Learning, doing, and a couple of meetings

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

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

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

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!

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.

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

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.