Without Poverty" (given by Chris Macrae).

One of the chapters that particularly appealed to John was the chapter about Danone Yoghurt's social business. In his voluntary role within Fantsuam Foundation John is involved with orphans and vulnerable children, and one thing he tries to do is supplement their diet.

It so happened that during my trip we were visited by one of John's friends who is at a senior level in a Nigerian company which produces yoghurt. We gave him two copies of the book - one to keep and one to share. We suggested he might persuade his company to follow in the social business footsteps of Danone. We could provide lots of the things that Danone had needed

Vulnerable children
Poor rual area
Large distribution network through the field officers of the Fantsuam Foundation micro-credit programme
Local cows

We didn't succeed in persuading him to set up a new business - but he did help us to take a step along the way. He is going to help us improve the quality of milk given by local cows. He is providing a bull from a herd whose milk is used for yoghurt production.

Obvioulsy it will take a while to get from the arrival of bull, to the arrival of better quality calves, to their growth into mature adults producing milk for yoghurt - but then Fantsuam Foundation is fimrly rooted in the local community, and is used to making progress through small steps. Those small steps have brought it a long way over the years. It has the patience and perseverance to embrace long term plans.

Yesterday there was exciting news during our (Skyped) Dadamac UK-Nigeria team meeting. John suddenly interrupted our discussions by typing

BREAKING NEWS
BULL HAS ARRIVED

Fortunately we had just about reached AOB on the agenda - so the meeting closed in haste as the team in Nigeria shot out to welcome the bull - leaving Nikki and me, back here in UK, looking forward to photos.

Happy Birthday Jibrin Perry - Dadamac SDL

2009-02-11T10:53:00.003Z

Today I got a great email from Jibrin Perry which I share below (with his permission). Perry is a head teacher in rural Nigeria. In September 2009 he was a participant on the Dadamac Self Directed Learners course that I ran at the Fantsuam Foundation Knowledge Resource Centre (KRC). Since then he has been a regular visitor to the KRC, and we keep in contact.
~~~~~~~
Hi Everybdy,
I am 52yrs today and I feel like 20.Knowing and becoming part of Fantsuam hyas made younger than my age.
It is now that I am beginning to have knowledge.
It is now that my aspirations are higher.
It is now that my vision is clear.
It is is now that I make real friends.
At this age I will continue to explore the world to the fullest, I will struggle to see that my dreams come true. After all life begins at 70
Perry.
~~~~~~~~~~~

CDE & GlueSniffers - Two perspectives on sharing knowledge

2009-02-10T10:38:00.014Z

Yesterday I was in two contrasting cultural settings, both connected with ICT and education, and both looking towards the future.

I started the day with the London University Centre for Distance Education at the 2008/9 CDE conference held at the Brunei Centre. The theme was Research in Distance Education: from present findings to future agendas. London University last year celebrated 150 years of working in distance education.

I don't belong in any university, but I am pleased to find myself connecting with them. I am a practitioner, not an academic – but I am a reflective practitioner, and I strongly believe that theory and practice should be interconnected and of benefit to each other. Sometimes I am disappointed when I try to make this connection between theory and practice, but yesterday surpassed my hopes and expectations.

I was delighted to find that the research presented was relevant to my interests as a practitioner and related to what is going on now. Perhaps this is because the CDE is researching areas of its own work - relevant to its own practice - so in a way it is both researcher and practitioner. The discussions stimulated my thinking, and as I hurried away from the CDE conference and on towards my evening meeting I was aware of taking new ideas and insights with me.

I was due in Bermondsey at 5.30 to meet with Vinay Gupta, Mark Charmer and others at the initial meeting of GlueSniffers which is about appropriate technology and sharing knowledge.
(The glue refers to joining pieces to form a bigger whole than the component parts). Vinay and Mark had attracted a rich mix of people, so the component parts are looking promising.

The meeting gradually got too large for the small conference room where we first met, so people spilled out into the larger office spaces. By then people had introduced themselves, and got some feeling for how the group connected, so we could usefully circulate, investigating shared areas of interest more deeply.

As well as the people who arrived in person, we had a young American student who joined us on Skype - video. (I assumed he was talking from the USA, until he happened to mention something local, in Peru.) I now realise I didn't learn the name of the Skyping student, I think it may have been Robert, (so that is the name I will use for now - if I learn better I can edit it later).

I'm intrigued by the dynamics and social niceties of online meetings. Robert had been included in the group meeting and Mark had suggested that Robert and I should have a one-to-one discussion later. When people started to break into smaller groups, I asked Mark to give Robert and me some pointers for our conversation, so we would know what interests to start exploring, and I was very glad to have the opportunity to meet him.

Of course, Robert was in Peru (or from my vantage point, he was stuck behind the laptop screen). This made it "difficult for him to circulate". After we had talked for a while I asked him how much longer he could stay with us, and he reckoned about 15 minutes. Everyone else had moved away from the conference room towards the beer and nibbles, so I called a couple of people back to talk to Robert while I went to circulate on his behalf. I went around letting people know that he would have to be leaving soon, so they could choose to go and chat or at least say goodbye before he left. When I looked into the conference room some time after he should have left, he was still chatting, so I was glad I hadn't just said good bye to him and left him “trapped in the laptop on the table”.

There will be another meeting in March (and with any luck that information will be updated in future so it will always help you to track down the next GlueSniffers meetup).

Retraining after redundancy in the 21st century

2009-02-08T12:29:00.004Z

The quotes from emails below relate to a proposed course to assist businesses through the economic downturn. There is a request for ideas and my suggestions in reply. My understanding is that the course would be mainly for people facing unemployment.

The request:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
................. Meanwhile what I should like to receive help from you is a check list say 5-7 Bullet points of the kind of training/development/ re-skilling/business support programmes that could in your experience be of most definite benefit to this sector....and of course what in specifics a University Business School can and should do to help, support, move on and change the direction of the economy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The reply:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Pamela McLean
Date: 2009/2/7
Subject: Re: Help Please

Hi David

An interesting challenge. I decided to think about your course - and came up with the collection of ideas below. It's a bit more than bullet points, but fits your 5-7 items request. I have no idea how long the courses are that you are planning, but the structure I suggest could be adapted for length.

The philosophy behind this course plan is that you must help the participants see that the 21st century really is a "new place to live". The time we are living in is in not "the familiar 20th century - but with more mobile phones and Internet applications added to it". The participants probably can't go back to where they came from. Therefore they must learn something different - and not be given training/re-skilling for a world that doesn't exist any more.

1 - Welcome them to the 21st century and reassure them. (If they have lost their jobs they will be feeling insecure, angry and frightened, rather like people on a journey who have crash landed in a foreign land.) Let them know that this new environment, although it is unfamiliar is an okay place to be - they may even grow to like it.

2 - Help them to see why they are probably not going back - the organisations and organisational structures they came from will be changing form. Help them to analyse what they did and did not like about their previous work situation, and what their ideal world and work situations would be. Help them to look forward in a realistic and positive way to building their futures, recognising that their new lives could be improvements on their old ones, even if they have to make major adjustments.

3 - Get very real - Help them to generate lists of precisely what building blocks would be needed to build the kind of ideal work/life situation they would like in the 21st century for themselves and their children and grandchildren. Then show them how many of those building blocks are already in place - or nearly in place. Encourage them to think of themselves as contributors and collaborators in building this better world. (NB They can start to collaborate on building it even while they are on their course, through their project work)

4 - The 21st century is largely about short term teams collaborating for a purpose. Help the course participants to analyse their own strengths and weaknesses and interests. Do this in the context of seeing what kind of teams they want to join, for what purpose, and then recognising what skills training they need. (This is where the practical skills training comes in. They may well have useful skills that can re-emerge quite quickly if they can find the right collaborative team to join, and are willing to be adaptable.)

5 - Make it practical - get them working in teams, and using a mixture of F2F and Internet based communication methods for their collaboration, so they get confident about working in virtual environments. This is not just a matter of knowing how to "make the technology work" it also has to do with the human factors and understanding some of the subtleties of Internet based inter-actions and collaborations. In this project work you will be training them in the culture of 21st century working practices . They will be learning by doing. It will be a great morale booster if, while they are learning the skills of 21st century collaboration they are also producing something they consider worth while. If the course is long enough some participants may find themselves contributing to "real projects" in collaboration with people who are not part of the training course, but who recognise your participants as potentially valuable to them. This kind of collaboration would be like combined work-experience/extended interview, and could lead to recommendations to join later paid collaborations. (NB "collaboration" is one way of seeing the relationship between customers and suppliers in 21st century - good information flows enable customers to influence what supplier supply, thus collaborating on what is delivered).

6 - Introduce participants to key ideas of 21st century "work for wealth creation". I could give you a list of ones I think important, and why, but you did only ask for bullet points. The key points are valid for people setting up new businesses as well as people working on an individual basis.

7 - Let them know that they are definitely not alone. Show them how they fit in and can continue to collaborate, and communicate and contribute, and continue their own skill development in a meaningful and valuable way, even before they see clearly how their paid work future is going to work out. This collaboration to build the future will be of genuine value in what it creates and will also ensure that people keep their confidence and social networks and have a good ongoing CV. (You may need to explore aspects of unemployment benefit entitlements to make sure your participants do not cause themselves financial hardship by using their time productively after formally completing their course. They may need to lobby for changes in the law regarding what unemployed people are/are not allowed to do. I am not sure of current details, but I know it has been an issue in the past.). By the time the course ends it should be natural for the participants to continue collaborating and supporting each other through the Internet. They should also be confident members of various communities of interest/purpose external to the course.

Hope that helps.

Pam
(Dadamac - Knowledge Brokers).

Recession - learning from last time

2009-02-07T13:35:00.006Z

People are comparing the present situation with the 1990s and 1930s to see if there are lessons to learn. I think there are. For that reason I offer my own experience of unemployment, and consider how it can be different this time around thanks to the Internet.

I won't write about my experiences first. They are offered more as a post-script - to demonstrate that I write from the heart and from experience, not from theory. I'll start with a statement of what I believe.

I believe that being out of work can be different (less horrible) this time around because one of the worst things about losing your job is the isolation and the Internet overcomes many isolation issues. I don't know how many social networking sites are now focusing on job loss and how to deal with it, but I would guess it is emerging as a major topic.

There are increasing numbers of people, at all skill levels, who will be using the Internet to exchange experiences and information. This networking could be put to good purpose. Yesterday I was writing an email about this in more detail in response to a question about re-training
(copied to my blog here) I have more thoughts but have not yet started to write them.

I believe lots of people will be giving opinions about unemployment, some with little idea of the realities. For this reason I share my unemployment credentials below. I genuinely believe that if the Internet had been around when unemployment was hurting me and my family then the hurt would have been less. I do know about unemployment. (That is one reason I went on a returners course when they were offered in 1999 so I could return to teaching. Then I got involved with Africa which pushed out teaching as a full-time day job.)

Looking back to how things were in the 1990s. I have relevant experience of unemployment and its impact. I remarried in 1990. During the first six months of our marriage my husband and I lost three jobs between us and we then lost our home. (The 1990s were similar to now - lots of job losses, lots of repossessions.)

I have other experiences too.

My first marriage was affected by unemployment. My young children were raised in a rural area and my husband left because of lack of work locally, and was not able to take us with him.

My own work history is varied, influenced by family responsibilities and other issues. I have never had "a career path". I know all too well the dreadful feeling when a job you are depending on is taken from you. I have known it at different levels of job security. My experiences of losing jobs range from seasonal work in the tourist industry to three months notice in a large company - and others in between.

In one training job I had the manager told me he was worried about a phone call he was expecting. If it was bad news we would both be affected. At lunch time he got the phone call he had been fearing. A planned project had been cancelled. He, I, and one other were about to lose our jobs. It was only my second day at work in a new post.

In my first experience of job loss I had been working all season in a local hotel. I was a young Mum and we really needed the extra money I was bringing in. I knew the job would wind down, but I was totally unprepared for the casual comment from the manageress during my tea break "I won't be needing you tomorrow dear." (I was hourly paid - end of story.)

The details of all my job-losing experiences were very different - but the feeling of shock, and unreality, were the same - an almost tangible feeling of blackness closing in, a sensation of separateness, of feeling I was on "automatic pilot" and just observing myself responding. In my memory it is like the memory of being in a car crash - an awful kind of slow motion, unreality, heightened experience, the dreadful feeling of sudden lack of control over what is about to happen.

Then there are the money problems.

There are also questions of identity. Without a job - who are you? What do you say when people ask what you do? Where do you fit in? Who do you mix with? What are you "worth" now that no employer can be found who thinks you are worth anything at all? The person you used to be is no longer of any value in the job market (and we have been taught to values ourselves by our place in the job market).

This is even worse for people who have no family commitments. At least if you are a Mum you can welcome the opportunity to be a full-time Mum for a while, and even make it look like a considered choice on your CV - but of course then there are more people in the family to suffer.

What if you try to re-package yourself, in endless application letters, and no-one wants the re-packaged version either. (In the 1990s I remember reading that on average it took 100 letters of application to land an interview. Employers were said to whittle down the pile of applications by some random rule such as "Reject all typed envelopes (or all handwritten envelopes, or whatever)" - confident that the smaller remaining pile would still have more than enough good people for a short list.

At a time when I was in work and my husband wasn't we would have rows because we'd be invited out as a couple and he wouldn't want to go. Even if it was something we could afford he wouldn't want to go. It was mainly because of the inevitable early question "So.. what do you do?"

Personally I think that question should be turned around, so no-one replies by giving their paid job. After all, it is only an opening conversational gambit (which is a fairly safe one for people who assume everyone is in work). I think it would be better if people always replied by saying what they do in their own time - not by saying what they do in their paid time. Of course that interpretation of "What to you do?" is potentially awkward and embarrassing for people who only have a "paid time" identity - which is arguably as sad as having no job - but that is another issue.

How do you remain employable when you know that "The best way to get a job is to have a job"? It is hard when your main task (other than making ends meet) must be finding work, and your main pre-occupation and identity is that "I have no job, but I must not look like a loser, or I will never get one". I remember going to an employment agency where I thought I was being "positive in my job search but not desperate". The interviewer told me I came over as angry and so she would not be able to place me anywhere. Gradually I developed a life style where I didn't have to rely on one single employer, so I would feel less vulnerable.

Becoming unemployed can be a terrible emotional and financial shock. Isolation and "uselessness" can follow. Using the Internet is the key to it being better this time around. "Rubbing minds" is the first step to using all the unemployed new talent to help create a better post credit crunch lifestyle. Let's actively seek out this influx of newly time-rich people and enable them to share their skills freely for a while and help to create a better tomorrow.

Marcus, Ecoshelter, Ecodome and Attachab

2009-02-02T21:26:00.000Z

Quick facts and links (at the end) about Marcus/Ecoshelter, Dadamac, Fantsuam Foundation, and Attachab ecovillage.

Marcus and I met at PRADSA (Practical Design for Social Action) in March 2008.
Made plans for him to come to Attachab through Dadamac (I'm the "mac" half of Dadamac - Knowledge Brokers)
Discussed ideas and plans by phone and through the Internet
Marcus joined some of the online Dadamac UK-Nigeria team meetings (held weekly using Skype conferencing - typed).
September 2008 Marcus came with me to Nigeria, and worked with Dadamac, Fantsuam Foundation and local people to build an experimental eco-dome at Attachab Eco-village.
Arrived Abuja early morning Tuesday September 23rd
Met by John Dada (who is the "Dada" half of Dadamac - and director of Fantsuam Foundation - an unpaid role).
Thanks to the early preparation Marcus hit the ground running - a few hours after arriving he was at the local timber yard, with Dadamac/Fantsuam Foundation team, choosing the wood he needed for his work.
Marcus and local "trainee team" successfully constructed small demonstration eco-dome.
Local carpenter made straw bale maker under Marcus direction.
Straw bale making was demonstrated.
Marcus visited other contacts in Kaduna State interested in eco-development.
Marcus' contacts from Lagos visited to learn about eco-domes, straw bale buildings, and permaculture.
Marcus did a training session on photography and photo-editing, for some of the students at the Knowledge Resource Centre.
Marcus was able to do a presentation at the Fantsuam Foundation Knowledge Resource Centre, showing the Attachab eco-dome construction and the bale maker, plus larger ecodomes and straw bale buildings from around the world. (Marcus spoke in English, the photos spoke for themselves, and afterwards John chaired questions and answers and discussion, often in Hausa. Answers came not just from Marcus, but also from the local team who had helped him, so language was not an issue.)

On Sunday October 12th we drove back to Abuja, ready for an early flight home on Monday, just under three weeks after we had arrived. Much useful learning done on all sides. All sides keen to continue the collaboration.

Outcomes and continuing story. Eco-dome will need some final weather proofing (plastering, and perhaps some thatch matting laid over the "roof area") - before the rainy season. Needs more money for that. Eco-dome is popular. It is cool and people feel confident about constucting others. Various people want to have eco-domes, when they can afford them (much cheaper than alternatives). Plans for larger eco-dome and straw bale building when funds allow.

See Cecily's blog dreams-will-come-true for wider view of Attachab and eco-dome.
See videos by Vinay Gupta ref Ecoshelter http://blip.tv/file/1672098, and Ecod0me with Dadamac http://blip.tv/file/1678638

Tom, Ricardo and life saving learning through the Internet

2009-01-27T20:25:00.005Z

This is what the Internet is for !

Last week Ricardo casually referred to a time when he had helped Tom Ochuko find information that was urgently needed. It is a true “good news story” that deserves to be more widely known, both for its own sake, and as an example of ICT being used for informal learning. The Internet was used to teach a practical skill which helped save the lives of children in Nyanza, Kenya, when cholera threatened.

This is what happened. Last year (2008) Tom Ochuko wrote an email from Kenya, explaining that sickness was following the rains, children were getting sick, the river, normally a source of livelihood had become a killer, homes and crops had been washed away. The area had already suffered post election violence. Now it was threatened with cholera.

Tom is an active member of an online community, Mincius Sodas (MS). He is a community activist with particular concern for deaf people. He was also active in the Pyramid of Peace initiative (post election turmoil response) in 2008. When he needed help, he emailed his friends in the Holistic Helping group in Minciu Sodas. He explained the situation, and that there was a need to provide sanitation - but how? He needed advice from people who were good at constructing toilets.

This was his email:
> Dear Sam,Ken ,Dan,Chelimo,Janet,Maria and all.
> Its has been reported thatNyanza is worse now..I Have
> experienced it now.
> The children have long stomach runs..with complain in
> the chest,River Nyando our source of livelihood has
> become akiller.
> We cant get nrea any more while the homes are already
> washed away..with no crops..we cant just live to see
> this come every year.
> To begin with we must comstruct toilets..are there
> peoplwewho are just good in this.
> Designing,and making.
> Our ground is loose..and needs abetter structured
> toilets for every home.
> Mosquitoes are also breeding,SAM EXPERINCED THIS WHILE
> HE VISITED ME.
> The deafimpact children..require nets,Tabs..and Even
> water containers to keep ..good health and hygine.
> WE can atlength dicuss this kisumu..is already
> affected as at now no running water and all are warned
> taht unless something is done ..Chilera is number two
> to election vilolence.
> What are your vies SAM HOW IS MbITA..sOME ARE ADMITTED
> AT THE HOSPITAL FROM MBITA.
> Lets comunicate and get alsting solution.
> TOM OCHUKA

Fortunately, Ricardo, one of Tom's online friends, saw the request for information. He searched the internet and came up with a relevant link. It was to a Water_Aid_Video by Adam Hart Davies, on how to build a pit latrine. The key element is simply a piece of plastic drainpipe. The video shows how to cut, heat and bend the drainpipe, and construct the pit latrine. Tom got the information and acted on it. The health of the children improved.

I asked Ricardo to give me more details of exactly what happened, so he sent me an email, which he also copied to the Minciu Sodas wiki at http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?PitLatrine It tells how Tom got the information he needed, built the latrine, and improved the health of the children. It was funded locally. So the only thing that came in from the outside was information.

This is not a high profile story. There was no publicity, no involvement from politicians or large NGOs, no planning and targets and budgets. It was practical local community action.

I am studying how ICT can enable learning and to me this is a wonderful example of genuine informal distance-learning-on-demand. It is far removed from traditional course-based distance learning, which is the main model that many people seem to have. This was something immediate and focused. It was serious, project based learning, which was needed to solve a pressing problem.

This example is a collaborative approach to learning that has only become possible thanks to the Internet. It is an approach where people who know each other through online communities are ready to share needs and resources and help each other to solve problems, using video and the Internet. It is a kind of e-learning that is radically different from what many people normally think of as e-learning (i.e. traditional, formal, course based, accredited learning, with a subject expert leading the learning).

There was no subject expert in the group, no-one who had the knowledge that Tom needed. The information was on the Internet, but the Internet on its own was not sufficient. Tom has little Internet access and had no realistic chance of finding the information that he needed for himself. The added extra was the transnational community of friends. Someone who was bandwidth-poor was supported by someone (in the band-width rich UK) who was more easily able to go online and search for useful information. An intermediary helped to download the information from the Internet in Kenya. It was put onto a CD so that Tom could learn from it offline and share the information.

The thing that strikes me repeatedly about informal Internet mediated learning is the way that it dramatically increases the number of contacts that you can ask for help. There is new hope for those of us who don't belong in a university, don't start off knowing people locally who are well informed about things that interest us, and don't have any kind of “old school tie network”. Anyone who can get on the Internet and ask questions has a chance of finding new contacts. Discussion and answers are available “with a little help from our friends”. There is even hope for bandwidth-poor people like Tom, if they know people who will help them. Thanks to the Internet it is worth asking questions, because there is a good chance that someone can help to find an answer.

Imagine a future where teams of volunteers support learning the way that Ricardo does. (Being a volunteer on such a team would be an interesting and satisfying experience for anyone who enjoys learning new things and meeting new people online). As the story of Tom and Ricardo demonstrates, there are exciting and wonderful opportunities for collaborative learning thanks to the Internet.
~~~~~~~~~~
Follow-up note: There are photos of the finished work - two well constructed cubicles.Tom sent photos to Ricardo, who has sent them to me. If anyone asks then I will get around to adding them here.

Ken Owino, Nafsi Acrobats, Water Purification and More

2009-01-26T14:14:00.005Z

Ken Owino is a friend in Kenya, and a great sharer of information.

This blog entry is to briefly introduce him and share his recent email which is copied in full below and begins

"I have realised a new trend of purifying water in Kibera slums.
I have also joined the long list of people purifying water using solar.
It is quite easy and nominally cheap-absolutely costless i would say."

Later in the day a reply from Ricardo gave additional information on how to do this, so I have added his email after Ken's.

By way of introduction - Ken is leader of the Nafsi Africa Acrobats, whose work was the catalyst for the Minciu Sodas Pyramid of Peace initiative during the post-election turmoil in Kenya in 2008. We originally met through Minciu Sodas, and have been able to spend time together in Nairobi and also in Europe. I have great respect for Ken and his multi-faceted (very practical but visionary) work. I hope to add more about him in a later edit to this page. (Ricardo is a great innovator, distance teacher and information provider, more about him elsewhere in LearnByDoing.)

I also hope to help Ken visit John Dada sometime, as they are both great community development practitioners with much to share. We plan to work together more closely when Dadamac reaches out beyond Nigeria. When John and I have further developed the Research, Development and Training Centre we hope to bring more people like Ken there, to enable idea sharing and replication.

Ken's email follows:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kennedy Owino
Date: 2009/1/26
Subject: [nafsiafrikasaana] Water Purification
To: nafsi Afrika acrobats , mendenyo@yahoogroups.com, holistic helping , learning from each other

Hi Sam, Tom and all,

I have realised a new trend of purifying water in Kibera slums.
I have also joined the long list of people purifying water using solar.
It is quite easy and nominally cheap-absolutely costless i would say.

It involves keeping water in a 5lt (whatever size you choose) water bottle that has been painted black.
The water bottle is left in the iron sheet roofs for some hours.
The water undergoes purification using the sun’s rays through a technique known as solar water disinfection process (Sodis).

It is an open secret that tap water and water bought from water vendors in the slum is contaminated with sewage.

After hours under the sun, the water is safe for drinking.

This water purification process involves simply exposing the liquid to the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) rays. In just hours, the UV radiation from the sun’s rays will have killed the micro-organisms in the water.

I think this is a phenomenon worth being adopted by the rural communities where diarrohea, cholera or water borne diseases is commn place.

Peace,

Ken Owino
Nafsi Africa Acrobats
www.nafsiafrica.org
+254723568251

Later in the day Ricardo replied:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: ricardoolpc
Date: 2009/1/26
Subject: [mendenyo] Re: Water Purification
To: mendenyo@yahoogroups.com

Hi Ken
that's really interesting. I found this Sodis step by step
guide with pictures, and info on the number of hours of sunlight,
bottle type, etc.

http://www.sodis.ch/Text2002/T-Howdoesitwork.htm

Ricardo

Fred Kayiwa and youth project

2008-12-15T23:23:00.003Z

I copy this email to my blog, to introduce Fred. He has supported me a lot, especially when I have needed help to make chats go well.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Pamela McLean
Date: 2008/12/15
Subject: Re: [learningfromeachother] Re: Fred Kayiwa and youth project
To: learningfromeachother@yahoogroups.com,

Hi Fred

I came across this link to Soccer Without Borders http://www.soccerwithoutborders.org/
I don't know if they are looking for any new teams to support.The website is asking for more donations and telling potential donors about the work they already do. However there is no harm in emailing them about your work and asking if they will be looking for any new partners in future. They do already have links in Uganda - I don't know if that would prove to be a benefit or a disadvantage.

Pam

2008/12/15 fdkayiwa <fdkayiwa@yahoo.com>
-Hello all friends
I just wanted to share with you what we do currently
http://dreamforthekjteam.org.uk/ and perhaps you can advise as well as
support our project in any way you can
thank you a lot for being there for us.
Fred kayiwa

Dadamac (shortened from Dada and McLean)

2008-12-15T09:50:00.006Z

Dadamac (shortened from Dada and McLean) is the name the John Dada and I use when we are working on things together. We started collaborating in 2003. How that came about is a long story, but the outcome is that:

I am John's eyes, ears and voice here in the UK.
I am active on the Internet on his behalf as well as my own.
I can describe John's various community development projects in rural Nigeria from first hand experience.
John and I communicate regularly using the Internet
We hold weekly online UK-Nigeria Dadamac team meetings
Together we arrange effective collaborations between people in my network (in UK and online) and John's projects in rural Nigeria.
We also act as consultants.

Our first project together was Teachers Talking, which had its fourth online anniversary celebration on November 29th 2008. Our most recent collaboration enabled Marcus Simmons of Ecoshelter to visit Attachab Eco-Village, to learn about Nigerian realities, to teach about eco-buildings, and to construct a demonstration eco-dome.

John's work at Fantsuam Foundation and Attachab Eco-Village is driven by his personal commitment and concerns and is work-without-pay. My independent investigative work into ICT and Education is done the same way, and so is our work with the Dadamac Learners, and some Dadamac Collaborators.

It is possible to contribute to our social/community initiatives (at Fantsuam Foundation and elsewhere) through a registered charity Dadamac Foundation (previously known as CAWD). At time of writing this edit (January 26th 2009) Dadamac Foundation has a policy of making no deductions for administrative costs (where necessary they are covered by Dadamac Ltd).

It is possible to employ the Dadamac team through Dadamac Ltd.

Open Farm and Marcin Jakubowski

2008-12-14T19:31:00.012Z

Marcin's work and vision - The world’s first replicable, post-industrial village

OpenFarm is the work of Marcin Jakubowski. Quote from Marcin's blog: "We are actively involved in demonstrating the world’s first replicable, post-industrial village. We take the word replicable very seriously - we do not mean a top-down funded showcase - but one that is based on ICT, open design, and digital fabrication - in harmony with its natural life support systems. As such, this community is designed to be self-reliant, highly productive, and suffciently transparent so that it can truly be replicated in many contexts - whether it’s parts of the package or the whole. Our next frontier will be education to train Village Builders - just as we’re learning how to do it from the ground up.

(snip)

On another practical front, we’re interested in collaborating with other existing post-industrial village construction programs out there. OSE-Mid Missouri just started as a student group at the University of Missouri, Columbia. We are framing our collaboration as experiential learning by building a post-industrial village. We also aim to develop this relationship to a clearinghouse of applied research and development projects for students in general.

What are other best examples of global village construction? How are they contributing to the integration of natural and technological ecology for creating replicable nodes of regenerative transformation? How do we work together?"

Good ways to learn more about the Open Farm project:

Visit his blog to follow developments on his farm as they occur

See slides from Marcin's presentation on Global Village Construction Set: Tools for Sustainable Living (4.23.08). I have started to put direct links below to the slides that are most relevant to the "bandwidth challenged" Dadamac team in Nigeria, to help make the most of time online. I will try to add more sometime.

Slide 1 - Introduction

Slide_5 - Creating self-sufficient communities anywhere

Slide_6- Open source and lifetime design

May 22nd, 2008 podcast to learn about his ideas and innovations - podcast introduction says
"Marcin Jakubowski is one of the premier pioneers of open source appropriate technology and agricultural innovation. Guided by Gandhi’s principles of swadeshi, Marcin has made great strides in moving towards community-based development and local autonomy...."

Overview

Video of discussion between Vinay and Marcin on May 26th, 2008. Introducing this Marcin wrote: " This interview is perhaps the most clear description to date of the essence of our experiments with Open Source Ecology, and its implementation lab - Factor e Farm. If you can bear the 54 minutes of time, this will definitely be insightful regarding the forthcoming peer-to-peer economy - and provide much insight into the threads of thought and motivations behind our work. At Factor e, we grow ideas, and winnow for the truth. "

It is a long video, but for anyone seriously considering working with Marcin and replicating anything of what he is doing, this video is very valuable for putting the whole thing in context.

Relevance to Attachab Eco-Village

Open Farm is a research and development project which combines technology and agricultural development. It includes many aspects relevant to our interests at Attachab Eco-Village. My hope is that, through Dadamac, Attachab will be near the front of the queue for replicating Marcin's Open Farm strategies.

Funding is through crowd sourcing. If people see that Marcin's work is relevant to Africa as well as USA it could make his work even more attractive to givers. Most people recognise that "something needs to be done" in rural Africa to address issues of poverty. However, not everyone yet sees the importance of sustainable local development approaches in USA. If we are working together, it could benefit fundraising for Marcin's research and development work as well as helping Attachab Eco-Village development.

I spoke to Marcin (Skype chat) before I visited Fantsuam last September, and since coming back I have met Marcin's associate, Vinay Gupta. Vinay and I plan another meeting soon to explore overlapping interests.

Marcin's blog includes video clips to show exactly what progress is being made. Ideally Attachab Eco-Village should be able to provide similar feedback. Dadamac has been working with learners at the Knowledge Resource Centre (KRC) to develop communication skills including blogging, camera skills, and video making. There are various cultural challenges in persuading people to develop these skills, which is another story, but progress is being made. We are also very fortunate at present in having a VSO volunteer who is blogging and can demonstrate the value of communication to people at the KRC.

Pattern Language and Helmut Leitner

2008-12-14T18:06:00.005Z

I mentioned Pattern Language at a Meet-up last week, so here is additional information as requested. By putting it here, instead of in an email, I can more easily show other people later.

I will try to return to this blog entry sometime and add more explanation - but Adam - who I am writing this for now has already had some introduction.

My weekly half-hour Skype-chat tutorials on Pattern Language are with Helmut Leitner. His paid work is as a software developer and consultant. Currently his main personal interests are ...

videobridge events (connecting places for education and cultural events)
building a network of interconnected places in Austria/Europe/World taht collaborate that way
system theory of unfolding living systems, following the ideas of Christopher Alexander (wrote a book about that)

Here are some qotes from Helmut from our first Skype-chat (which I know he is happy to make public). I have picked out some main teaching points. I am privelaged because I am able to ask questions and discuss that ideas as we go along - but I have not included any of that. NB - we Skype in haste so there are some typos :

System situations are often complex and it is not clear which way to go, where to invest time, money, energy or other resources. It is interesting to find the potentials that allow to step forward in the most efficient way.

So there are structural concepts that help to describe and design systems. There are process-related principles that increase to chance to do things right.

Development would be relatively easy if the developed system
were like machines and followed certain laws or rules predictably ...
then we could act like a machine builder and construct and build
them ... but their aren't.

All really interesting systems - like society, humans, ecological
systems, cities, communities - are like organisms that have their
unique indivdiuality. They unfold according to general but flexible
principles but they are unpredictable. They are to be nurtured,
gardened, supported in their growth.

Such unfolding processes have always numerous opportunities to
continue from the current situation. Development needs decisions
to follow one path or the other. Each decision influences all the
future decisions and may be right or wrong.

For example: do you want to marry this partner, Yes or no? Your
whole life will change on that decision. The children you get
and care for. The perspective on what is important in life.

For example: Learn this or that profession? On such decisions
almost everything depends. The people you have most contact with,
the things you learn, the abilities in which you grow.

The support of development, the coaching of unfolding is not easy.
Only in 2002-2004 Christopher Alexander published his 4-volume
"The Nature of Order" life-work, which shows the rough outline
of a general concept how to do this in a holistic way. His
earlier books "A Pattern Language" and "Timeless Way of Building"
(about 1980) tapped the potential and inspired people but they
were not yet the breakthrough that is available now.

In my book "Mustertheorie" (published in German) I tried to boil
the 4000+ pages of Alexander, that need a year to reading and study,
down to about 170 paperback-pages that can be consumed and thought
through during a weekend's time.

"Pattern Theory", a theory about how to improve systems, by
understanding their structures and processes, by recognizing the
meaning of patterns as the fundamental modules of knowledge that
can be shared, for decisions to be made in a participation process
based on our feeling for the quality of life.

Still, to make this work, one should understand that numerous
concept have to be understood and practiced. Pattern theory is
like a new kind of science or an intricate game like chess.
One can give an principle explanation of science or chess in
a few minutes, but to make this work, to create first results,
it may take days, weeks, months or years, depending on your
intuitive understanding and talents. Some may grasp this
immediately, others may never grok or like it.

There are about 50 concepts that make up the body of pattern theory,
roughly ordered in four groups. The more these concepts are
available in your mind, without thinking, the easier the work
with development processes will be. I give an incomplete
overview:

- The first group of concepts describes STRUCTURES by using
gerneral PROPERTIES that living systems have. We have words that
label these properties but its important, that what is meant is
deeper than the meaning of these words in everyday language.
So we have properties like BOUNDARY, SIMPLICITY, GRADIENT,
RHYTHM and LOCAL SYMMETRY (and more) but these need explanation.

- The second group is about principles of PROCESSES that help
in creating system development. There are principles like
STEPWISE IMPROVEMENT, REVERSIBILITY, STRUCTURE PRESERVING
TRANSFORMATION, WIN-ALL, TRANSFORMATION ORDER, ATTRACTIVE WHIRL
OF PARTICIPATION and RESONANCE JUDGEMENT (and more).

- The third group of concepts is about the concept of PATTERN,
which unifies structures and process as units of meaning.
Patterns have INPUT and OUTPUT, they are subjects to FORCES,
there are ALTERNATIVE PATTERNS and CONNECTED PATTERNS,
ADVANTAGES and DISADVANTAGES. Patterns also have a NAME
given and a DESCRIPTION supporting their application.

- The fourth group of concepts kind of glues everything together.
We talk about SYSTEM and the elements in the system are called
CENTER (not necessarily in the center, everything and everyone
you can see or image is a "center"). Our main concern is LIFE,
and its unfolding by increasing the QUALITY OF LIFE. Doing so
requires to perceive and think about STRUCTURES and PROCESSES
and PATTERNS (already mentioned and on top of the first three
concept groups). It is about WHOLES. At a human level we think
about the SELF and its unfolding (sense of life) in a co-process
with unfolding environments, people, communities.

This link takes you to diagrams.

There is also a website which has developed from Douglas Schuler's Pattern Language yahoo group. The book mentioned there Liberating Voices - A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution was developed through the Pattern Language yahoo group.

Activist Road Trip is pattern 134 in the book, Helmut pointed it out to me as an example and for its possible relevance to Dadamac.

Cecily's Blog - FF through UK eyes

2008-12-14T13:38:00.008Z

Cecily is a working at Fantsuam Foundation through VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas). She comes from the UK so her surprises, shocks, delights and insights are perfect for anyone in the UK wondering what life is like at Fantsuam.

You can go direct to her latest blog entry here , and explore the archives.
The links below used to be direct to the right story - but have developed a glitch - please ignore them for now.
Alternatively, go straight to the topic you want via the links below (in reverse order):
Children - The Day of Change: Launch of the Children's Parliament
Attachab Eco-village. - Cecily's blog - Site visit Friday 5th December 2008 - great photos
Culture vulture - Abuja Carnival
Stop the press! and File, Print - Credit crunch story, then scroll down for the realities of trying to get a print out at Fantsuam.
The wonderful world of work! Starting work at Fantsuam
Pretty in Pink - Cicely's new home in Nigeria

eGaia - by Gary Alexander

2008-12-13T19:37:00.006Z

Gary Alexander's book eGaia has interesting ideas about collaboration instead of competition. You can read about Gary; download pages of the book; find out how he is implementing the ideas in practice; and get his latest news here

He is a recently retired lecturer from the Open University and has practical suggestions for how we can move to a more sustainable future. He suggests that the human race at the moment is a threat to planet earth (like a cancer). He suggests how we could collaborate with each other in new ways, and could also work in harmony with planet earth. In his ideal future the human race would act more like the nervous system of the planet, rather than a cancer.

I met Gary last year at an Open Space event, during which he kindly gave me a copy of eGaia "on condition that it's not just used as a door stop" - and it certainly hasn't been. I have appreciated the ideas in the book and shared them. The full title is e-Gaia: Growing a peaceful sustainable Earth through communications. You can read more details and download much of the book here.

Meet-up (face-to-face not face-to-screen)

2008-12-13T17:46:00.002Z

"Meet-up" is a great online way to meet-up with people locally who share your interests , and on Thursday 11th December 2008 I went to my first meeting. Meet-ups is world wide, although first impressions at the Meet-up home page are that it is very American. I won't explain much because there are videos and explanations at the home page. For anyone who feels "I have local friends but they don't share my deepest interests, and I have people who share my deepest interests but they are not local" Meet-up is a great find. It is also excellent for people newly arrived in an area.

It's slogan is "Maybe it's time for a little less face-to-screen and a little more face-to-face." The range of groups is amazing, and if you can't find what you want then you can set up a new one and invite people to join.

DFID's International Growth Centre Launch

2008-12-12T13:02:00.008Z

On Wednesday December 10th 2008 I attended the launch of DFID's International Growth Centre at LSE (London School of Economics). For details see Invitation to the Launch of DFID's International Growth Centre.

According to the press release from DFID

The IGC will provide practical help to the governments of developing countries to support growth and improve their ability to cope with effects of the economic downturn. The centre will also provide innovative research on growth.

Secretary of State for International Development Douglas Alexander said:
"The IGC will be a unique resource giving developing countries a hotline to the advice of world-class experts – for example on finance, agricultural yields, the energy sector or policies for the economy as a whole. "

The IGC will:

Provide a systematic link between international research and on the ground delivery of policy and programme change around growth.
Be able to provide both whole economy analysis drilling down into specific sectors.
Provide a mixture of short and longer-term technical support.
Be free in its advice from the constraints and preoccupations around aid and loan programmes common to many international agencies.

The IGC has three core components: policy engagement, networking and research
Full DFID Press Release

What does it mean to us
As a practitioner in ICT4Ed&D (Information Communication for Education and Development) I am interested in collaboration between academics and practitioners, and also in how top-down initiatives connect with grass roots.

Regarding collaboration between academics and practitioners I was encouraged by the very down-to-earth comments of Professor Paul Collier (author of The Bottom Billion). I don't claim to be quoting his exact words, but the notes I wrote as he was talking say "Researchers have not had enough exposure to context so governments have learned not to listen (to economists/researchers) ... modesty and realism need to be part of the approach... start from where countries are; what is realistic; need to ask. He spoke about the bottom billion (most economically deprived people) and the need for long-term convergence between them and people who are economically privileged, and the need to use academic research to achieve this convergence.

Regarding how top-down initiatives connect with grass roots it seems a very long way from DFID's International Growth Centre (IGC) to places like Fantsuam. IGC will be advising governments, and Fantsuam is rather "far down the food chain" if you are starting as far up as Federal Government. So my usual cyncism about initiatives making any differences started to kick in. However I was encouraged when Robin Burgess spoke about networking and "consultation up and down stream". He commented that researchers don't know priorities and referred to the priorities of governments, the private sector and civil society organisations, and finding out what the most innovative are doing in odrer ro recognise what the areas of key research should be. Professor Collier also mentioned people who are serious, courageous and struggling for change, and the need to "step up behind them to make their struggle easier". What this means in practice and remains to be seen. Apparantly there will be ten thematic areas. When these are defined we can go back and see how they overlap with our grass-roots concerns, we could also consider trying to connect with the research team to offer some of our grass roots information.

Tackling my emails by blogging

2008-12-09T23:36:00.003Z

An email I sent this evening to the Learning From Each Other group explaining about the blog
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi Everyone

As I mentioned in a previous email I am trying a new approach to sharing information on the Internet.

~ The problem and plan

My problem is that I write a lot of emails to individuals and to lists, and often find that I want to include information I have already written elsewhere. The solution that I am trying now is to put a lot more information where I can easily find it – on my blog – and share it from there. When I do something, I try to write a blog entry. When I need to refer to a person or project in an email I try to do a relevant write up in my blog, and then refer to the link in my email. At present it is taking a lot of time, because I have a lot of catching up to do – and it looks decidedly drab because I haven't found time to sort out many photos, but I can edit them in later. (Thomas I will try to sort out your photos at the same time)

The links below illustrate the approach and may be of some interest.

~ Teachers Talking chat and follow-up yahoo group

I have written a report on the Teachers Talking online anniversary celebration http://learnbydoinguk.blogspot.com/

Following the anniversary celebration I set up a new yahoo group called Dadamac Learners, it is for people who are learning with me online – ranging from people in the first Teachers Talking group, to people I worked with recently at Fantsuam, and including others too. Minciu Sodas friends are of course welcome too if the group seems of interest. I hope there will be a sharing of ideas between Dadamac Learners and Minciu Sodas. I hope Andrius that you will be interested in the group too and will consider joining it. However this is not a Minciu Sodas group because it has developed from different roots, so it has a different "character" and would not really be appropriate in Minciu Sodas http://learnbydoinguk.blogspot.com/2008/12/dadamac-learners.html

~ Rick Crust and a useful service if your Internet connection is slow.

On Friday I was with Rick Crust http://learnbydoinguk.blogspot.com/2008/12/i-visited-rick-crust-of-age-concern.html

He used to live in Africa and fully understands the difficulties that people face with slow download speeds. He told me about a service (which he hosts on his server) which helps people to access the Internet more effectively. http://emailonly.szs.net/www4mail/ He describes it as Web Navigation & Database Search by Email

As I understand it, it works like this: If there is a website you want to down load, then you send an email to the service with the link of the webpage(s). The service goes to the webpage(s) and sorts out the important information which it emails to you, so you don't have to wait for lots of slow graphics etc to download. This is just my impression I haven't tried it. Please give us feed back if you decide to try this out.

~ World Without Poverty

Update on books and DVDs http://learnbydoinguk.blogspot.com/2008/12/world-without-poverty-book-dvds-etc.html
There is a mention of DVDs I have sent to Kenya – I don't know if they have arrived safely yet or got lost in the post. David has not had an opportunity to check his box yet.

~ Links

I have created an easy-reference alphabetical list of links. As I mention a link on the blog I try to add it to the list. If your interests overlap mine, you might find it useful. It saves checking through old blog posts to find what was mentioned. I will be updating it as I write new blog entries.
http://learnbydoinguk.blogspot.com/2008/12/useful-links.html

~ Catching up

Once again I apologise to people who are waiting for emails from me. Meanwhile, I hope you can understand why I am taking this approach.

Pam

Using the Chatroom

2008-12-09T14:45:00.008Z

The Minciu Sodas Worknets Chatroom

When I want to organise an open meeeting the Minciu Sodas Worknets chatroom has become the first-choice online-location. My thanks to Andrius Kulikauskas, director of Minciu Sodas (MS) for making it so readily available. We used the chatroom for the Teachers Talking 4th Anniversary online celebration. Also (at time of writing) I am usually "at home" in the chat room on the First Thursday of the month at 12.00 - 13.00 GMT, unless I am travelling. Sometimes we have a definite focus for discussion (such as the World Without Poverty book). Sometimes it is simply a welcome opportunity for a real time chat with members of MS groups such as LearningFromEachOther and others who share my learning interests.

These are the instructions for newcomers.

Go to http://www.worknets.org/chat/
Look for “Choose your language:” It is probably set for English (which is what you will need to choose on Saturday).
Click on "Next" (if you have a Mac) or the symbol ">" (if you have Microsoft Windows) it is next to the "Choose your language" box.
Type your name in the box and click on “Start the chat”.
You will find yourself in the chat room.
It will “whisper” a welcome greeting to you (whispers are just seen by one person - they are not visible to everyone in the chat room),
If you want to know what people were saying before you came into the chat room click on the chat archive link. You will see it on the right hand side of the chat screen.
If you prefer you can check what is going on before you go into the chat room by going ot http://www.worknets.org/archive/ but you will not be able to write any chat of your own until you do go into the chat room properly
When you leave the chat it is best to do it officially, by clicking the “leave” link on the left had side of the screen. This lets the computer, and everyone in the chat room, know you are not in the chat any more.
Sometimes there is a problem - perhaps you have a bad connection, or power cut. On a bad day it is possible you have to sign in again and again to rejoin the chat. The computer will not let you re-use your name if it seems that someone with that name is already in the room. I just add a number to my name if it happens to me (Pam, Pam1, Pam2... )

The chat room is easy to use. There are no complicated downloads and installation proceedures to worry people who hate technology. There is no need to belong to any special group before you join in the chat. Just click the link and follow the instructions above.

Steve Thompson - People and Place

2008-12-08T23:29:00.005Z

Cross cultural communication is a challenge. We are trying to address it with children through the People and Place project.

Steve Thompson is Community Media Coordinator at the Institute of Digital Innovation University Of Teesside. We met through PRADSA (Practical Design for Social Action). He does wonderful community work, making great use of freely available software.

When Steve was planning a new project for local schools we got into discussion about it, and he came up with an idea that could include the Children's Computer Club at Fantsuam as well. The project is called People and Place. It is a learning opportunity for children (and the rest of us). Children in locations very distant from each other are starting to post local photographs with short titles. There is a space for comments (anyone can post a comment, the comments are moderated).

People are still in the early stages of using People and Place and seem a bit shy about posting comments at present, but that is not surprising. There are language barriers and other cultural differences to be overcome. There are also practical details of "who does what" when using the camera, uploading photos, needing access to the computers to see what is there and post comments. Apart from techie details, classroom management issues, and time constraints, there are all the issues of building personal relationships. It will take a while to build confidence and trust and get the children (and staff) in the habit of exchanging information and feeling at ease with each other.

I encourage people to visit People and Place, to look at the photos and encourage the children (and staff) by posting comments and questions. Ideally, when you get there, subscribe to People and Place, then you will get notified when new photos or comments are posted, and can respond. It makes all the difference to children if they know their work really has an audience.

The Dadamac Learners

2008-12-08T20:53:00.004Z

Every now and again it's a good idea to tidy things up. With that in mind I have been thinking about the various people I connect with online for learning, and how I should bring them together. The result is a new yahooo group "Dadamac Learners".

This is how it came about. Recently we had the Teachers Talking (TT) 4th online anniversary celebration. The celebration was held physically at Fantsuam and virtually at the Minciu Sodas chat room. Things have developed in many ways since John Dada and I planned the first TT group in 2004, and I set up my first yahoo group to support it!

The group has widened. At Fantsuam the learners have gradually changed from TT participants to Dadamac Learners at Fantsuam. The anniversary guests are no longer mainly school teachers, and the guest list extends well beyond learners from Fantsuam Foundation (FF). Beyond Fantsuam we have TT Kenya, and various other individuals and groups I lead or connect with, including people from the Learning From Each Other Group in Miciu Sodas.

I look at the people who attended, and the others who wanted to attend but couldn't make it this year. For their benefit, and my own, I want a single, over-arching Learning Group - even if only to ensure that they all get invited to the 2005 anniversary celebration.

In reality it will be more than a guest list. It is a hub for people who share an approach to learning online. This is what I wrote about the group on its home page.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Dadamac Learners' Group is an Internet based community of learners. It connects local groups and individual members who help each other to learn. There is no membership fee. The initial Dadamac Learners came from Nigeria, Kenya, and UK, so we have many interests related to community development and the use of ICT for communication and learning.

We find that:

* We learn well when we help each other to learn.

* Some topics are best "explored" rather than "taught".

* Sometimes a "learning buddy" is more help than a formal teacher.

* The "need to know" for a practical purpose is a great motivator for learning.

* The Internet helps us to find "learning buddies" as well as factual information.

Dadamac Learners has developed from Teachers Talking and other connected groups, and brings them together. We learn according to the interests and learning needs of our members, and we encourage newcomers to join us.

The Learning Leader for this group is Pamela McLean. She writes a blog called LearnByDoing

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Joining is easy. Click this link to the home page and follow the joining instructions. (If you are new to yahoo groups and the instructions seem strange to you send me an email at pam54321@googlemail.com and I will try to help you. Please give you email the title "Joining Dadamac Learners". That will help to keep it out of my spam filter and get it safely into my inbox.)

Children's Parliament

2008-12-08T00:12:00.007Z

I received this wonderful text from John Dada at 11.34 on 07/12/08, sharing a great occasion that people at Fantsuam Foundation (FF) have been working towards over recent weeks:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kafanchan children made history today wt inauguration of their 1st Children's parliament. Hon Gumbare House of Rep, KauruConstituency delivered Keynote address, Canadian High Comm and Save the Childre - UK attended as well as Fantsuam Board members from Lagos, Jos Zaria. FF staff gave excellent support.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These are children who need all the help they can get. From an early age they fetch water and fire wood, they work on the farms, they do domestic work and petty trading, their educational opportunities are very limited, they suffer physical abuse (beatings) at home and at school, and when tragedy befalls their families some are even held to blame and punished as witches. The Children's Parliament is a major achievement and a step towards a more positive future for them.

See Cicely's blog (after the first story about stick ball) for full details and photos .

Folabi Sunday

2008-12-07T23:02:00.006Z

Fola is a primary school teacher in Oyo State. Fola teaches in a village in "the bush", which is even more rural, and with less infrastructure than Ago-Are. (I know young men from Lagos and Ibadan who consider they have ventured to the rural depths if they reach Ago-Are - but it is a major metropolis compared to Fola's village.)

Fola and I first met a couple of years ago through Pastor David who manages the Information Centre in Ago-Are. Fola was interested in the Teachers Talking programme. Later he joined the Learning From Each Other group, and he participates in discussions in the worknets chat room. In September 2008 he attended the Self Directed Learners course at Fantsuam Foundation. He also took Mohammed Yunus books on "Creating a World Without Poverty" back to Oyo State.

Fola's contract requires him to teach where he is sent. The Parent Teacher Association of the school where he teaches is required to provide his accomodation. He therefore lives in a traditional small round thatched "mud hut". Really he is a "city boy" and so he does not find it easy to live in such a rural setting. His lifeline is his phone, which he cannot use in the bush, so he has to travel to somewhere like Ago-Are. Fola uses this phone to keep in contact with the outside world, including connecting to the Internet.

The Information Centre at Ago-Are has computers but no Internet connection, and it is only in the last couple of years that Ago-Are has had coverage by the mobile phone network. Fola and Pastor David have been wondering what can be done to help the Information Centre get online. Today Fola sent emails to Learning From Each Other, which suggest a way forward, and explain a glitch.

I copy his emails below:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The possible solution - "Browsing made easy"

it was an interesting story, i met with a company that introduced me to browsing with my phone for 500naira in 24hrs or 3000# every night(10pm-5am) in a month or 10000# for every hour in the month(24/7) using my MTN line. better still it can still be used to browse on the computer and the phone will serve as a modem. i tried out the daily plan of 500naira yesterday and i browse all day on my phone but iam planning to connect it to a desktop and if it also work all day on the system that bring us to limelight at Dadamac and the Ago-Are centre. i have told pastor about this and he asked to give it a trial. iam a happy man now because i can browse all day spending 500naira only. iam even using it to send this mail now. what do you have to say to this
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The glitch - "my 3G phone"

I have a sony ericsson phone p990i(a 3G phone) the one i always use to send my mail. but it has developed a little fault not quite long. it does not allow me to install some beautiful softwares like opera,cellity,mig33 and others anylonger. it always says application closed registry server, reason code 9 and some other jaggons but Kelechi said it is the software that needed to be updated. is this true? and if indeed i need an updated software how do i go about it because it is now (that i have discovered how to browse 24hrs spending just 500#)that i needed the phone most. please anybody that has the know how should bail me out.
thanks
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am no techie so I don't know the answer to his problem, but discovering the more affordable Internet service, which he and Pastor David might use to provide an Internet connection for the people of Ago-Are is a huge step forward.

Update -problem solved

After Fola wrote his emails he got helpful advice from Bidi Bala and Ricardo through the Self Directed Learners (SDL) Group. The problem was solved and on Friday 12th December 2008 Riccardo posted the update below to the SDL group.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear All
just to finish this thread, Fola has now got his phone
working again. He went to the Somy Ericsson website and downloaded
and installed McAfee anti-virus, firewall and VPN manager program on
his phone, and it fixed the problem. He can now run application
programs again on his phone. He didn't need to backup phone numbers
and reset all the memory or install the latest firmware.

I think viruses are mostly a problem for people who install new
programs on their phone. Most people don't add any new programs, so
they never download any viruses onto their phones.

I just posted this info, in case it affects anyone else.

Ricardo

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

www4mail

2008-12-07T22:10:00.007Z

I first heard about www4mail through Kabissa, and thought it was a great idea. Recently I heard about it again from Rick Crust, who hosts www4mail at szs.net on his server.

The information below is a sample of what you will find if you click on www4mail at szs.net

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1. What is www4mail?

www4mail is an email browser for people who have an email address, but no access to the World-Wide Web (WWW) or to FTP. Users include

people who live or work in a country that has an under-developed or unreliable telecom infrastructure;
students and staff of colleges and universities (anywhere in the world) who do not have reliable access to the WWW

www4mail gives you access to the whole Internet — including search and downloads — through your email. All you need is a standard web browser (for example - Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera) and an email program (for example - Outlook, Thunderbird, Pegasus).

You use an email program to send requests for web pages to a www4mail server. The server emails you copies of those web pages, optionally modified so that hypertext links may be selected and passed to your email program for further browsing.

www4mail is an open source application — the home page is http://www.www4mail.org/.

2. About www4mail at szs.net

Our www4mail server is very similar to others. However, we have added a preliminary filter system which operates on incoming requests. Here are some of our new szs.net-specific features:

Use of www4mail at szs.net is a service for members of the ACCMAIL mailing list (which is not a private list — anyone may join it). We update the access control list every week, so members never have to wait long before they can use the server. Access control is handled by the pre-filter, not by www4mail itself.
Note that we also operate a 'denial' control list — a small list of email addresses which have been used to violate our terms of service. Denial control is handled by the pre-filter, not by www4mail itself.
We do not respond to requests from email addresses at 'yahoo', 'com.sa', 'maul.ru', 'surnet.ru' or 'post.su' (those servers reject so much of our content, it is impossible to use them effectively for www4mail).
We have made many other changes to the original source code — most of these edits are transparent to users.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I am grateful to Rick for telling me about www4mail at szs net so that I can pass the information on.

Rick Crust, Age Concern and Silver Surfers

2008-12-07T21:54:00.003Z

I visited Rick Crust of Age Concern Hackney on Friday December 4th, . We were to discuss the Silver Surfers project there, but discovered other shared interests as well.

Silvers Surfers aims to help people who are over fifty to become Internet-savvy, and to get more out of life through using the Internet. The Silver Surfer group at Hackney is unusual in the number of members who were born in West Africa, especially Ghana and Nigeria.

The email introducing us had said “Pam is interested in projects that communicate between African communities in the UK and Africa and intergenerational projects. As such, I think she'd appreciate a visit to the Lawns and talking to you and some of the people that use it. I've explained that there's formal teaching sometimes, therefore it's probably better for the visit to take place during a drop in.”

I had also been told “Here's the website which has contact details and general information: http://hackneysilversurfers.org.uk/ ”

It turned out that Rick himself also has connections with Africa, having lived and worked in Zimbabwe. This means he has an excellent understanding of the difficulties facing many people in Africa when they try to go online.

Already I have some practical information from Rick about www4mail. This is an email browser for people who have an email address, but no access to the World-Wide Web.

We will continue to explore ideas for collaboration.

Connecting with Africa.

2008-12-03T00:11:00.005Z

I am often asked to explain my relationship with Africa:

How is it that I live in the UK yet I am well informed about details of rural life in Nigeria?
How is it that my connections are personal and are direct to the grass roots (and not through some government initiative or large NGO)?
What do I mean when I say I am “Active on the Internet and at various locations in Africa”?
How is it that I am involved in practical field work?
What about money?
What is my relationship with Fantsuam Foundation (in rural Nigeria)?
How did I come to develop the Teachers Talking programme in collaboration with Fantsuam Foundation?
How did I come to deliver it in Kenya as well?
How is it that I am in frequent online contact with local community development activists in various parts of Africa?
Can other people have a similar relationship with these projects?

Background information

Rather than answer those specific question I will give some background information related to them, which should allow the answers to emerge.

My connections with Africa are unusual for someone based in the UK. They are very practical and yet also theoretical.

Practical side

The practical side comes from my relationships with people rather than projects. My connections with community development projects in Africa are specific and personal. They have come from many years of working (in my own time) with people who I know. These are people in Africa (or from Africa) who are doing things in their local communities, and have asked me to collaborate with them in some way. Sometimes I have collaborated by going to Africa on “working holidays'. Sometimes I have collaborated by doing various tasks on their behalf in the UK. Sometimes my work has been done on the Internet.

Helping friends

How I came to have so many friends and associates in Africa who are grass-roots activists is a long story, too long to tell here now. Suffice to say that it all began when a friend married a Nigerian, back in the 1990s. Once I got involved with helping him my networks and knowledge began to grow, and kept on growing. What started as “just some help with admin, Internet things, and helping to cross cultural barriers” developed into my present roles as an independent ICT for Education and Development practitioner and as co-director, with John Dada, of Dadamac.

Background in education and ICT

The focus of the practical work has been driven by the grass-roots development work of my friends and associates, while the theoretical side comes from my background in education and ICT. I am a qualified and experienced teacher. I am interested in cognitive development; intrigued by how people think, learn, make decisions, and deal with information. I first came across computers in the 1970s as an undergraduate with the Open University. As someone connected with learning and teaching I became interested in how computers (and, now, ICT) might usefully alter our learning/teaching systems.

Combining theory and practice

I like to combine theory and practice. When “micro-computers” came on the scene I learned how to programme them and did innovative work in my infant classroom. From that I got involved in research, development, writing, and training. All these work experiences have contributed to my present work in ICT for Education and Development (ICT4Ed&D). My work in Africa (face-to-face and “on the Internet”) enables me to do research and development about ICT and its role in formal/informal educational/training systems. I respond to local needs related to education/training and development. I am involved in practical projects and problem solving. I use ICT. I do field work. I teach and learn at a distance. Initially these interests competed with my day jobs, but gradually there is increasing overlap between the work I do for its own sake and the work I am paid for.

Enabling cross-cultural collaboration

I am now uniquely well-placed to enable effective communication between two very different cultures. On one hand I speak from my own cultural background here in the UK. On the other hand I can speak to people in my culture on behalf of my friends and associates in Africa. This is particularly true regarding speaking for John Dada and what he is doing at Fantsuam. In fact that is why we came up with the name “Dadamac” - when I speak as “Pamela McLean from Dadamac” I can speak authoritatively for John Dada as well as for myself. I can talk about his ongoing work and my own, but even more importantly I can talk for both of us about future plans and possible collaborations. In collaboration with John I can set up Dadamac projects in Nigeria, where everyone wins through collaboration and the free exchange of information. I can also set up more traditional collaborations where Dadamac Ltd – Knowledge Brokers provides paid consultancy services, and enables field testing and other research and development opportunities.

Testbed, showcase, dissemination of ideas

Part of our vision is to provide opportunities for people to trial innovations, relevant to rural Nigeria and similar locations. We offer a site which is both a living testbed and a showcase. The showcase aspect is connected to our training programmes and existing work at Fanstuam Foundation Knowledge Resource Centre. We want to aid the dissemination of good ideas, products and services. We are committed to sharing good practice. We will share information with people who travel to visit our site, and with people further afield. Our interests in ICT and education/training means that we are involved with distance learning as well as face-to-face education and training. As we develop on-site training at Attachab we will also be looking at ways to share information effectively with people who are far away.

World Without Poverty – Book and DVDs.

2008-12-02T15:05:00.006Z

World Without Poverty, Mohammed Yunus and Chris Macrae

Nobel prize winner Mohammed Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank and “father of micro-credit” was in the UK earlier this year. He was promoting his book “Creating a World Without Poverty”. I went along to hear him speak and also spoke briefly to Chris Macrae, who I know through Mincius Sodas.

Chris is a strong supporter of Mohammed Yunus, and was involved in organising Mohammed Yunus' meetings in London. Chris has been actively promoting Yunus' ideas in various ways. He has been freely distributing copies of “Creating a World Without Poverty”. He has also organised a related DVD, and made that freely available. I have taken some of these books and DVDs from Chris, so this blog entry is mainly to update him on their whereabouts. You can find out more about Chris through his contributions on Facebook and elsewhere on the Internet.

The first ten books, plus ten more

I have written elsewhere about the first ten books. I took them with me to the COMMUNIA meeting in Lithuania in March, to share with other participants. I understood that a book club had been set up in London to discuss “Creating a World Without Poverty”. I had in mind to see if we could do an online “World Without Poverty” (WWP) book club around the copies I took to COMMUNIA. Six of the books finished up in Kenya through Ken Owino and the Nafsi Acrobats. The other copies stayed in Europe, one with Andrius Kulikauskus (director of Minciu Sodas and organiser of the COMMUNIA meeting).

After we had all gone our separate ways we started to discuss the WWP ideas through the LearningFromEachOther yahoo group and the Minciu Sodas chat room. The archives show how these discussions went, how various people were asking to see the books, and how copies reached Tanzania and Uganda.

When David Mutua, from Kenya, was here in the UK we collected another ten books so that he could take more back to circulate in East Africa.

Books to Nigeria

When I went to Nigeria, on a working holiday at Fantsaum Foundation (FF) I took another sixteen books with me. I intended to give some to John Dada for FF, and to pass some to my contacts from South West Nigeria. I imagined John would know other people who might be interested, and this was in fact so. I was impressed by the range of people who came to Fantsuam Foundation during the three weeks I was there. John mentioned some of the ideas in the books to visitors who might perhaps be influenced by the ideas. If they responded in a thoughtful and interested way then we offered to let them read it, and if they seemed seriously interested we presented a copy. We soon realised that we wanted them to share their books with others, so we decided the best way to distribute the books was in pairs -“one to keep and one to share”. We did not have enough to do this, and had to give some out singly, but I have since been able to get a few more copies taken out.

100 DVDs

Chris has more recently made available 1,000 copies of a DVD which shows some of the people and projects related to the book. Mostofa brought some of these DVDs with him, when he held a London Yunus group meeting. He gave me 100 DVDs, and I now have just 10 left. Most of the DVDs have been shared between the parcel I sent to Fantsuam Foundation, and another parcel I sent to David Mutua. I hope these will get circulated to the book readers in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. I also gave a book and a few DVDs to Thomas Chepaitis when he was in London, from Lithuania. I gave another book and a few DVDs to Caroline Ifeka in London, to take back to the REIWA project.

DVDS for South West Nigeria and Thompson Ayodele

My friends in South West Nigeria, who already have copies of the book, are keen to have the DVDs as well. They are based in Lagos and at a couple of locations in nearby Oyo State. I understand that Thompson Ayodele from Lagos now has 100 DVDs, and hope he will be able to pass some of those DVDs on to the people who are I know are wanting them.

Catching up with Chris

Chris, I must let you know that I am not managing to keep up with your all posts. Here are some quick points.

I appreciate your energy and generosity in helping to share the ideas in WWP, and I am glad I have been able to help spread the ideas further.
If you could give me Thompson Ayodele's email address then I will ask him to pass on the DVDs to my contacts who are in his area.
I agree that the future belongs to the young and we should empower them. However my work is holistic, not age related. My impression (from the emails which I have managed to read recently) is that you want your collaborators to be work specifically with youths.
As my collaboration with you in sharing the ideas of Mohammed Yunus is done in my own time, I am sure you will understand that I don't have time to emphasise elements (such as specific youth projects) that are not current priorities in my own work.
I know that you are interested in connecting with Africa, and “UK-Africa connections” is what I do in Dadamac Ltd. I think it would be helpful to both of us, if I clarify the nature of the connection. I will write a separate blog entry to explain.
Regarding Fantsuam micro-credit and Grameen bank micro-credit. I know from Kazanka Comfort, the general secretary of the micro-credit scheme at Fantsuam Foundation, that she had to make many adaptations to the Grameen model to make it work locally. The culture is very different. This obviously has relevance for all the projects discussed in Creating a World Without Poverty.
Perhaps I should point to the area of the book most relevant to what I know and do. In chapter 9, (Information Technology, Globalization, and a Transformed World) Mohammed Yunus introduces the idea of a Center for International Initiatives for IT Solutions to End Poverty, or, in brief IT Solutions to End Poverty (ISEP). On pages 198 and 199 he lists projects that ISEP members or centres could spearhead. The work that John Dada and I do is relevant to various projects on the list, especially where they relate to on-the-ground practicalities of IT use (and potential use) in rural areas.

List of links

2008-12-02T13:26:00.081Z

Quick alphabetical reference to all (or almost all) the links to people, places and projects mentioned in this blog. Includes easy reference to blog archives.

Some items are referenced twice for easier finding e.g. "John Dada's 5 minute you tube Introduction to Fantsuam" comes under John Dada and Fantsuam. Please send a comment if something you hoped to find here is missing, or a link is not working, and I will try to add/fix it.

* A *
A Ray of Hope My blog entry "Thank you BA and A Ray of Hope
A Ray of Hope Friends, members and affiliations
A Ray of Hope How it started
Akvo - Mark Charmer's organisation
Andrius Kulikauskas, COMMUNIA, and Open Knowledge My blog
Attachab Eco-village. - Cecily's blog - Site visit Friday 5th December 2008 - great photos
* C *
Chatroom Log on here to enter Minciu Sodas worknet chatroom
Chatroom - My blog about it and how to log on
Connecting with Africa - My blog explaining how I got involved
Cicely's blog - my blog about Cecily's blog with easy links to her archive.
* D *
Dadamac
Dadamac Learners My blog - why I set up this online learning community
Dadamac Learners Front page - full details and how to join
Delicious - Delicious "about" page - how to share and organise favourite webpages
DFID's International Growth Centre Launch - My blog
* E *
Ecoshelter Photos Includes Marcus and Pam during Dadamac trip in Sept 2008
Ecoshelter - website relevant to Marcus Simmons who built the Attachab Eco-Dome
eGaia - by Gary Alexander - My blog
Emile Emiabata, Social Impact Businesses and HowDoYouDo - My blog
* F *
Facebook Front page
* F - Fantsuam Foundation (FF) *
Fantsuam Foundation - My blog - a flavour of Fantsuam
Fantsuam Foundation John Dada's 5 minute YouTube introduction
Fantsuam Foundation YouTube by a volunteer in 2007
Fantsuam Foundation - Cicely's great blog with photos and up to date news from Fantsuam
Fantsuam Foundation Wireless Network 2007
FantsuamCLC Self Directed Learners' Blog
Fantsuam Advocacy Centre for Children How it came about
FF Children's Parliament - From Cicely's blog
* F Continued *
Folabi (Fola) Sunday My blog introducing Fola, plus his recent news.
* G *
Ginger Farmers My blog on ginger farmers and how they relate to Teachers Talking
GlueSniffers - Introduction to GlueSniffers (its about appropriate technology and sharing knowledge)
GlueSniffers My blog about GlueSniffers first meeting
* H *
Hackney Silver Surfers
* J *
John Dada's 5 minute YouTube about Fantsuam Foundation
* L *
LearnByDoing My blog address http://learnbydoinguk.blogspot.com/
Learning From Each Other - join me in this yahoo group
* M *
Marcus Simmons - My blog on Marcus, Eco-shelter, Ecodome and Attachab.
Mark Charmer - My blog on Mark Charmer and Akvo
Minciu Sodas worknet chatroom Log on here to enter chatroom
Minciu Sodas worknet chatroom - My blog about it and how to log on
* P *
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* P (Pam's blog archive - by date - most recent at the top) *
Pam's LearnByDoing Blog http://learnbydoinguk.blogspot.com/
IT46 and mast at Fantsuam
Africa-Gathering_report_from LIDC
Skinningove Second Life in Italian
Fola_ICT training_and skill surveys
Andrius Kulikauskas, COMMUNIA, and Open Knowledge
WES: World Entrepreneur Society 2009
Pattern language and civil empowerment
CDE eLearning personalisation_seminar
Credit crunch musings
Go to college Get job Borrow from the tea-girl
Nafsiafrika Acrobats Kenya Lithuania video-bridge
Tuttle Club, Lloyd Davis and Temporary School of Thought
Hacking the Recession
Glen at Fantsuam - Canadian view of Nigeria
Happy Birthday Jibrin Perry Dadamac SDL
Yoghurt and a bull - Long-term planning
CDE and GlueSniffers: two_perspectives_on sharing knowledge
Retraining_after_redundancy_in the 21st century
Recession - learning_from_last_time
Marcus_Ecoshelter_Ecodome_and_Attachab Dadamac enabled project 2008 and ongoing
Tom_Ricardo_and_life-saving_learning unusual kind of e-learning - ideal Internet use.
Ken Owino Ken, Nafsi Africa Acrobats, Solar Water Purification and More
Fred Kayiwa and youth project
Dadamac (shortened from Dada and McLean) - how John Dada and I work together
Open Farm and Marcin Jakubowski - something we'd like to replicate/adapt for Attachab
Pattern Language and Helmut Leitner - I'm the beneficiary of an online learning collaboration
Cecily's Blog - Fantsuam Foundation through UK eyes
eGaia - by Gary Alexander
Meet-up (face-to-face not face-to-screen)
DFID's International Growth Centre Launch
Tackling my emails by blogging
Using the Chatroom - The Minciu Sodas Worknets Chatroom
Steve Thompson - People and Place
The Dadamac Learners
Children's Parliament
Folabi Sunday
www4mail
Rick Crust, Age Concern and Silver Surfers
Connecting with Africa
World Without Poverty – Book and DVDs
List of links
We celebrated TT - November 29th
Fossbox on Friday 28th November
Final arrangements for Sat 29th November
A Flavour of Fantsuam
Thank you BA and "A Ray of Hope"
Ginger Farmers and Teachers Talking Online
Community and Communications
Vinay Gupta
Mark Charmer and Akvo
Another Learn By Doing - can't see who writes it
Emile Emiabata, Social Impact Businesses and HowDoYouDo
Africa++, New Ideas for Africa and Femi Longe
Education, ICT, Nigeria and my friend Caroline Ifeka
Dadamac Meeting – November 19th 2008
Email backlog, blog,Open everything and TT anniversar
TT anniversary coming up
Twitter, blog and KMS
Web design and sharing knowledge
Learning, doing, and a couple of meetings
Sad News From Caroline Ifeka
Pics from Fantsuam now on Picasa

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* P (P continued)*
Pan Commonwealth Forum - fifth (PCF5)
People and Place - Front page of project - includes Fantsuam Children's Computer Club
Phone4Peace
Pyramind of Peace - Youtube
R *
Rick Crust - My blog on visit to Rick, Hackney Silver Surfers, and www4mail
* S *
Silver Surfers Hackney
Steve Thompson - My blog on Steve and his People and Place project at Fantsuam
* T *
Tackling my emails by blogging - Entry in my blog
Teachers Talking 4th anniversary - My report after the celebration on November 29th 2008
Teachers Talking slideshow - prepared for PCF5 workshop
Tuttle Club, Lloyd Davis and Temporary School of Thought - My blog
Twitter - Twitter "about" page
* U *
Useful visitors - changing the shape of international volunteering and skillshare

* V *
Vinay Gupta - My blog on meeting Vinay, with more links about him and his work
* W *
WES: World Entrepreneur Society 2009

Worknets chatroom Log on here to enter chatroom
Worknets chatroom archive Archive of latest chat - may take a little while to load.

Worknet chatroom - My blog about it and how to log on
www4mail at szs.net Web Navigation & Database Search by Email

We celebrated TT - November 29th

2008-11-29T20:08:00.006Z

Today we celebrated the fourth anniversary of Teachers Talking (TT)/the Dadamac Learning Group.

Name change

We need to change the name of this celebration to reflect how TT has grown and developed since its early days. When John Dada and I planned the first course at Fantsuam Foundation (FF) in 2004 it was for teachers only, and the yahoo group that I set up to support it was called CawdnetTeachersTalking. Cawdnet is not active any more in its old form. John and I collaborate under the name of Dadamac and I am involved with other FF learning groups, not just teachers. We also connect with teachers/learners in other locations, face-to-face and through the Internet. All these people belong naturally in this annual online celebration. It is not limited to people with direct involvement with TT in Nigeria and in Kenya. TT has given birth to a much more inclusive online learning group than that. Next year we will probably call it the Dadamac Learning Group celebration – not just TT.

Online venues – chat room and Skype

This year our online celebration was held in the Minciu Sodas (MS) worknet chatroom. Previous TT celebrations have been through yahoo. However the chatroom has certain benefits. It is a very welcoming virtual place and I often use it to introduce people to the Internet and online groups. It is also a familiar venue for people in the Learning From Each Other (LFEO) yahoo group that I lead (which is part of Minciu Sodas). Another innovation for this TT celebration was a video link between Fantsuam Foundation and UK, using Skype.

Wondering who might be at Fantsuam Foundation

The main physical location for the celebration was the main compound of Fantsuam Foundation (FF). It is not easy for people to get there on a Saturday. There are always family events, wedding and funerals, on Saturdays. There are other FF activities, like the Children's Computer Club, which demand the attention of some of our group. The staff and volunteers connected with FF are busy through the week. I was aware that the time they get to the weekend they may feel they have seen more than enough of the FF computers!

As for the teachers who have participated in TT back in the early day - well most of them had to travel to Fantsuam to participate, and so there are issues of time and cost and problems of letting them know. The first year we sent written invitations to all the participants. It took a volunteer two days of driving around on a motorcycle to deliver the invitations. There is no reliable postal service – and of course no Internet connection except through Fantsuam Foundation. This year it was more informal, just by word of mouth.

I knew that Mercy and Bala would try to be there and that Kelechi could not..... who else would be at FF to mark our fourth anniversary?

Mercy's Learning Journey Video

I had challenged Mercy Isaac and Kelechi Michaels to prepare a short video clip about a learning journey in readiness for the anniversary celebration. Mercy and Kelechi are leading the Dadamac learners at the FF KRC. Learning Journeys are an important idea amongst Dadamac Self Directed Learners. We have told our Learning Journeys face-to-face but I have also suggested that we should tell the stories of our Learning Journeys by (very short) video. Then we can all learn more about each other, think how we can help each other, and also develop our video skills.

I wanted Mercy and Kelechi to have one ready to share at Fantsuam so others would be encouraged to do their own. They sent Mercy's Learning Journey to me yesterday and Nikki and I enjoyed it together before going to the chat room. I hope it will be shown at Fantsuam too, but I don't know if they had time today. I am encouraging Mercy to post it on YouTube or give me permission to upload it here.

In the chat room

First to arrive in the chat rooom were Nikki and me from the UK, quickly followed by John Dada, director of Fantsuam Foundation (FF). He told us that Nicholas, Monday, Bala, Afiniki, and Cicely were also there with him at the FF Knowledge Resource Centre, and sure enough, gradually their names appeared in the chat room.

It was not just people from FF arriving. Kims (from LFEO/MS) arrived too – from Dar in Tanzania.

Then more people from FF - Patience, Sankwai, Comfort, Yakubu, Success, Kani and Mercy. Most of the FF people joining the celebrations are already connected with Dadamac Self Directed Learners in one way or another, but outsiders were welcome too.

I had not met Success before. She had travelled to Fantsuam Foundation from Ekiti to help with preparations for the launch of the Children's Parliament at Fantsuam next week.

Kani is the charismatic children's drama teacher for Fantsuam Foundation. I admire his work. In fact last September as I was crossing the compound, while he was leading some songs-and-movement warm-up activities, I couldn't resist becoming an unofficial “back row” and joining in.

I knew that Fola was looking forward to joining us in the chatroom from a cyber cafe in Ibadan in South West Nigeria, but he didn't arrive. I hope it was just the usual problems with NEPA and nothing more serious. Fola connects with Teachers Talking through my work with Oke-Ogun Community Development Network and the Information Centre in Ago-Are, and is a member of LFEO. He also joined us at FF for the course I ran in September this year. He teaches in a village in the bush and has to travel out of the bush before he can even make a phone call. Sometimes he used his phone to connect with the Internet. His full introduction deserves a separate blog entry.

David Mutua had sent apologies and greetings from Kenya. He needs a separate blog entry too. We have worked together in Ago-Are, at Fantsuam Foundation, and on Teachers Talking in Kenya.

Krishna Alluri of COL (Commonwealth of Learning) based in Canada, and connected with us through Ago-Are and TT Kenya had also sent greetings. (See his comment after the TT final post about TT arrangements.)

More people arrived in the chat room via FF Knowledge Resource Centre (KRC) - Solomon, Lilian from Praise Divine, and Mr Shinggu.

The skype video link

We had all been chattering away through our keyboards – old friends catching up and new introductions being made - but we had not put faces to names so we turned on the Skype video link between UK and Fantsuam. It was odd to be so near and yet so far from the KRC and all those familiar friendly faces. The sound quality was poor, and the video was clunky, and we lost the connection twice, but the faces were recognisable. It even so it was a real high-spot of the day. People who had worked with Nikki during the GIMP photo-editing course or our weekly Dadamac UK-Nigeria team meetings saw her for the first time. I was sitting by Nikki, pointing at the screen to tell her who was who. We smiled and waved and tried to call to each other by voice (at the same time typing to say we could not hear). Some people were considering logging out of the chat room, to leave more bandwidth for a third attempt at video, but then more people began to arrive in the chat room, so we all wanted to chat there again.

More arrivals

Back in the chat room the new arrivals were Fred (LFEO/MS) from Kampala, Uganda, Marcus (Eco-shelter) from the UK, Dan Otedo (LFEO/MS) from Kenya, Jude and Theophilus from Fantsuam, and Sasha (LFEO/MS) from Serbia. The conversations we had are in the chat room archives.

Some of us decided our geography was a bit shaky and Marcus sent us the link to Google maps.

Bye for now

People had to start leaving.

Nikki and I had thoroughly enjoyed it here in the UK. We hope a good time was had by all. Feedback from Mercy later in the day said “Being in the Chat room today has been so exciting. Those that were absent wished they had come because the stories reached out to them. I took some photos and I'll get them posted to you one of these days.”

Fossbox on Friday 28th November

2008-11-29T19:58:00.002Z

Thanks to Paula of PRADSA I was invited along to a FOSSbox training day. It was mainly about Open Source so I wondered if it might be too techie for me. In fact it was relevant, and with a good mix of people. I have two follow-up invitations to places in East London that sound a bit like our Dadamac Knowledge Resource Centre at Fantsuam Foundation. I look forward to learning more.

Final arrangements for Sat 29th November

2008-11-27T20:21:00.006Z

You are invited to join us in the chat room as part of the Teachers Talking (TT) anniversary celebration on Saturday 29th November. We will meet for about an hour - start time 10.00 GMT, 11.00 Nigerian time, 13.00 Kenyan time. To work out your local time see time zone converter.We are celebrating the fourth anniversary of the Teachers Talking (TT) programme, which I started at Fantsuam in 2004. Each year there has been some kind of anniversary celebration at Fantsuam including an online link-up (so I could join in from the UK).

This year we are widening the invitation list – so if you have any interest in what we have been doing with TT and other Dadamac learning programmes at Fantsuam, and would like to meet some of the people involved, do come and join us. You are welcome even if you have never participated in one of our programmes. It is an informal get-together – just like an ordinary face-to-face celebration. There is no formal agenda – we just want to enjoy being together. If you are new to the chat room, don't worry, I will put joining instructions at the end of this post.

The plan

The chat room session is part of a longer celebration at Fantsuam, including refreshments and various other off-line activities. Part of the plan is to chat online and part is to have a video link, between UK and Fantsuam, so we can smile and wave at each other. We cannot do a video link in the chat room. The best we can try this time is to just set up a link between two webcams (between Fantsuam and UK) using skype. Perhaps by next year we will have something with video that can involve everyone.

We will spend most of our online time in the chat room. The people at Fantsuam who are organising the celebration are accustomed to using skype for conferencing, but are not used to entering the chat room. If they have not already seen the instructions here I will meet them on skype, and bring them over to the chat room. (Later I will use the skype link with them for the video).

We will have a good group. We expect the Fantsuam people. Fola plans to join us in the chat room from Ibadan. Rose is hoping to join us from Kenya. There will be two or three of us from the UK. There are others I am not sure about. David Mutua, organiser of TT Kenya sends his apologies and greetings (he has a meeting and is also in the count-down to his wedding – greetings to David and his bride-to-be). Thanks to Andrius for letting us use the chat room. Andrius is busy in Bosnia, putting in time on the day job, and wrote “of course, please do use our chat room http://www.worknets.org/chat/ I will be grading midterms so I probably won't be there, but I'm excited for our work together...”

I need to leave soon after the hour is up (well before one and a half hours is up) because I have to go and earn some money teaching. But of course you can continue in the chat room for as long as you like. I am excited about the celebration and the people who will be there. If you want to join us, you are very welcome.

Using the chat room

Go to http://www.worknets.org/chat/
Look for “Choose your language:” It is probably set for English (which is what you will need to choose on Saturday).
Click on Next.
Type your name in the box and click on “Start the chat”.
You will find yourself in the chat room.
It will “whisper” a welcome greeting to you (whispers are just seen by one person - they are not visible to everyone in the chat room),
If you want to know what people were saying before you came into the chat room click on the chat archive link. You will see it on the right hand side of the chat screen.
If you prefer you can check what is going on before you go into the chat room by going ot http://www.worknets.org/archive/ but you will not be able to write any chat of your own until you do go into the chat room properly
When you leave the chat it is best to do it officially, by clicking the “leave” link on the left had side of the screen. This lets the computer, and everyone in the chat room, know you are not in the chat any more.
Sometimes there is a problem - perhaps you have a bad connection, or power cut. On a bad day it is possible you have to sign in again and again to rejoin the chat. The computer will not let you re-use your name if it seems that someone with that name is already in the room. I just add a number to my name if it happens to me (Pam, Pam1, Pam2... )

You are welcome

I look forward to meeting whoever chooses to come, friends old and new, at the TT celebration on Saturday.

A Flavour of Fantsuam

2008-11-26T23:22:00.005Z

John Dada, director of Fantsuam Foundation, has kindly called Fantsuam my “second home”. Certainly I feel very relaxed and welcome there, when I go for one of my visits - variously described as "working holidays", "field work" and "reality checks".

Fantsuam Foundation is located in Bayan Loco, Kafanchan. The main language spoken there is Hausa, but the really local language is Fantsuam. (I have been told that Kafanchan is the Hausa name for the town of Fantsuam.) I would like to give a flavour of Fantsuam Foundation and its location. Fortunately help is at hand through YouTube and some blogs:

Introduction to the work of Fantsuam Foundation on YouTube introduced by John Dada, director of Fantsuam Foundation - See the five minute video
VSO volunteer Cecily blogs on her early impressions of working at Fantsuam
For some of the problems scroll down this blog to the File Print heading
Cecily's latest blog entry
Archive of all Cecily's blogs

Fantsuam Foundation also has a Children's Computer Club (CCC). The CCC is taking part in the People and Place project where children in different countries exchange information by posting photos.

Thank you BA and "A Ray of Hope"

2008-11-26T22:17:00.002Z

Don McBurney, is the founder and director of “A Ray of Hope”. He is a great enabler.

"A Ray of Hope" started as a choir . By the time I first met Don (online, in 2003) “A Ray of Hope” had grown enormously. It has many friends – both individuals and organisations. However, despite its many friends “A Ray of Hope” did not have any contacts in Nigeria then, so Don asked me to provide that link.

Don said that my first task would be to organise a children's art competition on the theme of peace. He wanted to see if I really did have good contacts with schools, and he genuinely wanted the pictures. “A Ray of Hope” has a wonderful collection of pictures from children across the world. To help the children decide what to put in their pictures they are encouraged to think of peace as the opposite of conflict – a peaceful happy life. The pictures provide a wonderful insight into the lives of children. Some of the pictures have been framed to hang on the board-room walls of organisations that support “A Ray of Hope”.

My contacts in Nigeria organised the art competition in advance of my visit. In fact they organised art competitions at four different locations – Kafanchan in North Central Nigeria, and Okeho, Isseyin and Ago-Are, all in Oyo State in the South West. I simply took the trophies, medals, certificates educational posters that “A Ray of Hope” had provided and helped with some final judging and prize-giving.

British Airways is a friend of “A Ray of Hope” and as a result Don was able to give me free tickets for my trip to Nigeria for the art competition. He told me that as long as I did the art competition I could do anything else that I wanted during the trip, in fact I could do one of my usual “working holidays”. This meant I could run another Teachers Talking course for John Dada at Fantsuam, without needing to find the air fare. Wonderful!

When I came back I was delighted to find that Don was impressed by the work people had done in Nigeria with the art competitions. He was also very positive about the normal “working holiday” work that I had done. In fact he has given me additional tickets since. He has phoned me up and asked if I would like to go to Nigeria again. When I have said “Yes please, what do you want me to do?” his answer has been to simply ask me what I would do when I am there. He must like what he hears for each time he has told me to put it in writing, and I have been given the ticket. As a result I have been able to repeat my “working holidays” with John and the teachers, trainers and children at Kafanchan more frequently that would otherwise have been the case.

Thank you “A Ray of Hope” and British Airways.

Ginger Farmers and Teachers Talking Online

2008-11-25T20:09:00.005Z

We may have some ginger farmers at the Teachers Talking Anniversary celebration. This was mentioned during the Dadamac UK-Nigeria weekly meeting on November 19th 2008. When we were discussing likely participants I was told that “Reverend Gizo is attending, plus some ginger farmers.” I am delighted at the possibility, because I think I know how it has come about that Rev Gizo is bringing ginger farmers.

Reverend Gizo has participated in several of the Teacher Talking (TT) courses that I have presented at Fantsuam Foundation. (The first course was in 2004.) There are three elements to a TT course, and as far as the ginger farmers' story goes, the important element is TT-Online.

TT-online introduces TT participants to “my world” - the world of the Internet and communities of interest. We don't spend a lot of time on the technicalities, because in general TT participants are unlikely to see a computer again for a long while once the course is over. In fact the way that TT participants relate to my world of the Internet is similar to the way I relate to their world in rural Fantsuam.

The TT participants know that when I am travel to Fantsuam I need help. When I arrive at Abuja airport I look for John, or one of his people, who I know will welcome and guide me. Compared to when I am in my own country I am like a helpless child. I rely on my friends to bridge the gap between me and local ways of doing things.

It is the same when TT participants come to the Internet. They are “in an unfamiliar place”. For this reason I arrange that, when they first visit the Internet, plenty of help is at hand. We have two kinds of help. We have a “rescue squad” in the computer room to help them recover when they press a wrong key. And we have another kind of help ready “on the other side of the screen”. We go to a chat room or similar where people I know are “on the other side of the screen” to welcome and guide the TT participants – rather like I am welcomed and guided on arrival at the airport. A key idea of TT-online is that the Internet “is a place where you link up with Pam’s friends far away from Fantsuam, who will help you to learn things.”

Although most TT participants live far from any Internet connection that does not stop them sending messages through other people. One year, several months after I had come back to the UK after a TT course, I received a message from one of the TT participants, Veronica. Veronica had sent a message to Florence, who was working at Fantsuam Foundation. (Florence had been the TT course co-ordinator during the course that Veronica and Rev Gizo had attended.)Florence passed the message on to me. (The photo shows Florence and Pam preparing for another element of TT - the "no computer computer course".)

The message told me that Veronica had planted ginger, as an experiment. It would be ready to harvest in August, and she wanted information from the Internet regarding harvesting and marketing her crop. She said that if the crop was successful then she would share the knowledge with others in her community.

I shared the request for information with various online lists that I knew. None of them had anything to do with ginger, but they were interested ICT for Education and Development. I soon had four replies. They were all different, all related to ginger, and were potentially useful starting points to find out more. However they were not written with the needs of a small scale part-time ginger grower in mind. The information needed careful reading and refining before passing on to Victoria. There was no time for that. I could only pass on the replies as they were to Florence, with apologies that the information did not yet properly match her need.

I was excited that Veronica had turned to the Internet for help, and disappointed that I had failed to give her the exact information that she needed. Amongst the information was a link to a help-group on ginger production and that would probably have been most useful for her. However, Veronica would not have been able to connect with that group unless Florence could act as an infomediary. I am not sure where Veronica's school was, but I doubt if it was within walking distance of Fantsuam Foundation. We would have needed to take messages between Florence and Veronica. We could probably have found someone to do that, but they would have needed petrol money for transport. Then there was the question of paying for online access at the Fantsuam cyber cafe to enable Florence to continue the discussion with the help group. There were too many other things competing for our time and resources and we did not pursue ginger farming any further.

Although we could not give on-going support to Veronica in her ginger farming, her request for information was an encouraging indictor regarding TT. Her request demonstrated that the TT programme had altered behaviour, on the ground, in a way that could benefit rural development. She was a rural teacher, with no direct access to the Internet, yet, thanks to TT she was looking to the Internet for information. Our theory that if you teach teachers about ICT you also benefit the wider community was being illustrated in practice, spontaneously, by one of our TT participants back home after the course.

We believe that the way to introduce ICT to communities is via the teachers. This is because:

Teachers are motivated to learn about ICT
Teachers (unlike health workers etc.) need to know about ICT for its own sake, because they have to teach about it
Teachers are leaders in their communities
Teachers are change agents in their communities
People who are teachers have other roles too (parents, farmers, tailors, barbers etc)
If you train teachers to use ICT they use that knowledge in their schools (ICT in Education)
They will also apply their knowledge in their other roles too
This will benefit the wider community (ICT for Development)

The example of Veronica demonstrates that Teachers Talking (TT) is not just a training programme for teachers, it is a combined approach to ICT in Education and ICT for Development.

When I was told that Rev Gizo wants bring some ginger farmers to the TT anniversary celebrations my mind immediately went to Veronica and I asked after her. I am told that she has moved away from the Fantsuam area now. I hope Rev Gizo will bring his ginger farmers to the TT anniversary UK-Nigeria link-up. I wonder what he wants them to gain from the experience. I look forward to finding out if they do connect in any way with the ginger planting experiment that Veronica began.

Community and Communications

2008-11-24T20:29:00.013Z

On Saturday 15th November I attended "Community and Communications" at Royal Holloway College:

Organised by the ICT4D Collective
Details of the programme

Speakers included Shirin Madon (LSE), Marek Tuszynski (Tactical Tech), Josh Underwood (London Knowledge Lab), Richard Duncombe (IDPM, University of Manchester), Uduak Okon (Royal Holloway, University of London) and Avril McIntyre (LifeLine)

All the sessions were relevant to my interests in ICT for Education and Development - but I will just mention one - Josh Underwood's - because he was talking about Vesel which has the most overlap with our projects.

David Mutua, Marcus Simmons and I first learned about Vesel when we went to the London Knowledge Lab back in July for a workshop related to PCF5 -Pan African Forum 5. We were particularly interested in Vesel because it links UK and Africa, and the part of Africa in links with is David's Kenya.

Vesel involves two sites in Kenya, and one is a school, Silanga school. (The photo shows Josh talking about Silanga school, the display behind him includes photos sent by the school.) The school has its own presence on the web which includes regular news and photo updates.

Vinay Gupta

2008-11-24T14:38:00.018Z

I met Vinay Gupta on Wednesday 19th November (in the photo Vinay is on the left and Mark Charmer is on the right). I had read some of Vinay's posts in recent months, and various people had pointed out that we had some overlapping interests, so I was very pleased when a visit to Mark's office included a meeting with Vinay.

Vinay had just arrived to start working with with Mark at Akvo. You can read Vinay's blog about his work at Akvo. It was written the day after he arrived and includes a video interview he made with one of the Akvo team, so you get all the background - and an idea of Vinay at work.

Our overlapping areas of interest include practical implementation of eco-ideas, and using the Internet to help people learn from each other and share good practice. Vinay connects closely with Marcin Jakubowski of Openfarm . I have not met Marcin face to face but we have spoken by Skype, to discuss overlaps between his OpenFarm work and John Dada's plans for Attachab Eco-Village.

Vinay has tremendously wide interests so I offer a few links to help you find out who he is:

Vinay's "About me" page.
His blog (not just the Akvo bit)
His view of the future
An interview with Vinay which begins "At first it’s hard to get a handle on what exactly Vinay Gupta does. Well, even after getting to know him it’s still hard to pinpoint."
The Unplugged A speculative fiction - giving his ideas for how things could be
Global swadeshi - because one world is plenty - Open Sustainability Network
The whole system - big picture vision
A Village to Heal the Planet A Practical Whole-Systems Showcase Village
How to live - by recognising and avoiding the six ways to die
Video of Vinay Interviewed by Green Ocean - explaining his work (bringing different threads together, research, practitioners, technology....)
Videos made by Vinay Watching these will give some idea of Vinay's approach and wide ranging interests - including Dadamac and the Eco-shelter collaboration

Our informal meeting ranged from the thoroughly practical (training videos, the OpenFarm project) through realistic ideas to the totally surreal. As we continue to meet I am adding more links to this entry.

Mark Charmer and Akvo

2008-11-23T11:11:00.004Z

Wednesday 19th November I met with Mark Charmer at Akvo's office in Bermondsey. Mark is co-founder and communications director of Akvo

I came across Akvo earlier this year on the Internet and was interested to see that its work is water and sanitation. I am not a "water and sanitation activist" but I am a realist, and I know my priorities. Every time I am going to a new location in Africa I want to know "What do we need to do about water?" and "What's it going to be like to go to the loo when we get there?" I know the way that some people have to "just manage" with no facilities at all, so when someone is doing something to improve water and sanitation I want to know more.

I discovered that Akvo works with partners at various locations in Africa. Hence my contact with Mark, to find out if Akvo might be interested in Attachab Eco-Village. Mark and I first met face to face a few months back, when I was getting ready to travel. We bumped into each other again at OpenEverything. I was recently back from Attachab Eco-Village and so we arranged our catch-up meeting for 19th November.

It happened that Vinay Gupta arrived in the UK to work with Mark on November 19th, so I was able to meet Vinay too. I will write more about him separately.

You can read more about Mark on Akvo's "team" page

My appreciation of Mark increases each time I meet him (not just for who he is, and what he does, but also that he finds the money to do it) so I am ready to follow whatever advice he cares to give me. That is why I am now obediently tweeting on Twitter.

I hope we will find an opportunity to collaborate on a project sometime. Mark and I are in agreement that one of the key issues regarding funding is feedback, so that people can see what is being achieved with their money. Given that John Dada and I have been collaborating for years we do know a thing or two about ICT enabled communication between rural Nigeria and the UK. I am hoping this will help John's Attachab Eco-Village project to be front of the queue next time Akvo is looking for partners.

Another Learn By Doing - can't see who writes it.

2008-11-23T10:30:00.004Z

I have just discovered another "Learn By Doing" where "A Lifelong Learner Shares Thoughts About Education." I don't know who writes it, because the "about" link is broken at the moment. It seems to be written by someone who knows their stuff and is closely connected to academia and e-learning in USA.

I flag this up for two reasons:

It is an interesting site
To help avoid confusion between the two unconnected sites i.e. - this blog ( http://learnbydoinguk.blogspot.com/ ) and the one I have just found ( http://www.learnbydoing.org/)

Recent entries from LearnByDoing.org are:

Top 100 Tools for Learning 200811.13
Social-networking sites viewed by admissions officers9.21
The New Classics of Computer Science9.7
Tinkering School8.12
But I Did Everything Right!8.11
20+ Free Web Design Ebooks And Guides6.1
You Play a Game, Computers Get Smarter, AI Starts to Work5.26
Useful Podcasts for Designers and Developers5.26
Want to Remember Everything You’ll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm5.25
“What Do Teachers Really Make? Taylor Mali… - Cellfish.com3.26

It looks like a rich resource, well worth exploring.

Emile Emiabata, Social Impact Businesses and HowDoYouDo

2008-11-22T20:28:00.008Z

Emile Emiabata is a social impact entrepreneur. I first met him a month or two ago, when Chris Macrae set up a meeting in London related to Mohammed Yunus' book "Creating a World Without Poverty". Emile and I have been engaged in lively debate since then and I was looking forward to the second meeting of his HowDoYouDo group. However it was on Thursday 20th November, and clashed with New Ideas for Africa, so Emile and I met in the afternoon for a pre-meeting meeting at the British Library Business IP Centre to work through the agenda together so I didn't miss out.

When Emile first started talking about his ideas I had lots of questions about how things would work in practice, but the more he fills in the details the better I like it all. I can see how being part of HowDoYouDo would benefit Dadamac in building up the business side of what we do.

Over the years, working from home, and collaborating with people far away, I have learned how to achieve a considerable amount at a distance. But contact by keyboard does impose some uncomfortably linear disciplines on the sharing of ideas. I know there are mind-mapping tools and interactive whiteboards, but for me, nothing beats face-to-face with pens and paper and evolving diagrams. During our pre-meeting meeting Emile roughed out plenty of diagrams, and I was able to point to bits of them and quiz him about precisely what he meant and how various things would fit together.

I won't try to outline the objectives and structure of HowDoYouDo yet - but once there is more information out on it then likely tags will be SocialImpact SocialIndicators Business Collaboration BusinessStart-ups BusinessServices Network CompetitiveAdvantage Brand. That list gives some idea of its scope and focus. HowDoYouDo will be much easier to explain once there is something in place to show how it works. I am enthusiastic about it and see it as a truely 21st century way to do business.

Africa++, New Ideas for Africa and Femi Longe

2008-11-22T19:28:00.008Z

On Thursday evening, 20th November, I went along to the Royal Commonwealth Institute in Northumberland Avenue for the monthly New Ideas for Africa meeting. New Ideas for Africa is an open-space event where people who have ideas and projects with a positive benefit to Africa meet with people who can help their ideas to grow. I hadn't been to one of these meetings before, but I picked up news about it at OpenEverything earlier this month, when I ran into Femi Longe who leads Africa Plus Plus (also known as Africa++). Even if you can't attend the London meetings you can keep up with them through the Africa++ Ning that Femi has set up. (Femi is in the middle of the photo.)

Networking notes

I first met Femi earlier in the year at another OpenSpace event, which we had both heard about through our links with Chris Macrae (more of Chris in another blog entry).

I invited Ben Parkinson to New Ideas for Africa. It was our first face-to-face meeting, although we know each other by email and phone. I e-met Ben through John Dada of Fantsuam Foundation (see the sidebar for more information about John, and our collaboration as Dadamac).

Education, ICT, Nigeria and my friend Caroline Ifeka

2008-11-22T00:15:00.010Z

My mind has really been stretched this week through a number of meetings. The actual discussions may not get written up, but there should be practical results over coming months and I will try to cover those as they happen.

The latest meeting (on Friday 21st November) was with my friend Caroline Ifeka (in the photo) who is director of REIWA . We met at Waterstone's in Picadilly (bookshops are such good places to meet up when you can't be certain of the time - warm, dry, plenty of interest, a chance to take the weight of your feet... ) Down in the basement, away from all interuptions (even beyond the reach of mobile phones) we settled ourselves on a comfortable sofa, with big mugs of hot chocolate, and dipped into the myriad things we have in common.

Caroline and I connect regarding, Nigeria, education, use of IT etc. Unlike me, she comes from an academic background, has spent much of her adult life in Nigeria, and leads a project there. Her project is based in Kaduna, slightly North of Fantsuam (my main location in Africa) but I didn't meet her through Fantsuam Foundation. The link was more distant. Caroline has worked in Australia, and we originally met thanks to an Australian friend of Caroline's, (Valerie) who I linked with through the pattern language list. It was Valerie who suggested, some years back, that Caroline and I should meet in the UK (her country of origin) and we quickly became friends.

There is huge overlap between our interests and projects, but tremendous differences too (partly because she is working with pastoralists and nomadic people) so it is great to chat and share ideas and anecdotes. I have stayed with Caroline in Nigeria and visited her projects, and I have introduced her to my friends at Fantsuam Foundation. It's not easy to keep in contact when she is in Nigeria so we try to meet up (or at least phone) when she in over here.

As usual, our conversation leaped from personal to political, practical to theoretical, comic to tragic, went on for hours, and hardly touched the surface of all we wanted to share with each other. For instance, one of Caroline's interests is adult literacy. So she was telling me about some of her adult literacy students (all women), their desire to learn, and how they feel they have missed out. It is so hard for girls to get a good education. The culture does not favour it. Caroline has also been trying to persuade one of the young men who works with her to let his teenage bride-to-be finish school before burdening her with childbearing. Caroline acknowledges that her pointed conversations with him are unlikely to make any difference, but at least she wants him to realise what he is doing to the girl, and question whether this is a selfish choice, before he decides to do it.

Of course we didn't cover educational opportunities for women and children in such a straight forward way. Even on that narrow theme of we branched off to adult education, UK Open University, Nigerian Open University, NOU experience of one of her staff members, anecdontes about Caroline's work, catch-ups on the staff I know personally, problems with paying people, exchange rates, falling value of the pound against Naira, how and why the dollar is holding up against the Naira, oil, ecology, power politics. Hmm - isn't it lovely to just chat with no set objectives or agenda!

We discussed various issues of education, including the legacy of rote learning, and related cultural issues such as a lack of questioning, and an acceptance of authority and things as they are. We covered "relationships with information" and all kinds of things that our own "information overloaded" culture takes for granted, which are completely outside the experience of many of the men, women and children we know in rural Nigeria. We are particularly interested in the appropriate use of ICT in education (both as a curriculm area and as an enabler) so all the usual issues came up on that. We were discussing the practicalities we are struggling with on the ground - but inevitably we wandered soemtimes into examples of hype and the gap between it and reality.

As I write this I feel a need to justify my interference in anything Nigerian, especially in instances where some kind of culture clash is involved. I think back to how I got involved with Nigeria (when my friend Agnita Sternheim married Peter Adetunji Oyawale - now sadly deceased - and I just did a few things to help Peter with a project back home). Later I came across the term "neo-colonialists" and I was so horrified by the potential label I almost stopped helping with Peter's project. I am still uncomfortable about the fact that I am helping to initiate change in a culture that is not my culture, and there is always the "law of unexpected consequences" to bear in mind. But as I think about the discussion with Caroline I know we were covering things that concerned Peter, and that John Dada has asked me to help him with. Peter was Nigerian and John is Nigerian and he is responding to local needs (especially the under-educated rural poor).

Why do "we" want people to be better educated and able to think for themselves? What does ignorance do to people? What does poor hygiene and health awareness do to people? How easily are ignorant unemployed youths turned into a violent rent-a mob? Why do people who are faced with domestic disasters, disease and death decide that the cause must be witch-craft? Why are young children blamed for natural events, and then abused, beaten and sometimes even killed in an attempt to get rid of the evil forces? We used to do that in the UK too - what stopped us? Does education help people to make better decisions and have a better standard of life? Is it ok if I help John to help the local teachers and trainers to improve local standards of education? Does it matter if I am attracted to this challenge simply because I am interested in how we learn, and how ICT is altering our potential to engage in learning?

I remember discussing with Peter the potential negative results of the project he was trying to do. He challenged me by pointing out the negative results of failing to do it - and he spoke from the heart. He was in his own words the son of "an ignorant peasant". Ironically it was in fact the local belief in witch-craft which enabled him to escape from a lifetime of ignorance and of toiling on the land. It was because his parents believed that a "witch-craft spell" had been put on him that Peter was sent away from his home village, and as a result of that move he managed to find and take opportunities for education.

On reflection, I think it is okay if I experiment with the use of ICT and the development of new educational systems with John at Fantsuam, even if I do get labelled a "neo colonialist" and even if there are some unexpected negative consequences.

Dadamac Meeting – November 19th 2008

2008-11-20T14:16:00.009Z

Weekly Dadamac UK-Nigeria meeting

The Dadamac team (in UK and Nigeria) meets online for approximately one hour each Wednesday morning. Although these meetings rely on typing, not speech, we manage to get through a good deal of work. These notes about today's meeting give a flavour of what we cover. They are not minutes, just my jottings for the blog. We don't need minutes as we always have the chat archives for reference.

Fantsuam Children's Parliament

The Fantsuam Children's Parliament will be inaugurated on December 6th. Children are getting trained on rudiments of parliamentary procedure and issues they want to raise. They want the roads fixed, electricity, school fees etc.

Teachers Talking (TT) 4th anniversary

We are planning for the Teachers Talking 4th anniversary celebration on November 29th . This will include participants from any Dadamac Learning Groups, not just TT.

The celebration is to include a UK – Nigeria link up. (Time 10:00 - 11:00 GMT, 11:00 - 12:00 Nigeria time, 13:00 - 14:00 East Africa time.)
The inclusion of Dadamac Kenya teachers and teacher-trainers as well is a possibility, but depends on their current connectivity.
One of the original TT participants may be bringing along some ginger farmers.
Newcomers to Dadamac team asked for more information about the connection with ginger farmers. Ginger farming is something we have touched on with a previous Dadamac Learning Group - I will blog on that separately.

Video update

Information was shared on:

Current skill levels
Recent videos from Nigeria
How soon UK will see these videos
Sending videos to UK just as they are now or waiting until they are edited

Attachab Eco-village

Progress reports from Attachab Eco-village on fish ponds, irrigation, vegetable growing , and a new compressed earth block building which is to be used for storage and security.
Marcus Simmons of co-Shelter is introducing new contacts to the project, following the visit we arranged for him last September. He has mentioned two specialists (one in architecture and the other in permaculture).

Photographic record

The Dadamac Learning Group (photography) participants have been out at Attachab Eco-Village recording details of developments.

Dadamac Learning Group

The Dadamac Learning Group at the Knowledge Resource Centre is gradually growing and so are its interests. We have a new mini learning group (of two learners and a learning leader) tackling English and maths.

People

There were details of various new volunteers, visitors and contacts - more about them in future blogs as their work develops.

Conclusion

Looking back on it - a good one hour meeting.

Email backlog, blog,Open everything and TT anniversary

2008-11-18T23:25:00.005Z

This is an email I just sent to a couple of lists

Hi everyone

~ Email backlog

I am trying a new approach to help me cope with too many emails. I don't manage to read all my emails any more, and I certainly can't keep up with replying to them. My apologies to everyone who has been expecting a response from me. If I fail to reply within the next month or so it may be best if you contact me again - just resend the original email. (Contact me sooner if it is urgent).

~ blog

This is what I am thinking about the emails and my blog. I recognise that when I do write emails (and attachments) I am often duplicating my effort, because what I write is scattered around in so many places. This means that I can't easily refer to what I have written elsewhere, so I often have to explain it all over again. I am currently trying to overcome this by making more use of a blog. If this approach works I should be better able to keep up with emails in future, and who knows, I might even be able to catch up with some of the ones I have missed out on.

I will show you what I mean with two examples:

1 - Open everything

A couple of weeks ago Franz sent me information about OpenEverything, following a discussion in the One Village group. I went to the London meeting and the feeback about it is in a blog entry I wrote on Friday November 14th. I have not shared it before because I wanted to add some links, and I have only got around to doing that today. OpenEverything is about the fourth item that I wrote. I now realise I should have written each item separately for easier reference. (Maybe I will be able to alter it later - hmm - and then perhaps this link won't work any more.)

2 - TT anniversary

I want to let the Kenyan Teachers Talking (TT) people (past and potential) know about the TT anniversary on November 29th. There are other people who need to know about it too, so I have put a bit of info on the blog . The link up will probably be around 10:00-11:00 GMT, 11:00-12:00 Nigerian time, which I think is 13:00-14:00 Kenyan time. I will update the blog entry as details are firmed up.

I hope that if this blog approach works then my use of emails will become manageable and useful again and I will manage to reply to everyone in future. (If you want the whole blog see)

Pam

TT anniversary coming up

2008-11-18T21:02:00.003Z

At this time back in 2004 I was busy with last minute preparations for the first Teachers Talking (TT) course at Fantsuam Foundation (FF). The planning details are in the archives of the TT online support group.

Things have moved on a lot since then:

Each time I have presented a course, I have further developed the content and the delivery methods,
We have used various different tools - especially yahoo groups, emails, blogs, photo-sharing, video, CDs, audiograhic conferencing, wikis, Moodle, VOIP, instant messaging, text conferencing and chat rooms.
John Dada (director of FF) and I now work together much more closely, under the name of Dadamac.
John has extended my training work at Fanstuam Foundation (FF) to include staff and volunteers working at FF.
The Dadamac Learning Group at Fantsuam has a "home" in the FF Knowledge Resource Centre - the KRC. (TT met at various locations, out in the open, in a school, and in some of the FF classrooms)
Roles are emerging within the Dadamac Learning Group - such as learners, learning leaders, know-its, newbies.
Our skills and strategies for sharing information at a distance have developed.
We are learning together, as a team, sometimes face-to-face, sometimes at a distance.
We are learning more about how we learn - and exploring the various stumbling blocks that we have to work around as we are learning together.
The list could go on.....

On November 29th we plan to celebrate the 4th anniversary of Teachers Talking and the wider Dadamac Learning Group. We are still deciding exactly what link up we will do as part of the celebration. Usually it is a yahoo chat connecting the participants gathered at Fantsuam with me in the UK, and perhaps some other online guests.

We are still deciding what is best for this year. We will probably do a skype link-up (as skype seems more stable than yahoo at present ) and we might experiment with the video link as well, so we can smile, and wave, and laugh together - and generally greet more warmly even though we can't touch. On the other hand it would be great to include people from the TT course in Kenya, and they might well have to use a cyber cafe that only offers yahoo. We still have a week and a bit to decide. It will depending on who might be able to attend.

Twitter, blog and KMS

2008-11-16T22:39:00.007Z

It's nearly a week since I started to use Twitter - and I'm struck by a side benefit that I hadn't anticipated. It's the same side benefit that I discovered when I first used plastic instead of cash i.e. a record of previously unrecorded aspects of my life. My diary only tells me what I intend to do - in contrast to my bank statements, which tell me in precise detail what really happened. I can see that Twitter could provide the same kind of useful trail - but it would follow my contacts and thoughts rather than my finances.

If I get in the habit of telling other people what I'm doing as I go along, then I'll be able to check back for myself later. I like the idea of that, but I'd want a bit more detail than Tweets allow for. Ideally I'd have a full Knowledge Management System (KMS) which would help me zoom in to any bit of information I needed to retrieve. However, I think I'd need a team of techies to sort out my ideal KMS, plus some (as yet uninvented) easy, speedy way to input all the information I'd want to find there. Maybe jotting things down as they happen could be a useful compromise.

I think I'll experiment with using this blog as the kind of maxi-twitter for a bit and see if I finish up feeling more in control of my information.

Web design and sharing knowledge

2008-11-16T18:46:00.003Z

A letter to the Learning Group at Fantsuam Knowledge Resource Centre. For photos and more about this group see the Fantsuam Learners' blog

Hi Mercy

Thanks for continuing to try to move things forward ref web design training and arranging for people to learn more from Yakubu..

You are right that it would be good to show appreciation to Yakubu. He is being generous in sharing what he knows about web design with the Fantsuam Learning Group. I am glad you are looking at how he might be given some payment by local students later on.

I have been thinking about the way the SDL group is becoming "knowledge richer" thanks to Yakubu sharing what he knows with the blog "newbies" and web-design "newbies". How can we help Yakubu to become "knowledge richer" too?

What knowledge/skills does Yakubu want? How can we help him to get these skills? For instance, I think he was wondering about making money from his camera skills. Perhaps we should be helping him to see if and how this could be done. Perhaps there is some other knowledge that would be more useful to him. John Dada has asked me to think about providing some training opportunites in maths and English language sometime. Perhaps one of those subjects would be of interest to Yakubu. If so we could start with the one he would prefer.

One of the good things about sharing knowledge is that we do not loose it when we share it. In fact we do usually become "knowledge richer" in one way or another - soemtimes by learning it better, soemtimes by learning soemthign new. For example, I have never been given any money for sharing my knowledge with people at Fantsuam (this is why I can only come to Fantsuam as my "holiday" - not in my working time). However I always learn a lot when I am at Fantsuam. I have become "knowledge richer" over the years of coming to Nigeria - each time I visit I move further in my learning journey. This is useful to me in my personal and professional development. How can we help Yakubu in a similar way?

Mercy - you are also helping the learning group to become knowledge richer in may ways. You must let us know what knowledge/skills you are seeking so we can find ways to help you as well.

Yakubu - if you read this please let me know your thoughts.

Please greet everyone for me, and give my apologies where I still owe people emails, but I felt this was a priority one.

Pam

Learning, doing, and a couple of meetings

2008-11-14T17:39:00.010Z

Pattern Language

Yesterday I was learning more about pattern language. Pattern language is one of those things I come across from time to time, and think I would like to know more, but then other things get in the way. However earlier this week I was having a catch-up Skype chat with Helmut Leitner (who I know through Minciu Sodas) and pattern language was mentioned again. I said (or, to be more precise, I typed) that I was interested in learning more. Helmut said it was “not a three minute thing” - hence the arrangement for a half hour introductory session yesterday (another Skype typed chat).

I could not have asked for a better teacher. It turns out that Helmut has written a book that introduces pattern language. However his book is in German, so he is kindly explaining it to me in English in small chunks. Pattern language seems to tie in with systems thinking, and I enjoyed doing systems courses when I did my Open University degree (a long time ago so I don't remember much detail). I appreciated my introductory first lesson on pattern language and we have agreed to do a second one.

I hope that what I learn from Helmut will give me a structure for thinking through some of the things I am exploring regarding teaching and learning opportunities related to the Internet. This is another example of Learning By Doing in that respect. Certainly it is only thanks to the Internet that I e-know Helmut, and that I can have have these half-hour distance lessons with him. I am in the UK. I don't know where he was yesterday when he was teaching me. I think he lives in Austria.

Collaborative Work

Yesterday also gave me cause for reflection on what we have been Learning By Doing regarding collaborative work and the Internet. I've been involved in two Dadamac UK-Nigeria e-conferences meetings this week. One was with the Fantsuam team and the other involved people in Lagos. The contrast demonstrated how much we have learned through our regular online meetings. The Fantsuam meeting went smoothly, both technically and with regard to the various people joining in. We all knew what to do and what to expect, not just technically, but regarding how we would interact and progress through the meeting.

The Lagos meeting was for a new group. It was like time travelling, reminding me of how we used to be in our early Fantsuam meetings before we got in the swing of things. There were six people at four or five locations and there were problems with them all logging on together and finding their way into the right conference. There were phone calls and SMS messages before we could get started properly. There was some switching between Skype and yahoo, some dropped connections, lots of glitches, but also success and gradual progress. Now there is the satisfaction of one e-meeting achieved. Soon there will be a better feeling in the group for "how these meetings work", what it best done by email, and what is best done "in real time" at an e-meeting.

Twitter and Delicious

What else have I learned this week? Well, I am never first in the queue for trying anything techie (especially if I will have to learn by using on-screen instructions instead of learning with friendly humans) but I have finally started using Twitter and Delicious. NB for anyone “behind me in the queue” for trying Twitter and Delicious:

Twitter is like mini emails or texts, sent to whoever chooses to follow them.
Delicious is a way to share interesting web pages with other people and to find them again more easily yourself.

Now I'm using Twitter and Delicious I'm kicking myself for taking so long to get started, but I was just the same with Yahoo chats and Skype when people told me I should be using them. I'll probably be equally reluctant with the next thing I have to learn. So, if you are a bit of a technophobe like me, be assured that I won't enthuse about anything unless it really does serve a purpose.

OpenEverything

On Thursday of last week, 6th November, I was at OpenEverything:

Programme for OpenEverything with links to speakers.
Review of OpenEverything
Open sustainability network and wiki
Glyn Moody's blog

There were some excellent opening presentations to put the later discussions in context. I was particularly struck by Glyn Moody's argument that Open is not a new idea, it is really a very old idea that is coming round again. In the spirit of openness Glyn sent me his presentation afterwards, but as an attachment, not a link, so if you want to see if I'd have to forward it to you.

I met interesting new people and, to my surprise, three familiar faces - Graham Knight ofbio-design, Femi Longe of Africa++ and Mark Charmer of Akvo (It was Mark who persuaded me to start Tweeting on Twitter). We split into small groups in the afternoon, and fortunately all four of us chose the same group topic, so that made for easy introductions.

New Ideas for Africa

Femi also told us about a New Ideas for Africa meeting next Thursday (November 20th) at the Royal Commonwealth Society, 6.30pm, £5.00

Community and Communications

Another meeting I hope to attend is about Community and Communications. It is tomorrow, Saturday November 15th, organised by Professor Tim Unwin's ICT4D group (Information and Communication Technology for Education) at Royal Holloway College. One of the presenters will be Josh Underwood, from the London Knowledge Centre. I first met him in July when David Mutua and I attended a meeting about a schools project in Kenya that Josh has been working on.

Developing Networks

I am gradually discovering where there is overlap between what I am doing and the interests of other people over here. For years all my research in the UK was on the Internet, and I only worked on my projects Face to Face (F2F) when I was in Africa, so I am really appreciating more opportunities to connect with Education and Development researchers and practitioners F2F in the UK.

Sad News From Caroline Ifeka

2008-11-10T23:36:00.006Z

This evening I've been on the phone to Caroline Ifeka of REIWA (Rural Empowerment Initiative in West Africa). She is back in the UK for a few weeks, with lots of interesting news and positive progress to catch up on, but tragedy too. Another fatal accident. I am sorry to tell people who were at the Teachers Talking (TT) course at Fantsuam in 2007 that Caroline's colleague, our talented and charming friend Ilyasu, who joined us on TT from Cross River State, was killed in a traffic accident on July 3rd this year. (I can give further details to readers who knew him.) The local Chief Imam was also killed. The circumstances around the accident illustrate not only the dangers of Nigerian roads, but issues of injustice and corruption, and the assumption of some of the rich and powerful that they will not be held accountable before the law. Caroline, in her usual courageous way, has been fighting for justice.

Pics from Fantsuam now on Picasa

2008-11-04T10:07:00.008Z

The photo on the left was taken in the Knowledge Resource Centre at Fantsuam (the people are Emmanual, one of the participants in my Self Directed Learners group, and me).

There are more photos (on Picasa) from when Marcus and I were at Fantsuam. They include photos of a nursery school with some computers. The school belongs to Mr Perry - another member of the Self Directed Learners (SDL) group. As well as joining my group Mr Perry spent time with Marcus doing some hands-on learning about constructing eco-domes, and is now hoping to build one himself.

By the way - on a Learn By Doing note - this is the first time I have added a photo to a blog. It's one of those "simple when you know how" things (but earlier today when I didn't know how and I was trying to find out and was having difficulty... well then it didn't seem simple). I wanted to find out about photos because my SDL group have learned how to do blogs, and they have already started to add photos. Now I'm catching up.

Visiting Fantsuam

2008-10-24T14:51:00.005+01:00

I started writing this blog entry last month when when I was in Nigeria, but didn't get a chance to post it while I was there.

At Fantsuam

I am bandwidth challenged at present, here with Fantsuam Foundation in North Central Nigeria, so there may be some delay in posting this blog.

People and Place

The People and Place project is up and running www/peopleandplace.co.uk The photos there from the Children's CC (Computer Club) give a flavour of Fantsuam, and are an example of information sharing between four schools, on three continents.

The Self Directed Learners

My main challenge here is to help create the first Dadamac Self Directed Learners (SDL) group at the Fantsuam Knowledge Resource Centre. I spent the first day and a half struggling to get people to share their learning needs, and failing. Today, with John Dada's help, we hit on the idea of describing our personal learning journeys. This has lead to really rich reflection and discussion.

Informal Learning

One of the group members pointed out the importance of learning from our peers. We discussed how much we learn from our peer group throughout life. We also considered how much we had learned at home before starting primary school. This discussion helped us to recognise that learning is not only what is taught in a formal manner in school or college. The experiences of home learning and peer-to-peer learning has helped people to understand what we mean by informal learning. It also helped us to discuss learning by doing, and all kinds of alternatives to formal class teaching.

Internet

Now we have recognised the richness of peer learning we are ready to use the Internet to widen our peer group, and consider what we want to learn and how we want to learn it. In our discussion someone mentioned unreliable peers which lead usefully to the issue of reliability of information sources on the Internet.

Chatroom

I will try to introduce the learning group members who I am working with here to the chat room www.worknets.org/chat/base/. I will lead the usual First Thursday of the Month meeting, on October 2nd, from the Fantsuam Knowledge Resource Centre. I am hoping the Fantsuam Learners will become part of a wider peer group thanks to the Internet – starting in the chat room. Please drop by to welcome them if you can and join in our discussions about informal learning.

World Without Poverty

I have brought sixteen of the Mohammed Yunus “Creating a World Without Poverty” books here (thanks to Chris Macrae). My idea is to give some to John Dada (director of Fantsuam Foundation) and also get some taken down to my friends in Oyo state.

Ecoshelter

I arrived here on Tuesday (September 23rd) with Marcus Simmons of Ecoshelter. He has come to learn and teach about construction techniques. This week has been orientation, buying materials, visiting the site, meeting the team and so on. Practical construction training is scheduled for next week.

Comparative costs

Ricardo and other members of the Minciu Sodas Includer development group would have loved to be included up at the main house this evening. A couple of people were discussing the minutiae of comparative costs of different mobile phone networks, cyber cafes, and phone access to the Internet. This is exactly the kind of information the Includer group are looking for.

In my hut

I am writing this in my hut by the light of an oil lamp - no NEPA (mains power) again. As it is Marcus' first visit John has booked him into a hotel in Kafanchan, with running water and a generator for when the power fails. Marcus is driven back and forth each day, but I think he'd probably prefer to be at Fantsuam Foundation like I am. It is Friday evening, and I will try to upload this over the weekend.

It is now Monday October 6th. I have still not uploaded the blog. We have had serious problems with the Internet connection. It has been erratic, extremely slow most of the time, especially in the KRC in the day time. (It has become an in joke that the service provider is working to American time, so it doesn't get going until they wake up). I have only been able to deal with the most urgent online tasks, and uploading a blog is not one of them.

I have been leaving my laptop at the main house to charge overnight as there is solar power there. Last night and the night before we did have NEPA for several hours down at the fish farm (where my visitor's hut is) but it is so unusual I have really got out of the habit of expecting any.

My Hausa is improving – because people give me informal lessons in “morning greetings” every day as I set out for the Knowledge Resource Centre (KRC). It is about a ten minute stroll from my hut up to the compound where the KRC is. There are various clusters of people I pass every day, and they teach me as I go by. I am ashamed of only speaking English. Many people here speak several local languages. Some speak good English, and many know simple phrases that were drilled into them at primary school, such as “Good morning” and “How was your night?”

“Sannu” is a Hausa greeting that serves well in almost every circumstance, and “Lafiya” is a fairly safe reply to most questions that relate to your well-being, so with just those words I can at least show willing. However, I am now able to be slightly more ambitious in the range of my conversation. I sometimes manage to get in first with some of the well-being questions – even though I'm not too sure exactly what they mean. I think I can now ask after your nights' sleep, your bodily health, your children, your family, your household in general, your work, your afternoon and your day.

What I really like is if I manage to do enough of this back-and-forth question-and-answer session to get to the concluding part of the conversation. At this point the person who I am leaving behind me will say “Sai kin dawo” (meaning “until you come back....”) which seems to be my opportunity to make one of two sounds that I am forever hearing and wanting to copy. I don't know the spellings. One sounds like “e”- but is a wonderfully long sound (I think it means “yes”) and the other sounds like “yow-wah” and is said with great emphasis – so I think it's more extreme than “yes” - it gets used when things are a good idea or likely to work well.

PS Now I am back home. Autumn kicked in here while I was away. The evenings are drawing in and the trees are beautiful. Water comes out of my taps, the electricity supply has been constant, traffic drives straight along the roads instead of weaving around floods and potholes, and strangers pass each other in the street carefully avoiding eye contact. Life is “back to normal”. Tomorrow, I join Marcus and two or three others for a “back from Fantsuam lunch and debrief”. Sannu Marcus!

Blog Action Day to Fight Global Poverty!

2008-10-15T21:15:00.004+01:00

I have just learned that today October 15th, 2008 is Blog Action Day to Fight Global Poverty! So here are some thoughts related to poverty and what we are learning by doing.

On Monday I came home to the UK from one of my "working holidays" at Fantsuam Foundation (FF) in North Central Nigeria. When I am not physically at Fantsuam I work with the project there via the Internet.

FF began as a micro finance scheme and has helped thousands of women over the years through its loans. It is now also an integrated community development programme involved in health, education, training, rural connectivity, solar energy, eco-development, and all aspects of family life. My involvement has to do with education and training, including working at a distance with people through the Internet.

FF is in a rural area that knows very well about poverty. The poverty levels are such that loans of only a few pounds can make a big difference. They can help people to set up as petty traders and earn a living. FF also has a programme which supports widowed grandmothers who are supporting at least four orphaned grandchildren. The programme gives them 300 Naira a month - approximately £1.50.

Director John Dada says that at Fanstuam Foundation people learn twice, once by doing and a second time by sharing what they know. I love that attitude. I am a teacher. I like practical, project based approaches to learning and I also know that teaching something well is a good way of demonstrating competence. Another reason why I like the attitude of the rural community projects sharing what they know is because I believe that will be the best way to tackle the issues of poverty.

The Internet allows two way exchanges of information. People who have to cope with the challenges of poverty first hand, on a daily basis, are the experts. We need to tackle problems through exchanging information, not through top-down approaches. People in the so-called developed and developing countries should be "rubbing minds" to tackle issues of poverty together.

Incidentally, I don't believe that material wealth is the only indicator of poverty. I believe there are other kinds of poverty too. Some people for instance are time-poor, others may not have many social contacts and so on. What do we really want for a poverty-free future? What kind of sustainable life styles can we develop together?

I know from the work I do with Fantsuam Foundation that we really can use the Internet to exchange practical information at a distance, and work together even when we are not face to face. I am hopeful that more people who are tackling poverty will come and rub minds with us - either face to face in UK with me, or with John and his team in Nigeria, or with all of us through the Internet - so we can all learn from each other, share our practical knowledge, and make more rapid advances against poverty.

Last week's learning.

2008-09-12T20:29:00.004+01:00

Review

It's Friday evening. I'm thinking of what I need to pack when I go to Fantsuam, and thinking about information too, and anything else I need to learn about before I go. That got me thinking about what I have been learning in the last week or so.

Akvo water and sanitation

Today I was learning about the Akvo water and sanitation programme with Mark Charmer and Joe Simpson of Akvo (here's another Akvo link). I am hoping that Dadamac can help Fantsuam Foundation to become a field partner. Potential field partners have to show they can send back good information about their project work.

Photo feedback

Regarding information: I hope the Fantsuam team will enjoy helping the Children's Computer Club to contribute information to the People and Place project . It could be a first step towards providing information to projects like Akvo. I've experimented with Peopel and Places and know how to upload phots there now. I know it looks foolproof - but I managed to fail the first times I tried.

Need-to-know

I hate doing things from written instructions and I am a very reluctant user of any techie stuff. Usually I only learn what I really, really have to use. I hope that the longer I wait to use a bit of new technology the more user friendly it will get. Even if it hasn't got user friendly, if "every one else gets it first" at least there should be someone to show me how the thing works.

Minciu Sodas Pyramid of Peace feedback

Back to Mark and Joe - I also told them about the Pyramid of Peace (PoP) and the brilliant way that Minciu Sodas got feedback during the post election turmoil in Kenya (see this background information on PoP taken from a call for funds prepared during the turmoil) - or go straight here for the video of the acrobats' peace demonstration.

Transition Towns

Yesterday I was collecting my visa, and on the way home went to the Islington Hub to buy a copy of "The Transition Handbook", published in association with www.transitionculture.org. Transition Towns had come up in conversation at the PRADSA workshop the previous week, which is how I knew where to get the book. There is a wiki about Transition Towns They started in the West Country and the place I used to live (Lostwithiel) is listed as a transition town, but I don't know anyone else round here who is interested yet. I want to learn more about them, and perhaps get involved.

Drupal

I have spent several hours exploring some features of Drupal. I did it along with Nikki. We both find it easier to learn in company - even if neither of us really knows anything much to begin wit). Thanks to a link Alan put in for us, we can now set up forums, and we are beginning to understand how pages link together. I also experimented with the list of html commands and discovered how to make the text bold and italic - all very basic, but more than I knew before.

The whole Drupal thing looks slightly less stange and threatening to me now - so next time I get a chance to learn from someone who knows Drupal I shall be better prepared to benefit from their knowledge. I long to pull all our Internet stuff together in one place and have a welcoming Dadamac virtual reception area where people can came and e-meet us, and join in whatever interests them.

Open tractors

At the weekend I was learning about open tractors and such like from the Factor E Farm weblog and through a skype chat with Marcin Jakubowski, supplemented by discussion on Global Villages . I think there is a lot that he is doing which could be relevant to the sustainable community project that John Dada is planning at Fantsuam. I'll be able to discuss this more with John soon.

Photography

Also at the weekend I was learning to operate my new camera. My camera operating skills are about as rudimentary as my Drupal. When I have owned a camera it has usually ended up being used by other people, so I don't learn anything much. This time I felt I had to try harder. I am always asking my Fanatsuam friends to send photos of "ordinary everyday sights" - and it was recently pointed out to me that they would like to see some "ordinary everyday sights" from where I live, so I decided I had better try to oblige. I took the camera with me when I went shopping - and looked at the High Street with new eyes. Hmm - quite a lot to notice that I would never see at Fantsuam. After sixteen photos I ran out to memory. I've put them on my computer, but haven't tried to send them yet.

Connectivism and Connective Knowledge

This week has also been the first week of an online course on conectivism and connective knowledge I enrolled for the free version (no supervision etc), but I'm not doing as well as I hoped. I've read most of the basic information, but haven't got into the interesting disucssions, or gone to any unfamiliar applications to find out more about how they are being used. I really want to be part of this, because I will see how proper professionals run online courses, and how it feels to be a learner there. However this is not really a good time for me to be taking a course. I have a faint, rather unrealistic, hope of managing to catch up a bit over the weekend.

End of the week

So, that is what I have been learning about this week. I am so glad to be able to be part of the online learning community.

One month catch up

2008-09-10T14:17:00.005+01:00

It is just over a month since I wrote my "five months catch-up" so this a quick review of current learning, before too much time goes by.

Last week I was at the final PRADSA workshop, in Leeds. PRADSA is "Practical Design for Social Action" and is part of a "Designing for the 21st Century" programme. This was my third PRADSA workshop, so I know there is a lot of expertise there - lots of opportunities to learn.

Already, as a result of PRADSA networking, there is a People and Place project that will help children in Teeside and children in rural Nigeria to learn from each other by exchanging photos.

This time the workshop theme was Power and Participation. Participation (inclusion) is dear to my heart. One of my big challenges is how I can help my community activist and teacher friends in Africa to be included in online groups, and other Internet benefits, given their lack of bandwidth.

I am frustrated by the way I am an information bottleneck. I am so information rich. I pay a fixed regular monthly subscription which gives me access to the Internet from home for as many hours as I want - every waking hour of my free time if I so choose. By contrast most of my friends in Africa have to pay by the minute, the connections they use are painfully slow, and are typically at cybercafes some distance from their homes.

How can I help my friends? How can I use my information riches to benefit them? How can I use the fact that I am bandwidth rich to overcome the fact that they are bandwidth poor? How can I be their "information runner" - doing some of their information-finding chores for them while they are off-line? How can I help them to connect up with the people they need to connect up with? How can I get the Internet to do more of this automatically for me, instead of doing so much of it "by hand" through emails and yahoo chats? How can I find other people who would be interested in helping? At present there are only really three of us, Lorraine, Nikki and me - and we are seriously lacking in the additional online skills that we need.

Obviously I need the help of some techies - but where do I find them, and how do I explain what we need? In the past we have used emails, lists, instant messaging, and miscellaneous other communication tools, plus some wikis and Moodle, and couple of free websites that sadly vanished into the ether without warning. I understand that if we had an implementation of Drupal then that would serve to pull everything together, and a friend has kindly made Drupal available to me and my friends - so we have a Dadamac Drupal, once we know how to use it.

We are at the start of our Drupal learning curve. Fortunately there at PRADSA I discovered Alan and Paula, who know about Drupal, looked at the Dadamac Drupal and gave advice on how to go forward. As a result there was much behind the scenes "learning by doing" today when Nikki and I were together with a few hours and visited Dadamac Drupal.

Over the weekend I have also been learning about open source tractors and other things that could be relevant to my friends in Nigeria (and elsewhere). I hope that when our Dadamac Drupal is running effectively I will be able to drop into it all these odd bundles of potentially useful information - things like the open tractor discussions. I need to do it in a way that makes the information very easy to find, but putting it there must not be not too time consuming.

Nigeria, especially Fantsuam, is at the front of my mind at present. I go there again soon, and I am supposed to be helping the Dadamac team at Fantsuam to set up the online Knowledge Resource Centre (KRC). We need to tackle various cultural issues related to learning as well as the provision of resources. I want to be as well prepared as possible before I leave. I see Dadamac Drupal as an important part of the long term KRC provision so I would like to be a more effective Drupal administrator by the time I travel.

So - plenty of learning to be done - and thanks to PRADSA we are taking some useful steps forward.

Describing Dadamac

2008-08-31T23:45:00.002+01:00

I've written a fuller explanation about Dadamac (it's a google doc so there's a bit of signing in involved before reading it).
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dvkjgqm_371x75z6cf7

My current plan is to explore Drupal and then gradually use it to create a tidy web presence, and to give the Dadamac online community a virtual home - meanwhile I will continue to scatter information around using what I already know.

Five months catch up

2008-08-07T21:15:00.003+01:00

This is a catch-up of what I've been learning-by-doing over the past five months - since the entry about Pyramid of Peace. It probably won't cover everything - just whatever springs to mind while I'm at the keyboard (There won't be any live links included yet, but perhaps later).

Today the Learning From Each Other (LFEO) group had its regular "First Thursday of the Month" meeting in the worknets chatroom and we used it to discuss the ideas in the Mohammed Yunus book "Creating a World Without Poverty". We now have sixteen copies of the book circulating in East Africa - mostly in Kenya, and we have an informal WWP (World Without Poverty) study group. It was a small meeting today. There were four of us - each in a different location and each interested in the ideas and how to apply them appropriately in practice, in "our own communities".

The WWP group is a new kind of collaborative learning experience for us. The books are circulating. Odd bits of e-mail chat make reference to who has got a copy and what someone is thinking, and now and again some of us have a more formal exchange of ideas through the LFEO list or in the chat room.

In Kenya the WWP group has its roots in the Pyramid of Peace. The post election turmoil died down, and the young unemployed youths were persuaded to stop attacking each other. Now some of the peace activists are trying to help the youths to turn on their real enemies - which are poverty and ignorance. The ideas in WWP are a focus for this - but how do these ideas get turned into practical local action? That is the challenge. That is what we will try to LearnByDoing.

Unusually for me I have been involved in three face-to-face gatherings since March. They were all in the UK: a PRADSA workshop about funding bids, 2gether08, and PCF5. They were all very different, and each time I felt an "outsider" - but each time in a different way. I was suffering quite an identity crisis by the time I had been to all of them.

I was at PCF5 because I had submitted a paper about Teachers Talking. I was happy about the quality of the project and so, originally, I felt confident in my role at PCF5. After all, PCF5 was a joint COL (Commonwealth of Learning) and University of London event, and the version of TT which David Mutua had organised in Kenya had been supported by COL, and TT "is my baby". I thought that I would feel that I did belong.

At PCF5 I was placed in the "Children and Young People" group, because TT is about Teacher Training - but I am nothing to do with any formal Teacher Training Institution. After a day of meeting people who all had strong job titles in big organisations I was feeling very much an odd one out again. Fortunately, on the second day I heard Professor Brenda Gourney talk about the kind of informal communities of learning where I do belong ("places" on the Internet - like the groups I belong to in Minciu Sodas) so I felt more included again.

I like the phrase Community of Learning (CoL). I belong in various online CoLs and I believe they are an important part of the way forward for education in the 21st century. However online CoLs tend to be rather organic, and freely structured, compared to traditional institutions of learning so there is quite a cultural divide between the two. In the last couple of days (through one of my CoLs) I have been pointed towards some useful articles theorising about informal online learning. I have learned a new description "rhizomic learning" which does seem to describe how we learn in CoLs. Rhizomic learning was described in a very academic way. This makes teh article a good "connecting point" between between those of us in the "CoLs" and the established academic institutions. I am hopeful that better communication channels may be opening up.

I have also been involved in developing better communication channels between UK and Nigeria. It is something I have been struggling with since 1999, when I used to help a friend's Nigerian husband to keep in contact with people back home. Now, as part of the Dadamac team I am in regular UK-Nigeria contact, including a weekly online team meeting. The Dadamac team has made interesting progess. We are on our second project and we are getting increasingly confident of our ability to deliver what our clients ask.

We are still trying to classify all the things we do in the Dadamac team and how they relate to each other. This is how things seem to be shaping up at present. There is a network of people which I used to describe as Cawdnet, but has now developed, and changed its focus and becoem something I am calling the Dadamac Community of Learning. That is online, so its boundaries are very porous, and it overlaps other Communities of Learning, especially Minciu Sodas. (To me Minciu Sodas is the best and "richest" Community of Learning that I know. It is the online community where my own learning is nurtured: though the encouragement, example, and enabling of the Director Andrius Kulikauskus; and through the discussions with other group leaders and members.)

Various educational initiatives have already developed though this network, usually linking with Fantsuam Foundation. In connection with Dadamac CoL there will be Dadamac Local Communities of Learning. The first one is developing at the Knowledge Resource Centre (KRC) at Fantsuam. We are experimenting to find out what people want to learn and how their learning can be enabled through the KRC. We are building on education/training work we have done together previously in UK/Nigeria collaborations. Dadamac links in various ways with Fantsuam Foundation, including the Children's Computer Club, but I won't attempt to clarify the details here. We are very happy to see benefits starting to come to Fantsuam as a result of Dadamac initiatives.

Once we know how the Dadmac CoL works at Fantsuam we will invite other people/organsiations that we know to collaborate with us as local Dadamac Communities of Learning as well.

At present the online Dadamac CoL is a collaborative network with no formal structure or registration. It is concerned with the exchange of information and the growth of learning - very "21st century".

However, some things do need to be firmly and formally rooted, and have to function in the money economy. To this end there is also Dadamac Limited (a related registered company) which enables us to share out networks and knowledge in return for fees, just as any other knowledge brokers would do.

I haven't managed a full catch up, but the main points are here. I hope to write more often in future.

Kenya: POP member notes on the ground/ proposals

2008-03-07T20:12:00.005Z

These emails show an online community (Minciu Sodas) in action, focusing support on Kenyans within the group. They give a snapshot of the Minciu Sodas Pyramid of Peace (PoP) project on Thursday March 2008. The emails give precise details of what is happening on the ground as PoP people work to promote long-term peace and prevent reprisal violence. The writers are Andrius (director of Minciu Sodas and the strategic thinker behind PoP) and Rachel (the present leader of PoP in Kenya -a role which is filled by different people in turn). The emails were sent on Thursday March 2008 to holistichelping@yahoogroups.com and other Minciu Sodas groups.

From: Andrius Kulikauskas

Rachel Wambui Kungu +254721626389, http://www.peace-caravan.org Thank you for your excellent report from our peacemakers in all of Kenya which I share below.

I can send you 400 USD and perhaps a bit more, I have to calculate the money I received and how much we have spent so far. Also, it is very good that you have found funds for our Nakuru meeting by linking that with the Volunteer Youth Philanthropists one day training. Are any more funds required for that meeting? We should make a list of our projects and the budget required. Also, please we need phone numbers for some of the people below, who might provide them? Thank you! Andrius Kulikauskas, ms@ms.lt, +370 699 30003

(To support PoP see current news of phone4peace )
-------------------------
From: Rachel Wambui Kungu

Dear Janet, Andrius and all,

Thanks for your support and being part of peace building in Kenya,
though miles away very close in efforts of building a peaceful
coexistence in Kenya. I look at all in the network and especially
those away from us as our mentors, we volunteer and walk the talk
together.

This morning I spoke to Achami, Rono, Kilel, Edwin, Muturi, Wilson,
Tonny, Beatrice, Kirathe, Chelimo, Wesley and Kihara all from
different areas of the country called Kenya and from different
culture, communities, tribe etc

The general response and feeling is that there is peace in most parts
of our country and that those who had moved from various area and
regions are going back to where they call home. This to me is a sign
of peace in whatever perspective we look at it.

ACHAMI-Kuresoi +254720613379
Reported to me that on Wednesday there were killings in a place near
Molo (total) and several people have been admitted in hospital. On
Sunday Rono and Achami traveled to total to speak with elders in that
area of which the Kalenjin and Kikuyu live in the area. Achami says
"we had a dialogue meeting and we were able to negotiate on how to
stop the violence in order for him to be able to continue opening up
Molo to all the communities and for the negotiation to be successful,
it is a must for both community to maintain peace." He says that Rono
has played a major role in calming the situation and as we speak now
one of the worriors who was very much involed in the conflict has now
changed position and he is flexible and open for dialogue. Thanks Rono
and Achami, you compliment each other. Achami is still engaging the
community in Molo. Though he is in Kuresoi, he reported an attempted
attack at Baringo B but police intervened.

RONO Richard +254723732617
As I spoke to him this morning he was heading to a burial of a person
killed in the area and he said that he has a good platform to discuss
the peace talks going on at the community level and why the youth
should turn away from the violence thus, it was a mobilized group
despite the death, they can speak peace, Rono proposed that he would
like to go to Kitale to speak to the kalenjin, but after our
discussion we agreed that Kuresoi is still a hot spot and violence is
still continuing, thus he should work on building peace in ones
community before going to the next community. We agreed and then he
says he would like 50USD for his travel reimbursement and
communication for the talks he has had near total, which has changed
position of a worrior. For sometime Rono will be concentrating on
engaging Kalenjin in peace talks within Kuresoi to stop violence.

Kihara-Eldoret
He is organizing meetings and dialogue in secondary and University in
the area, taking advantage of his well connected network to work for
peace. Kihara says he would like to organize an open day forum with a
start of a road show stating the objective of the forum and the venue
to round Eldoret for effective mobilization and a start off forum for
all the communities for relationship building. I requested him to come
up with a budget for that, but I also mentioned to him that the
caravan is a road show and is being prepared to cme in May but he says
that's too far and the road show is a form of advertising for the
forum for mobilization purposes. Thus am waiting for the budget and
then I will discuss further with him to realize his dream. I call upon
Cheliomo Wesley and Joseph to be part of the noble cause.

Wesley –Eldoret +254722992107
He was one of the person I met in Eldoret on 18th of January 2008 ,
when I started taking risks to go and carry out fact finding and build
friends around me advocating for active non violence among the youth,
when I called him and I had him laugh on the other end, I knew it is
the dawn of the new beginning. He told me that there is peace
inEldoret and that they are looking forward to International women's
day and asked if I will be joining them. I was happy to heart to hear
the good news, however he requested for some credit if available and
that was all.

Chelimo +254722809690
Welcomed me to Eldoret and he said there is peace and people are going
back to there so called homes. He asked me whether I will be
participating in the women's day event in Eldoret as Andrius had
promised to send one of us but told him , I have no idea but I will
think about it. I joked that he will send me away but he said a big
NO, there is peace and war is over, as a peace builder, those were
veery encouraging words to me especially that early morning. I have a
reason to sleep a little longer and a smile if not laughter. Ken also
requested for airtime. That was all.

Charles Kilel +254 727 281 419
I always smile but too bad he cannot see it through the cell phone,
reason being, when we met for the first time, after knowing him for a
while over the phone, I requested him to describe the Rachel he had in
mind, sorry I will not describe because of those who haven't seen me
yet I live them to think about it. He was happy to hear from me after
sometime and I told him not to be breaking the silence, as
communication is power and we learn from each other. He didn't have
something in mind then as he said the victims are now coming back home
and he is thinking of how to hold a dialogue meeting with the victims
and perpetrators to build relationship again. He says he has noted
some fear from both communities and he would like them to address the
fears to avoid negative outcomes. However, he says he will wait for
sometime for more people to come back. We also discussed my then
proposal of building a group of 10s from several homestead nearing
each other and encourage them to be each others keeper. I was happy
too that he has started identifying the representatives. Mr. Kile, am
definitely coming to Kericho to see you and the team, I have postponed
it for long but with a reason and to address urgent matters, I felt
you could handle Kericho from the discussion we had and with the
introduction of the young man Henry. Kindly ask him to give me a
shout. I will get back to Kilel for further discussion on my visit
which should be soon. I proposed to him a training/dialogue in Kericho
with participants from Sotik which he says its near and Kisii. This is
to try and connect Edwin who has interest in Sotik so that they can
work togther.

Edwin Nyandisi +254-722587836
Having worked with him for several years, it was not hard to get what
I wanted from Edwin, He has already written and proposed for the
follow up meeting in Sotik. Kindly outline how many people will
participate in the meeting. I would also like to know if the team you
met have a formal group or not and if not during your next meeting we
would like to here what they have to say about registering a group for
easy follow up and networking in Sotik. I personally have a special
interest in Sotik Kisii and Kericho, I would also like to know if you
have managed to get intouch with some of the youth we met last year
during the caravan. Still think of proposing a security team as you
reported that you met the administration (areas chief) and a councilor
could you build on that in order to have flow of communication on the
ground. I would like to join you, if possible we leave on Friday
morning and find out on Saturday what the women will be doing. Just a
thought Kindly quote your budget again and we can discuss.

Beatrice Nzovu
She called me this morning requesting for the reports we have
submitted at WIKI on views and happenings on the ground and
recommendation. This is in line with the Curriculum she is trying to
produce for POP peacebuilding healing and reconciliation. Also she
confirmed her facilitation of the 15-16 training in nakuru, despite
her tight schedule she has time for POP. Also she would like to get
the reports in order to have an idea of our expectation as POP
leaders. All in all Beatrice has worked with women *elite* as I may
call them but she is now concentrating with the young woman at the
grassroot level and in that case, she is organising young women for
the march on Saturday and requested me to join her but it is
unfortunate I am living for either Eldoret or Sotik to organize some
forum. I would like to request for 250USD for Beatrice to organize and
facilitate young women meeting after the March and gather some ideas
on the motherly constitution. Beatrice kindly elaborate on how you
plan to go about the above and the number of young women you intend to
mobilize and possible outcome. I always look at forming groups on the
ground and if this can be a starting point I am ready to follow up the
group. Together we can make it.

Tonny
He is looking forward to meeting the Luo elder soon a trip he is
joining Ken for fact finding and empowerment of youth in Kisumu to be
able to participate fully in POP and also identify the champions down
there or is it up there Ken O and Tonny?

Ken Owino +254723568251
He was occupied trying to keep his house in order for his preparation
for a trip soon. He has several events and he will be at the National
Theatre tomorrow afternoon, actually today (Thursday) and He has
invited me at the cultural center where they are performing on
Sarturday. All the best young man, you have the potential you will
make it. Come back with a smile as always. I haven't heard from you
the budget for your trip kindly forward it as well.

Dennis Kimambo +254722388275
He was facilitating so we didn't talk. Dennis, I hope we can talk soon
need your advice on some few things about the Nakuru training on 15th
and 16th.

Kirathe & Wilson -Naivasha
After the unblocking of the roads, and my personal visit and a follow
up meeting with the Naivasha youth and forming a Naivasha Youth Peace
Initiative, Kirate says we are forgetting them. He was the first
together with Thuo to report that the Luo's who had been evicted from
Naivasha are now coming back and taking over there jobs after a long
forced leave. He told me that Naivasha people are welcoming them and
life is going on well. No tension or incidences and since the TWO
agreed to work together they are ready to restore the lost
relationship. He was asking if I will be visiting them soon but I
didn't have answer since I am abit held up in other areas. However,
Naivasha being very near Nairobi, I promised I can have technical
appearance every now and then as we fundraise for a training in the
area. I miss you friend in Naivasha, I will see you soon.

Robert Muturi Nairobi +254 722 555 302 and Wilson Naivasha
They are young men with positive thinking about the future of the
country. Through them I was able to get connections in Naivasha. I am
happy to have you around and the information you share with me is and
has always been helpful. They were both collegues in High School and
as I learn now they are tied up organising themselves either to join
University or College for further education. Robert is also helping
me with VYP theatre group. He has interacted with most of you in the
chat. Young me when you join another institution move on with the
peace handle and build circle of friends for a positive thinking. You
can change the world.

Rachel
Nakuru Training
This will be a joint effort of Pyramid of Peace and Voluntary Youth
Philanthropists who have secured some little funding to facilitate one
day training and POP can facilitate one day. This saves on travel cost
and maximizing of the resources for a greater impact. VYP will also be
having student teachers leadership training either in Nakuru or
Eldoret, we are yet to confirm.

I have also invited Kinyanjui who will give a motivational talk on
Youth leadership in peace building. Find out more about him when you meet.

I will be sending credit to those organizing an activity or event for
communication purpose.

Emmanuel Were +254721938340, Tom Ochuka +254 712 929 029 and others I hope we can chat in the morning. It
is 3am, I wish to go and sleep for now.

A youth steward council or what… for the countries future (watchdogs)
thanks Janet and Andrius and Gachara for you contributions.

Great to know you all.
Rachel
www.peace-caravan.org

http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?HolisticHelping

Please note our rule: Each letter sent to the Holistic Helping group enters the PUBLIC DOMAIN unless it explicitly states otherwise. Thank you! http://www.ethicalpublicdomain.org

Another First Thursday

2008-03-06T23:13:00.003Z

If I'm not travelling I try to be in the chat room from 13.00 GMT on the first Thursday of the month. Last month our thoughts and energies in Minciu Sodas were focused on Kenya and the post election turmoil. We were on an amazing learning curve discovering how we (an online group including Kenyans) could work together effectively with few resources to alleviate the suffering and danger facing our friends and their communities. Anyone with an interest in researching topics such as conflict resolution; African politics; tribal conflict; ICT (phones and Internet); online communities; Internet and social action; grassroots activism; and various other topics would find a mine of information in the Minciu Sodas yahoo groups archives.

Now attention is shifting. Today we were looking forward, and also taking stock. The power sharing agreement has been made, so now there is a president and a prime minister, and parliament is meeting again - but the problems have not gone away, they are just different, as our current email exchanges demonstrate. I feel I should be

Analysing what we have learned
Sharing that information in appropriate forms
Joining in the work for the next stage
Helping to raise the necessary finance to support our Kenyan friends as they continue to work with displaced people; unemployed and angry youths; all kinds of people who are recent or long terms victims of poverty and/or violence.

But (like many others, now the urgent obvious pressure is over) I also need to rest and to catch up with tasks that have been neglected. I have not learned the best way to deal with this situation. What is the most effective way to share the information I have, so that it could lead to resources being directed to my Kenyan friends and their communities? I don't know, maybe I will start simply posting here some of the emails that come in from the group. If I do that at least there will be a slightly better chance of more people sampling what is being shared, and becoming interested. Even if I am not managing to summarise the discussions or put things into context at least I would be passing them on in some way. I will try to do that.

Alternatives to Violence in Kenya

2008-02-27T20:35:00.001Z

Following the post-election turmoil in Kenya, Minciu Sodas has been exploring alternatives to violence. We have developed an initiative called Pyramid of Peace (pop). I am part of Minciu Sodas and I am also a trustee of CAWD (a registered UK charity). To learn more about pop and how CAWD is supporting it please see http://phone4peace.blogspot.com/

January 31st - Join us in the chat room

2008-01-31T12:09:00.000Z

Jan 31st - Hasty update. We are meeting as planned in the worknets chatroom. Do join us. There was an "admin glitch" which prevented the parallel audio-graphic conference. See side panel for worknets chat room link.

New Year - LearnByDoing 2008

2008-01-11T14:01:00.000Z

This New Year blog was written (but not published) at the start of the year - just before the turmoil in Kenya. We have friends there - for more information about them see Cawdnet NL 44 - Kenya Special Edition

The chat room mentioned below has been a focus for exchanging news and arranging practical help. The LearnByDoing session on 31st January will now be "Communicating with Kenya". It will look at how Mincui Sodas (an online community) was able to respond to the turmoil in Kenya.

New Year - LearnByDoing 2008
It's the new year - so I have been having a quick look through the 2007 entries to the blog before deciding its direction for 2008. Lorraine Duff and I started the blog last July as one of our LearnByDoing experiments.

Comments
I see that we got two comments - which I did not know about at the time. I think Lorraine has investigated blog settings since then so we will know in future if anyone sends a comment - please do - and belated thanks to Andrius and Elfneh for sending their comments.

Who does what
Usually I am the one who generates the words for our blog (often, I confess, in longhand) and the tidy version owes much to Lorraine's intervention. The focus up to now has been fairly narrow, emphasising e-meetings, as you can see from previous entries. This year I think we will take a wider view and include other LearnByDoing activities. The thread connecting them will simply be that Lorraine and I are involved in them all.

Our projects
Lorraine and I have been working together on various unfunded ICT4Ed&D projects for several years. We have only met face-to-face once, so over the years we have explored various strategies for collaborating at a distance. As we don't come under the umbrella of any organisation there has never been any formal training or any IT department to guide us. This means that everything we do is a LearnByDoing experiment (with miscellaneous "help from our friends"). Our links with grassroots projects in Africa came about through personal friendships - and the friendships and subsequent collaborations have relied heavily on communication at a distance. As a result, in our small way, we have developed an unusual expertise related to the realities of ICT4Ed&D (Information and Communication Technologies for Education and Development).

Blogging 2008
At this point I am tempted to try and explain more about what we have been trying to learn and why, but that would take too long. Suffice to say that it all relates to ICT4Ed&D. Anyhow, it is the New Year - time for a fresh start not for looking back. A blog is a blog. It is a diary that other people are free to read and diaries relate to the here and now. (If anyone reads this and wants an explanation of something there is always the comments box.)

Welcome to the WorkNets chat room
So, what next? Thursday January 3rd is the first Thursday of the month. We meet in the WorkNets chat room. Various newcomers would be more likely to turn up if I sent them a reminder. I need an effective system for doing that - I don't know what it should be.

Trainerspod sessions
Thursday January 31st is the new date for our next LearnByDoing (LBD) online session with Trainerspod (previously planned for the third Thursday of the month).

Guest Speaker - John Dada of Fantsuam Foundation
John Dada, director of Fantsuam Foundation (FF) is going to be the guest speaker in January.
(NB -This session now postponed until later in the year to enable January session on "Communicating with Kenya")

Developments at Fantsuam
John will be describing the latest technical developments at Fantsuam. Previously there was a VSAT which served the FF compound - mainly for Cisco training, and also for office use related to FF (including its micro-credit bank), and for a small cyber cafe. That was amazing enough for a rural location in Nigeria - but last time I visited things had moved even further on. Where previously there were turkeys, chickens and goats I saw a tall mast and a beautiful new building (made of compressed earth bricks) to house the server room and other facilities. All this enables ten other sites to access the Internet (three of which will be cyber cafes, if I remember correctly, and other sites include clinics and a hotel). The FF cyber cafe has closed and become another office.

Interests of participants
John will be telling us all about it - with either a technical or social emphasis depending on the interests of people who register for the LBD session. I hope that as John shares the details of FF's pioneering work it will be an eye-opening reality check for people who are interested in ICT4Ed&D, especially those whose experiences are limited to "bandwidth rich" environments. Thanks to Trainerspod we have the facilities of Elluminate so we can show web pages, power point slides, photos and so on - and participants can interact with John using microphones, via typed chat, or in various other on-screen ways. As we learn to make the most of these opportunities the LBD sessions should come ever closer to the value of face-to-face meetings.

Format
I hope to gradually develop the best format for these sessions. I want plenty of participation and exchange of information - but with a clear and well informed focus. My potential guest speakers are practitioners with masses of information to share. They are busy people - and so I want them to be able to participate easily. Last year I tried something which was a bit like a meeting with an agenda and chairman - this year I'm going to try something a bit more like a TV chat show and phone in. Gradually, as we LearnByDoing we will evolve the best way to e-meet through Trainerspod.

Sharing knowledge
We have great people in our network with a tremendous wealth of practical experience. Some of them have already agreed to follow John as guest speakers. Over the coming year I hope to see LBD sessions making positive contributions to sharing knowledge and closing the gap between people who are bandwidth rich and people who are bandwidth challenged. We have a lot of challenges to overcome. 2008 promises to be a rich learning experience.

(written by Pam - published by Lorraine)

Update - LearnByDoing Session with Trainerspod on 29th November 2007

2007-11-20T05:12:00.000Z

Registration for the LearnByDoing session with Trainerspod is now open.
For more information and to register please click here - please register.
Date: Thursday 29th November 2007
Time: 15:00 GMT - 17:00 GMT (Arrive at 14:30 for tutorial on Elluminate). Please go to WorldClocks to confirm your time zone.
Venue: On-line!
Topic: ICT and Education in Africa - Practicalities in Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana.
Prince Obiri-Mainoo and I (Pamela McLean) will be discussing our plans and experiences related to ICT and education in Africa.

Chats past and Trainserspod future

2007-11-08T01:55:00.000Z

Chats catch-up
This is written in haste. My intention was to edit down some chats we have had, to make them more "reader friendly". I also wanted to tell about a discussion that Andrius Kulikauskus and I had about the group dynamics of our chat sessions and the benefits and disadvantages of various approaches. However - time has been against me for that, so for now I am simply
mentioning that chats have been continuing, and we do definitely LearnByDoing .

Thursday 29th November
Looking ahead. The next LearnByDoing (LBD) session with TrainersPod is scheduled for Thursday 29th November. Prince Obiri-Mainoo and I (Pamela McLean) will be discussing our plans and experiences related to ICT and education in Africa. Prince and I e-met recently, at a TrainersPod webinar. We discovered overlapping interests because of Prince's ICT training work in USA and Ghana, and mine with rural teachers in Nigeria and Kenya.

This session is going to be participative and very much about practicalities. People who join the session will be encouraged to ask questions and share their own experiences of ICT and education in Africa. I, for one, am intending to learn a lot from the discussion - and I hope others will too.

You can register your interests and comment at the LBD section at Cawdnet Campus. Find out more by clicking here.

The first Thursday and the last Friday
The usual time for LBD meetings in the chat room is 13.00 GMT on the first Thursday of the month. The Teachers Talking Kenya group also try to get to the chat room during their monthly meetings - we are trying to learn how to raise some money for them, to help cover their travel and online expenses. If anyone has any ideas do please let us know. (You can paste a comment here - or email info@cawd.net)

Teachers Talking From Rural Kenya

2007-09-29T00:19:00.000+01:00

On Friday September 28th twenty teachers in rural Kenya left their schools early and traveled to Holy Rosary Secretarial College, Tala, where they gathered around the only computer that was online.

At home in the UK I was sitting at my laptop, logged in to the worknet chat room waiting for them.

The teachers were participants from the Teachers Talking (TT) Kenya course - and in August I had been in Kenya teaching them. I have published an edited down version of our chat here.

This TT Kenya initial programme is a COL / CAWD collaboration and consists of a one week course followed by monthly meetings for six months. Before I left Kenya the participants and I had agreed to try and meet in a chat room, next time they were online. We want to continue working together even though we are at a distance - the chat is part of that.

Our chat is about the practicalities of ICT training for teachers in rural Africa - not in theory, but in real life. We were joined in the chat room by a Kenyan living in Sweden, and a Nigerian, still in Nigeria, who had helped me to present TT there.

Please share the chat as widely as you can. The twenty people clustered around that one computer in Tala are experts regarding education in rural Kenya - they are practitioners. They are ready, willing and able to use the Internet in their own professional development, and to share what they know with their colleagues and their communities. Just imagine what a power for change they could be if they could get online more than a couple of hours once a month.

I don't know where to go to get the resources they need to build on their initial knowledge and enthusiasm - but maybe if this information circulates far enough some organisations will be able to help them. Alternatively we could "pass the hat" and collect donations from individuals through CAWD. (To direct an on-line donation to a specific CAWD project, simply name the project in the "personal message" box.)

The first LearnByDoing audiographic e-meeting was held on 2nd August 2007 through Trainerspod

2007-09-25T15:58:00.000+01:00

The first LearnByDoing audiographic e-meeting was held on 2nd August 2007 through Trainerspod. It was a "foundation laying" e-meeting, where I (Pam) shared ideas for running a regular LearnByDoing virtual group. The main ideas are on a PowerPoint presentation which can be seen via Google Docs or at the Trainerspod archives where (after creating an account) you can also listen in to our meeting and see what we wrote in the chat box etc.

The proposed structure of the meeting was along these lines:-
Pre-session:

Informal chat
Introduction to using audiographic conferencing

Main-session:

Chairman's introduction
Outline of proposed LearnByDoing series
> Structure of meetings
> Roles and responsibilities
> Focus of LearnByDoing
Meeting topic
> ICT for Education and Development - "Three-legged stool" checklist
Future planning

Post-session:

Informal discussions and networking

I won't write the meeting up as "minutes" because the archive is available, so this will be a personal account to give you a flavour of what went on.

Altogether fifteen of us gathered through Trainerspod - which I felt was a good number for the initial meeting of a club, or group, which will gradually establish its identity and grow. I was pleased to find a balance of people I was e-meeting for the first time and people that I already knew (F2F or virtually).

I think it is worth looking briefly at the geographical spread of the participants, as I am hoping that as the group grows the LearnByDoing (LBD) participants will come from a mixture of countries representing a variety of cultures. The people who I met for the first time had probably been invited by Asif Daya of Trainerspod and seemed to be in the USA. Those of us not in the USA were from three European countries, and there was also one very welcome participant from India, who had discovered the meeting by coming across the blog. Although LBD is rooted in practical experience in rural Africa, there is a great overlap between work in Africa and work in India, so an exchange of ideas and experience will be most welcome.

Grass roots projects in Africa were represented by Caroline Ifeka and me. Caroline is based in Nigeria but has roots in the UK, and was staying over here. I live in the UK but am involved in practical work in Nigeria and Kenya. Our friends in Africa who rely on cyber cafes were not able to attend, but we are exploring ways to include them as much as possible. They find it easier to be involved in our complementary e-meetings at the Minciu Sodas chat room, and our yahoo group LearningFromEachOther.

Kabissa was represented by Chioma Oruh. This was exciting for me, because way back in 2003 Kabissa helped me to start an online newsletter about a tiny project I was involved with, in rural Nigeria. Kabissa's work of making ICT more easily accessible to community groups in Africa was well known and initially I felt a bit intimidated about approaching Kabissa, but we were welcomed. When our little newsletter was launched I felt a double benefit. There was the obvious practical benefit of having an online newsletter. Equally important was a sense of belonging, acceptance, approval, because Kabissa had "allowed us in". I am hoping that the future direction of the LBD group will be influenced by Kabissa's vision, experience and network.

I don't know everyones full names, so I will have to refer to some people by the identities used in the chat room.

Our meeting also benefited from input from Mireille and her practical suggestions about relevant uses of ICT, which included the site http://www.zoho.com/; http://www.google.com/; and http://www.slideshare.com/. I hope we will explore these in practise as we LearnByDoing.

Sasha, Maria and Repyke looked forward to exchanging practical information, including on-the-ground projects related to livelihoods. This is certainly the kind of thing I hope we will be able to do, once we have established our LBD group. At first, while we are establishing ourselves, and "settling in" to our audiographic e-meeting space, it is probably best to focus on topics that address some of the challenges of e-meeting. E-groups have many similarities with Face to Face groups. When they are running smoothly it all looks deceptively simple - but first they have to be set up to run smoothly - and that is the stage we are at now.

We did not get around to agreeing the topic for our next meeting, but we can discuss and arrange that through the LearningFromEachOther and I will try to get an outline agenda agreed and posted here before our next audio-graphic e-meeting.

Since the initial meeting I have been to Kenya for the local launch of Teachers Talking. The participants are keen to get involved with people and information through the Internet. They hope to visit the Minciu Sodas chat room on Friday 28th September at 3.30pm Kenyan time 1.30pm GMT. They are very limited in their opportunities to get online. How can we best help them to benefit from the riches of the Internet during the precious times when they are connected? I hope we will discuss some of the related issues at our next LearnByDoing audiographic e-meeting on Thursday 29th November 2007.

LearnByDoing Session 2 - August 2nd 2007

2007-08-05T04:48:00.000+01:00

The session topic was: "Evidence Evidence Evidence!" - How we use photos and video to share our stories

For evidence of how people in Minciu Sodas are moving on in their ability to share photos and video see the session archives. There are also recent contributions to YouTube by the School for Acrobats in Kibera and by Samuel Kongere. Links from the session two archives are collected together on the right hand side navigation bar.

Review Structure
I'll use the "Three Legged Stool Checklist" for a quick review of the meeting:

Information
Communication/People-with-a-purpose
The Technology
ICT-for-What?

Information - The information exchanged can be seen by going to the archives of the e-meeting. You will see all the chat and there are various links contributed by the participants.

Communication - The "people with a purpose" - The people who wanted to discuss this topic had emerged through various Minciu Sodas discussion threads and also through FaceBook. In the event not all were able to attend, but those who missed out will be able to see the report and we can hold a follow-up meeting for them later.
More about the people - I was encouraged to see the mixture of people at our meeting this month - some "core members" and some newcomers. From memory I think we were eleven people including five newcomers. People joined in from India, Korea, Lithuania, Serbia, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda, UK and USA. Three other potential participants, two from Kenya and one from Nigeria also tried to attend, but sadly techie glitches kept them out. We also had some apologies. If I have missed anyone out please let me know so I can edit my mistakes.
The Technology - The meeting was held at chat room. You are welcome to drop into the chat room at any time. See the session 2 archives for other technologies involved during the e-meeting.

ICT for What? - As usual we were looking at using the chat room effectively, as well as considering the session topic.

We are getting more accustomed to our structure of informal networking at the start and finish, with a central more structured session.
Many thanks to Sasha for acting as chairman and for agreeing to take the chair again in September.
Next time we will also try to have a "latecomers steward" to whisper a welcome to latecomers and help them settle in without disturbing the flow of the meeting. Fred has accepted that role if he is able to attend.
Regular attendees at the LearnByDoing sessions are getting in the habit of choosing their own text colour, which makes it easier to follow who is saying what.
We are developing an Instant Introductions page, which helps to speed up the process of people getting to know each other.
We are learning other details like how to turn auto-scroll on and off, and how to make better use of the area around the main chat screen.
It begins to feel as if we are "moving in" to the chat room, as a regular e-meeting space for what I think of as the "LearnByDoing Club."

Open invitation to our e-meetings and future dates
LearnByDoing e-meetings are usually held on the first Thursday of the month. Given our varied time zones, no time is perfect - but 13.30 GMT seems to work fairly well. Times of future sessions may vary depending on what best suits the key participants. There is an open invitation to people who would like to attend.

Our next LearnByDoing e-meeting in the chat room will be on Thursday 6th September 2007.

Before that, on Thursday August 16th we plan our first LearnByDoing e-meeting at Trainerspod, using Elluminate. We will be exploring the best way to use audio-graphic conferencing, with a view to holding regular e-meetings at both locations (chat room and Trainerspod) in the New Year.

E-meeting - August 2nd "Evidence, evidence, evidence!" - How we use photos and video to share our stories.

2007-07-30T17:20:00.000+01:00

Our next e-meeting at chat room is planned for Thursday August 2nd 2007 at 2.30 pm London Time (1.30 GMT. Please click here to check your timezone.) It will be a chat room meeting. The theme is "Evidence, evidence, evidence!" - How we use photos and video to share our stories.

As usual we will start off with some informal "meeting-and-greeting", before the main session, and there will be opportunities for informal networking afterwards.

There has been a lot of discussion at LearningFromEachOther, Mendenyo, and Facebook, about how we share grass-roots evidence with bandwidth-rich communities. Our grass-roots groups face great problems getting online and achieve a major triumph if they manage to join in online discussion using text. By contrast our bandwidth rich contacts (and potential contacts) are accustomed to multi-media.

How do we cross the culture-gaps and and communication gaps?

How far have we progressed and what are the main issues we face at present?

How do we move forward?

ICT4D Checklist
I will use my ICT4D "three-legged stool" checklist to review our progress.

Checklist item 1 - Information
We have a lots of information:

Information that Samwel has collected on his camera (and there are other photos, and video clips, on other cameras, tapes, computers, CDs and datapens belonging to other people in our various grass-roots networks).

Experience that Samwel and others have about their problems sending their photos and video clips.

Experience that people have of working with photos and video, mostly in bandwidth rich situations.

Ideas of where our information should be presented once it is on the Internet.

Checklist item 2 - Communication
Who are the "people with a purpose" who want to share their information? There are quite a few. All the names I mention here are invited to Thursday's session:

Andrius, Maria and Samwel - who are involved in the e-collaboration and/or face to face (F2F) meetings that got the cameras to Kenya -,and it is Samwel who has collected the photos/video clips (no sound) into the camera.

David Mutua - who has helped me to collect grassroots photos and video in the past and suggested we should have an e-meeting about it.

Guilhem and Asif - who have been giving practical advice to Samwel via Facebook and yahoo groups.

Chris Macrae - who wants to get Samwel's videos on youtube, and helped Samwel to get the camera.

I cannot promise all te peopel mentioned will be there, but they are invited. Perhaps as we get further with LearnByDoing we can agree a place where people sign up in advance for e-meetings - so everyone knows in advance who is planning to attend.

Pam will also be attending, and probably others from LearningFromEachOther, Cawdnet, and other networks, who are part of the growing "LearnByDoing Club".

Checklist item 3 - Technology
Aspects of technology have already been mentioned:

The Camera, the existing and potential interfaces between the camera and the Internet, the various e-locations where emails have been exchanged, and this e-meeting.

Checklist item 4 - ICT4....
So - ICT4What?

Well, in this case the objective is to move forward in our attempt to collect visual evidence form grass-roots projects in Africa and share it in places like "YouTube".

Some practical details for the session
Chairperson:

We will need a chairperson. I am thinking it may be Sasha - but haven't asked him yet.

Introductions:

We need to make our way of introducing ourselves much smoother.

We have space on Andrius wiki for this, and Lorraine is making a start on creating a LearnByDoing club index.

The idea is that we will develop an alphabetical list of everyone who comes to our "LearnByDoing Club"e-meetings. This alphabetical list will be on one page of the wiki - each name will be a live link to a quick introduction to the named person.

People who often come along to LearnByDoing e-meetings will get to know each other and won't need to check on the introduction list.

The introduction list will be there to help newcomers. By clicking on the names, newcomers will quickly get to know more about the various people who are contributing to the chat.

Newcomers will always be welcome to introduce themselves (during the informal networking time) and their information can also be added to the introduction list. This will happen gradually, depending how much people do for themselves and how much it is left to others.

Agenda items:

When the chairman is chosen and calls us to order for the main session we will agree the agenda.

It will consist of discussion on various points relating to cameras and the sharing of photos, and video clips.

Towards the end of the session the chairman will sum up and offer an "Any Other Business" (OAB) time. Suggestions under AOB may be discussed immediately or held over for a later e-meeting.

The chairman will then declare the meeting closed and people will sort themselves out for informal networking.

Invitation
As usual with a LearnByDoing e-meeting there is an open invitation to attend.

How It Went - LearnByDoing E-meeting 1 - 26th July 2007

2007-07-26T18:01:00.000+01:00

Today we had our first LearnByDoing E-meeting.

We met at the Minciu Sodas chat room. There were seven of us there. We were from three continents - Africa, Europe, and North America - and from five countries. Two more friends from Africa were kept in contact with the chat-room meeting through yahoo chat, because they experienced problems accessing the chat room from their cybercafes.

Most of us are already in contact through the LearningFromEachOther yahoo group. We were also happy to welcome a newcomer - Caroline Ifeka.

We are developing a format where:
The session topic and the meeting leader(s) are agreed beforehand.
We start off with informal chat, and break up for informal chat again at the end of the formal session.
When everyone has arrived the formal session begins and we agree an agenda.
At the end of the formal session there is a review of what has been discussed and learned.
The formal session closes.
People have the opportunity for informal chat before logging off.

As this is a LearnByDoing project the structure of the e-meetings are not already set. It is part of the project to develop effective strategies for e-meetings, strategies that suit the different e-locations where we meet - and suit the real world locations (and cultures) where we are connecting with the Internet.

In this first meeting we did start and end with informal chat, and there was a more structured central session which had a formal ending. We made sure that everyone was able to use colour to make it easy to follow which contributions were made by which people. We discussed various practical issues relating to access and personal introductions.

We are exploring how to develop the right balance between making people feel at home in the group, and moving forward with the business of the meeting. For our purpose of having an e-meeting in a chat room it is a disadvantage that, when people join in, they do not see the chat that has already taken place.

Maybe we can get our chat room changed so that people can easily see what they have missed. (Of course in a real world meeting you do not get the chance to see what you have missed - but e-meetings offer different possibilities.) Maybe we will simply agree that if anyone arrives after the formal session begins we will not be able to greet them properly until the formal session is over.

We looked at the possibility of preparing personal introductions before the e-meeting begins, so people can easily introduce themselves at the appropriate moment. We will explore ways of doing that effectively as the project develops.

The chat from the e-meeting can be read here...

July 26th - change of venue.

2007-07-24T15:58:00.000+01:00

Change of arrangements ref LearnByDoing e-meeting planned for Thursday July 26th. The meeting on the 26th will now be held in the WorkNets Chat Room at 2.30 pm London Time (1.30 GMT. Please click here to check your timezone.)

The audiographic version of the e-meeting, to be held at Trainserspod has been postponed until until August (probably the 16th).

Open Invitation

2007-07-15T00:32:00.000+01:00

You are invited to participate in the next LearnByDoing virtual event - provisional date and time Thursday August 16th 1.30pm for 2 pm GMT start... (please click here to confirm your timezone.)

This event (postponed from July 26th) is the first of an occasional series of e-meetings, using audio-graphic conferencing.

Who is invited
I don't know exactly who will turn up for the first session, but I can tell you who I will be inviting, either for the first session or as the series gets underway. They are people I have met during seven years of work on ICT for Education and Development - partly in rural Nigeria and partly in the UK using the Internet. Some I know Face to Face (F2F), some I e-know. I am also inviting people who are friends of my friends, or contacts of my contacts - so please feel free to circulate the details. Anyone who happens to come across this invitation and feels it is of interest is invited. For log-in details email me Pam quoting "LearnByDoing July 26th" in the subject line.

Shared interests and collaboration
For years I have valued my Internet networks and my grassroots networks and wanted the people in them to know each other better. This series of e-meetings is a step in that direction. Attendance is free of charge. I hope that as the series progresses we will develop a core group of people who attend on a fairly regular basis - and that new shared interests will be discovered and new collaborations will result. However, regular attendance is not essential as each session will stand on its own.

Reducing knowledge gaps and cultural gaps
The Internet is heralded as the death of distance. Through these e-meetings I hope we will reduce the knowledge gaps, and cultural gaps, between people in my two very different, but overlapping, networks. Each session will have a similar structure and will focus on some topic dear to the heart of one or more people in the core group. These are people who routinely use ICT - through emails and chat - to share information with each other about the practical work they are doing in grassroots education and development. The audio-graphic sessions offer a more sophisticated way of e-meeting - and bring together a wider group to "rub minds". Sessions are hosted by Trainerspod using Elluminate

People you might meet

Members of the Learning From Each Other yahoo group that I lead within Minciu Sodas (Lithuanian for "Orchard of Thoughts"), which includes grassroots activists from several African countries.
Members of the Teachers Talking (TT) yahoo group which was set up to support the first TT ICT training course for rural teachers, at Fantsuam, in 2004.
Other ICT4Education and Development activists who are working with African grassroots projects.
Facebook friends such as the ICT4D group from Royal Holloway College University of London.
Other individuals from Cawdnet and other networks.
People from discussion lists related to ICT4Ed and Development.

The first session
In the first session I will be setting the scene, sharing long term vision, introducing people to each other, explaining our plans for the next twelve months, promoting the "three legged stool" model of effective ICT for Education and Development, and generally laying the foundations for this innovative, practical, LearnByDoing project. For log-in details email me Pam quoting "LearnByDoing July 26th" in the subject line. As with any project there are benefits if you are in at the start. Please circulate this information as appropriate.

The LearnByDoing Blog... is part of a practical project

2007-07-03T19:39:00.000+01:00

As the blog title suggests, the LearnByDoing blog is part of a practical project. The project "walks the talk" of using ICT for Education (ICT4Ed) and ICT for Development (ICT4D).

Starting the blog doesn't mark the start of the LearnByDoing project (although it does mark the start of some practical learning about blogs). The blog is simply a way of bringing various ongoing initiatives together in one e-location - and under one heading - LearnByDoing.

Already, people who are involved in the initiatives make up a wide ranging group in terms of practical projects, geographical locations, key interests, access to ICT, skills, experience, education, languages, age, employment, cultural backgrounds and other variables. We welcome newcomers who also want to Learn By Doing.

This blog is being co-authored by Lorraine Duff and Pamela McLean. (We have just discovered how we can set up a blog with shared authorship.) The initiatives we will be describing here are ones where we are actively involved, and which give us, and others, a chance to LearnByDoing. The initiatives all involve ICT and have some connection with education and/or development.

We have a Learning From Each Other yahoo group and we also hold e-meetings to share information about our various projects. Our next e-meeting is on Thursday 5th July, 4.30pm Kenya time, at the WorkNets Chat Room - please check your time zone. It will be the second e-meeting that we've held at the chat room. After the first one we decided more structure was needed. This time, in addition to having a main contributor (who influences the content) we will also be having a chairman and some kind of agenda. We are making plans for the e-meeting in the "let's e-meet again" thread. The LearningFromEachOther yahoo group archives are open and new members are welcome.

We don't have any set plans for how often we'll write the blog. It is unlikely to be a comprehensive journal. Probably it will be more like a series of post-cards sent in now and again from various locations (real and virtual) relevant to the blog. As we send in the "postcards"we can add links down the side panel - providing easy reference directions to the locations mentioned in our "post-cards". Then other people can follow around, and join in what seems of interest.

Perhaps that is how it will work.

We will find out as we -LearnByDoing...