Email backlog, blog,Open everything and TT anniversary

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

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

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

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

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.