All posts by Maha Bali

International Something: Why You Should Care #DigPed

Accessibility, Contexts Matter, Diversity, Inclusivity, MOOCs



flickr photo shared by andreas.klodt under a Creative Commons ( BY-NC-SA ) license

This article was co-authored over THREE timezones, by Maha Bali (in Cairo, Egypt), Kate Bowles (in Wollongong, Australia) and Paul Prinsloo (South African currently in Virginia, USA) and refers to a workshop we are co-facilitating at the Digital Pedagogy Lab Institute in UMW. You can watch live (or recorded) at this YouTube link (we hope YouTube works or at least streams well enough in your country). The workshop takes place Thursday August 11 at 4pm EDT (Virtually connecting website converts to your timezone – because we know we all live in different timezones – it will already by Friday for Kate!)

Yesterday, in a Virtually Connecting conversation, Ken Bauer commented on having virtual participants located in Mexico, Austria, South Africa and Egypt, compared to a regular VC hangout where most people were usually from the US. He asked how we could create more such conversations. Audrey Watters commented on the importance of this given the limited US-centric views of ed tech. Jesse Stommel and Maha Bali talked about intentionality: recognizing the importance of internationalism and acting upon it are very different things.

A while ago, Digital Pedagogy Lab co-directors Jesse Stommel and Sean Michael Morris asked Maha to create a hybrid workshop for DPLI UMW on “something international”, to invite other facilitators and organize it however she saw fit. This invitation is encouraging: it recognizes the value of having international voices be part of such an intensively local event, with the freedom to speak for themselves, including in quite critical ways.

Maha invited Paul Prinsloo from South Africa (who will be onsite) and Kate Bowles from Australia (who like Maha will be a virtual participant). Working in various-sized education systems outside the US we’re all familiar with complications of wrangling international digital pedagogy out of faulty internet connections, language confusion, and above all timezone mismatches. This is also the infrastructure of our research and professional networking; for us, working as academics means international-first, not as an afterthought. So we responded enthusiastically.

Our collaboration in developing this workshop has itself been about the practicalities of working internationally. Sometimes we’ve all been online at the same time; just as often we’ve left messages for each other to find on waking up or getting to work. And while doing this, we’ve learned about each other’s work schedules, life histories and work spaces, as we’ve become sensitised to the work-life rhythms of our three lives. We use some but not all of the same channels, so even our three-way conversation isn’t completely contained anywhere. We don’t use the same digital devices and this has had a surprising impact on how we each work when we’re away from our desks. We can work together in English, but we’ve had to look things up to fully understand their meaning. And even though we’re familiar with each other’s work, it turns out we’re still unfamiliar with important elements in each other’s political, cultural and national context.

Since 2012 critical educators have been hearing regularly about how open digital pedagogy or social networking expands access to learning to everyone in the world. This is now such a familiar claim that we don’t need to name the edtech visionaries and entrepreneurial capitalists who’ve been relentlessly promoting it—it has become a defining truism in digital pedagogy. However, for most of us not in the US (or the UK), this vision has often signalled top-down, US-to-world, Anglo-oriented, decontextualized, culturally irrelevant, infrastructure-insensitive, and timezone-ignorant aspirations, even when the invitation for us to join in may be well-intentioned.

We want to rethink this one-way flow of benefits, and argue instead that all learning is enriched when we have the opportunity to hear from voices markedly different from our own. We want to suggest that when US culture and educational systems are the default for MOOCs and similar platforms, international voices are exoticized, marginalized and silenced at once. We also want to challenge the tendency to call something “global” when only two or three countries are involved, often including only participants from powerful institutions, and everything is in English.

But even for those learners/educators outside the US who do have both the internet and the English to participate, there are power dynamics that need to be made explicit. Whenever you connect online, you connect on someone’s terms, and in digital pedagogy these are often the terms designed by educators who enjoy the network infrastructure and cultural capital associated with US institutions. And while overcoming technical access barriers to the internet is critical for learners around the world, access on US terms or to spaces and platforms controlled by US assumptions can often introduce new cultural barriers for learners outside the US. Being more sensitive about these issues also allows us to recognize the fact that we often disregard issues of access and the different cultural and class barriers and the (in)visible fault-lines of race, gender and class in the US.

Our workshop is therefore an attempt to talk openly about how things look like from our respective non-US perspectives. We’ll be sharing case studies of our own experiences that will demonstrate different angles on the complexity of transnational education. And we will invite participants (onsite and virtually) to consider ways to build more inclusive networked learning experiences. While we are talking particularly about networked learning, much of what we discuss will apply to both onsite and online international learners and teachers.

We also recognize that inclusivity and cultural relevance are not unique to international learners, but connect to issues of identity and difference that are pressing within the US. There are learners inside the US for whom language or technology access are immediate practical barriers; and learners whose experience is continually affected by educators with a poor understanding of their cultural context or their personal priorities.

And this is why after one hour of discussing internationalness, we will have a hallway conversation with Annemarie Perez, Chris Gilliard (both onsite) and Sherri Spelic (virtually) on how identity and difference shape their practice in digital pedagogy.

If you can’t come to our workshop, we encourage you to read this article by Maha which is detailed but not very long case study on the shortcomings of an attempt at global learning). But we hope you can join us, as we explore what can be achieved in a three-timezone workshop relying on a network of regional and domestic internet technologies.

You can watch the workshop live here:

And the hallway conversation following it here:

And we will be working on a Google doc if you can’t be part of the live session but would like to contribute: http://bit.ly/inclusiveDigPed

On Whose Terms Are We (Digital) Citizens? #MyDigCiz #DigCiz

Contexts Matter,

 

This post is part of #DigCiz, a conversation about Digital Citizenship. Check out http://digciz.org/ for more. This post is cross-posted there as well.


flickr photo shared by ** RCB ** under a Creative Commons ( BY ) license

When we practice digital citizenship or foster it in our students, how do we define it? On whose terms do we encourage it?

When we enact our digital citizenship on Twitter, we are complying to a 140 character limit – or stretching it, or challenging it, depending how you use it. But we are sound-biting our expression.

When we enact our digital citizenship in a particular language, what does this mean?

As an academic, what does it mean that I express my anger at injustice in a poem (conveniently entitled “I’m Not Angry at You”; conveniently widely shared by the people I am NOT angry at, and not, of course, the ones I AM angry at). What does it mean to express ourselves that way instead of more formally, more academically? What does it mean to express ourselves that way instead of in more concrete ways, more embodied ways, like going out into the street and helping someone, like actually fundraising to help others, like actually welcoming someone into our own homes? What does it mean that I can express myself about international events online but am cautious to do so about local ones?

When we think about promoting a digital literacy of criticality, do we also remember the need to foster empathy? Do we recognize that sometimes, in our zeal to help students question, we may also be hampering their capacity to truly listen to the “other” with an open mind? Do we recognize the limits of promoting empathy digitally, and do we explicitly work to help ourselves and others bring that back into our daily, embodied lives? Do we recognize, deep in our heart and mind and gut, that rationality is not necessarily the highest value, and that sometimes, morality needs to override it?

Little examples that got me going:

So what is your digital citizenship? Where are examples of people enacting their digital citizenship that you admire? What are examples of your own digital citizenship that you wish you would do more of? But also – what would your ideal digital citizenship look like? Or in what ways is your digital citizenship incomplete , imperfect, flawed?

Write it on paper, do something at work, create a gif, write a poem, do whatever you think is right, express yourself in your own way, listen to someone you haven’t truly listened to before..talk to someone you wouldn’t normally have talked to… question something, cry with someone,  live or imagine or dream… and if you’re comfortable with sharing, share it as a comment here or as a tweet to #MyDigCiz #DigCiz this week. Or respond to someone else’s.

Call for Ideas: Envisioning Postcolonial MOOCs #pocomooc

Contexts Matter, Diversity, EdConteXts, MOOCs, pedagogy, , ,

By Maha Bali and Shyam Sharma, edcontexts co-founders and facilitators

Can we safely say that xMOOCs, for the most part, reproduce privilege? The privileged elite universities that can afford to create them, the privileged star professors who have the resources to build them, the privileged mostly Western point of view they perpetuate, and the privileged learners who can access them?

But can we also say we see a glimmer of hope in initiatives such as connectivist MOOCs that decenter authority (e.g. #rhihzo14, #rhizo15), MOOCs from non-Western origins (e.g. the Arab Edraak) and people who are able to challenge the xMOOC paradigm even while offering their MOOCs on places like Coursera (the Universiry of Edinburgh people who do #edcmooc and Jesse Stommel et al who did #moocspeare and Cathy Davidson who did #FutureEd)?

We (Maha and Shyam) are writing a book chapter with the title “Envisioning the Postcolonial MOOC” and we would like to solicit ideas from people everywhere on what that might entail. We do so because while we have our own ideas, part of our vision involves diversity and inclusivity. We also didn’t do a formal research study because we hope you are willing to make your responses open and attributable to you.

How do YOU envision a postcolonial* MOOC?
[* we understand postcolonial here broadly to mean anything that challenges the legacy of colonialism/imperialism, or even neocolonialism)

Let us know in the comments here, or tweet to #pocoMOOC or write a brief blogpost and link it in the comments here or on Twitter using #PocoMOOC. We will curate on edcontexts.org and hopefully find a way to use these ideas in our book chapter, attributing you appropriately.

Unfortunately we are only giving you one week (because we don’t have much more time) – even a one-line contribution can be valuable. So what do you think? You have until August 18. Go 🙂

Thanks for taking the time!

20150811-103912.jpg
Image “Magical Town of Tepotzlan Mexico-16″
by Christopher William Atach, retrieved from Flickr under CC-BY-SA license

Patriarchy — The Invisible Elephant in the Classroom!

Contexts Matter, Diversity, EdConteXts,

By Sushmita Maryam, Bangalore, India

Patriarchy is deep rooted in cultures around the world, in all kinds of social institutions, including education. It qualifies male gender to be the head of the family or society reflecting the belief upon which it stands – male is superior of all genders.Most societies function within the patriarchal framework. The idea of male superiority is fed into the human mind at a very young age- primary feeders being the parents, immediate members of the family and teachers. Children imbibe rigid ideas of gender roles based on patriarchy that eventually become their psychological make-up and foundations of their identity as they grow into adults; men- the primary decision makers and women – the primary homemakers. They live by it further cementing the social structure and propelling biological and social evolution in that direction. The human mind has thus evolved for generations’ now preserving patriarchy; it has become the fundamental structure of living – in subtler forms in some societies of course, but always present.

Links to some interesting blogs that look at the origin of patriarchy, as I was researching the topic are here and here. Most studies point to gender roles as the origin of the patriarchal system and not to natural biology of human race. This lays bare the belief that biologically male is the superior gender suited to lead and so patriarchy is the natural order of being for humankind. Superiority of male intelligence is more an idea than a fact. No studies have been able to conclusively establish it. There sure are biological differences in the way a man’s and a woman’s brain is, structurally. Studies suggest that these differences could also be attributed to the way human brain has evolved, both biologically and psychologically owing to the repetition of roles the genders have been engaged in over generations.

It seems that gender roles in the ancient times emanated from the then circumstances when survival and sustenance were the aim of life for humans. A woman’s life was attributed more value owing to childbearing and nursing – for sustaining and further building the human community, while men were considered more dispensable in that context. Hence they were in a position to put their lives at risk fighting threats in the wilderness in the egalitarian (gender equal) hunter gatherer societies.

These roles however when extended beyond those times in which they were relevant, gradually solidified into a psychological social structure. Along the way the idea of male superiority might have set in because men may have been more visible outdoors in the wild, as the face of family and the voice of decisions in the community. This social structure that originated from need based gender roles of the past however began determining gender roles of the future, firmly hinged on the idea of male superiority, sustained by the elements of power and pleasure, spreading its roots in the human psyche as the norm.

It is only reasonable to state that man is not superior or inferior to other genders. He is, as they are. Patriarchy framing him in the image of a superior being has almost irreversibly affected human relationships and not in the best way. It has piled up the expectations of a man to unreasonable levels, coercing him to alter his sense of self, reducing it to an idea that is not realistic and does not exist. The superhero movies are exaggerated reflections of the image of the male gender and of the expectations from him– the savior, decision maker, the problem solver, the charmer, the powerful, and the doer etc

The constant pressure to live up to being the ‘man’ is a lifelong one for men.  This entails hiding his natural self behind the image of a ‘super human’ and struggling to live that disconnected identity and live up to the expectations from himself and everybody around him. It is most suffocating also because it is disguised in the cloak of superiority. And that blinds him to what it does to him. To me that is the one of the biggest challenges of patriarchy; why society as a whole and men themselves are much less aware of how patriarchy impacts this gender.

The typical expectations of men (e.g. in India) are disguised as the privileges that come with being the head of the family or society. Some of these expectations, depending on which part of the world he is in, are to be the breadwinner at any cost, to financially provide for the immediate and extended family, to live with an unduly inflated ego and aggression, to be smarter and more intelligent than the girlfriend/wife, to seem superior to those around and, the worst of all, to suppress ‘human’ emotions.

Having to suppress feelings and emotions is the most unreasonable of all expectations – also because the other expectations mean that he is in a constant state of stress and confusion – a state which is not as obvious as a state of conflict because of its constancy and normalcy. Constantly suppressing emotions is a contradiction to being human and hence a prime source of inner conflict. Also severely stressful is to live a life disconnected from self to prove to oneself and to everybody around one’s worthiness to belong – in this case to one’s gender. A huge part of male aggression may be generating from this intense inner conflict which may even have become inherent to the male psyche through evolution. And what could be powering the aggression further is his resorting to his ego, reminding himself of his superiority to justify it all.

Fear of failure in conforming to the social image of ‘man’ because it would invariably lead to his rejection otherwise, may be seen as a dominant emotion that drives his action and the action of those around him. My ex-colleague was asked by his earning wife to leave home for his inability to earn a steady income; my friend and her mother bully her spouse for her not having the freedom to give up her job as his career is unstable; my friend who is well placed in his career is always struggling to reach a higher goal, compromising on his peace of mind, his present and his relationships – because he needs to be the best, as he was brought up believing. Action that comes from fear and insecurity is bound to create conflict within oneself and within one’s relationships.

Domestic abuse, dowry crimes, pornography, rape, gender discrimination, female foeticide and infanticide, prostitution, honourkillings are some of the most visible manifestations of patriarchy. The passive conflicts that patriarchy fuels, causing relationships to breakdown, whether within families, in work spaces or elsewhere, are rarely given the attention they deserve, although every person has suffered and suffers it – it is everywhere – a reflection of how deep rooted it is in the human psyche.  Unfortunately, despite this, patriarchy is not explicitly addressed by educational curricula in most places, but it is an elephant in the classroom nonetheless.

One of the things that have limited the seeing of the real impact of patriarchy on relationships is looking at it through the lens of women’s rights alone. It promotes the general and popular view that patriarchy is pro men. Unfortunately, not understanding this structure and its manifestations in its wholeness is inadvertently limiting relationships, blocking the emergence of sustainable solutions for a more coherent world.

Patriarchy is as imprisoning for men as it is for women. The only difference is, as previously mentioned, for men the superiority disguise makes it almost impossible for him to see that it is imprisoning him, and in his case in his ego. To add to that the conveniences of not having to take as much responsibility for the physical aspect of raising children and not having to take equal responsibility for the chores around the house make it even more difficult to acknowledge it, even if he might see glimpses of what he is stuck in. For women it is as clear and direct as it can get when she is told that she deserves less because of her gender, that it restricts her freedom to be the person that she is.

Also important to note is, transgender persons are completely invisible in the patriarchal system, one of the probable reasons why they are not represented or actively considered in the policies and laws of many countries, and are not visible in the eyes of many people.

What is the point in patriarchy when it is completely blind to a gender (transgender individuals); forces a gender (men) to live a life of illusion and coerces a gender (women) to be the subservient one – stealing everyone’s basic freedom to be one’s own self; locking all in a lifelong struggle to cope? Individuals have different capabilities which are irrespective of their gender. However, they are to live by the rules that patriarchy lays for them – altering and manipulating their capabilities, skills, sense of self and perceptions to suit these gender norms. What is even more baffling is women and men are then expected to come together and form ideal families and build peaceful and stable societies on this shaky fragile and rigid foundation. Relationships cannot get more twisted and complicated than that, can they?

Looking at the relevance of social constructs and ideas in the context of human relationships is imperative because quality of our life is dependent on the quality of our relationships– whether with oneself or with others. We tend to discount that the chaos and conflict in society or the world is reflective of conflicted and chaotic human relationships.

Patriarchy at some point in the past may or may not have made sense; there is no way to establish the certainty of that.Spending time and energy, dissecting the past or imagining the future is not as effective in finding sustainable solutions for the challenges that we live with in the present.  Let us look at situations in the present because that is where we are all the time.

Is patriarchy making sense in the present?

Is it not time that educators and other responsible adults around the world began addressing this elephant in the room?

[Editor’s note: readers may be interested in reading bell hooks’ perspective on how patriarchy affects men as well – her book The Will to Change is highly recommended — MB]

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About the Author:
Sushimita Maryam
Sushmita Maryam is a Mediator and a Conflict Resolution Practitioner who has co-founded the ‘We are Peace’ network that works with Educational Institutions in facilitating awareness of conflict and peace using tools of dialogue and skills of mediation among teachers, students and their parents in an effort to awaken youth to being peace promoters their personal lives, homes, communities and the world at large. Sushmita is the chosen participant from India for the United Nations Alliance of Civilisations (UNAOC) summer school 2014 that brings together 75 youth from across the globe, to address pressing global challenges, within the context of cultural and religious diversity.

#IfMalalaWasMyStudent

Contexts Matter, Diversity, EdConteXts, Inclusivity, Inspiration, pedagogy, Teaching, Twitter

This post is republished with permission from Sherif Osman’s blog, and we invite readers to use the hashtag #IfMalalaWasMyStudent on Twitter and their blogs, and Sherif and Edcontexts will compile responses and storify them, then publish here.

by Sherif Osman, Cairo, Egypt

I was watching the Jon Stewart show [the other day] and he was interviewing Malala, interestingly enough we were just talking about her at work that morning. It got me thinking, what if Malala was a girl in my class? Would I realise her potential? Would I encourage her? Would I be intimidated? Would I differentiate for her? Would I modify my teaching?

A better way to think about this, if one of your students was a Nobel peace laureate and has an international fund raising organisation dedicated to education access and educational reform. Would you feel you had to up your game? If so, does that mean that teachers need students that will challenge them in order to excel? What does that mean for ‘low ability’ group settings? Is that beneficial for students or teachers if that’s the case? Hmm…

As I continued to watch the show, I was intrigued. Her knowledge and vocab were excellent for a student her age; you could tell it wasn’t something she’d practiced, her wit and confidence shone through. I’ve met many students who surprised me with their knowledge, or their passion, or their confidence, or their attitude, or initiative, but rarely all those combined. I began to remember certain students, and wonder what they were up to now and if they had realised their potential? Are they enjoying what they are doing?

Earlier this year, a colleague at work asked me to write an article about an incident that happened to me as a student and how that affected my teaching. Since writing that article, I frequently started thinking about my time in the classroom as a student and what I can learn from it now as a teacher.

This got me thinking that I am who I am today because of my interactions in the classroom for a large portion of my life. My interactions with the teachers and other students have had a massive impact on my life and hence who I am today. That then begs the question, could I have been much better at something had my teachers or one of my teachers realised my potential in a particular area? A more positive way to look at this, have I excelled at something because someone helped me realise my potential? Who where they and what did they do differently? Perhaps this reflection can help me help my students.

When speaking to a colleague at work about this post idea, she suggested that I follow this post up with several posts where I reflect on those incidents and how they affected me. She then jokingly suggested I start a twitter movement #ifMalalaWasMyStudent where people can post their views on this. I liked the idea so much that I am going to do it. So I invite you all to share your stories or reflections on this hashtag. I will try and compile all the responses in a blog post to follow this up.

#ifMalalaWasMyStudent

About the Author:
Sherif Osman
Sherif Osman (@the_sosman) currently works as part of the Pedagogy & Assessment team at the Center for Learning & Teaching at the American University in Cairo. He also teaches a range of courses at the Professional Educator's Diploma, a teacher education program at the same institution. Sherif has a rich background that encompasses academic and professional experiences in education. He holds a Master of Arts in Education along with the Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) from the UK where he also taught in a range of schools. Teaching in different cultures and contexts fuels Sherif's passion towards education and educational research.

Connecting on Whose Terms? Extending @pernilleripp Downsides of Being a Connected Educator

EdConteXts, MOOCs, pedagogy, Twitter, , ,

By Maha Bali, Cairo, Egypt

Becoming a connected educator is probably the best thing, career-wise, that has ever happened to me. I now have a support network of other educators, where I can draw inspiration, brainstorm solutions, share problems and victories, conduct research, carry out cross-cultural classroom collaborations, get emotional support and have loads of fun. It’s an incredible approach to professional development that is messy and yet helps me learn something new and important every single day; sometimes even every tweet or blogpost, such that I learn something new every minute I am online! (Maureen Crawford recently shared a great website on the value of Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) and how to develop them)

It’s Connected Educator Month (we need a month for this daily lifestyle?) and I thought I would write this post as a response to Pernille Ripp’s post The Downsides to Being a Connected Educator. I thought it might be appropriate to write about the perspective of a connected educator from Egypt and how the downsides differ slightly, because when I connect with other educators online, I am mostly connecting with educators from the global North, on their terms. In their language (English), on their timezone (unless they are in Europe, which is my timezone), discussing what is largely their context. The downsides from my perspective look different. Continue reading Connecting on Whose Terms? Extending @pernilleripp Downsides of Being a Connected Educator →

An education(al) anecdote from Brazil

Contexts Matter, EdConteXts, Teacher Education,

By Clarissa Bezerra, Brasília, Brazil

As an educator and as a woman, I have had the privilege of having a very strong woman to look up to – my mother. Today, in my 39th birthday, after having spent most of my day by her side, I decided that it was time I wrote down a story she once told me about her life as a young and inexperienced teacher back in her hometown, a small and impoverished village by a river, called Cajari, in the heart of the state of Maranhão, northeastern region of Brazil. This was back in the early sixties, and my mom had just finished her studies, the then-called ‘Escola Normal’, which no longer exists, to become a teacher. Back then, it was the only choice a woman had to being someone’s wife and bearing children.

My grandmother Raimunda was my grandfather’s, Jerônimo, third wife. My mom was the first-born daughter of three siblings, but they had a whole bunch of other brothers and sisters from my grandpa’s first two unions. Having become an enthusiastic young teacher, my mom greatly contributed to the setting up of one of the first schools in her village, where she taught Portuguese, basic Math, and basic agricultural practices to students who were in their majority either as old as, or older than herself. She remembers the exhilarating feeling of standing in the front of the group in the very simple classroom. That was, she had always known, her true calling. She was a natural-born educator, taking after my grandma Dodoca, whom I will certainly write about in another post. Continue reading An education(al) anecdote from Brazil →

A Chinese-Australian’s Reflections on Language and Culture: a response to Bland Culture

EdConteXts, , ,

By Tanya Lau, Sydney, Australia

I was inspired to reflect on my own experiences of language and culture by Ana Carolina Calil’s EdConteXts post Bland Culture. As an Australian-born Chinese, I found that much of her story of learning English as a Brazilian kid mirrored mine, of learning Chinese: “I remember being dragged to class because we HAD TO learn Cantonese”. I don’t recall being told it was “important for our future”; the reason we were given was more along the lines of “because YOU’RE Chinese” – whatever that meant.

Like Ana Carolina, we were taught a language without context; and adding to the alienation was a pedagogy based on learning by rote and repetition. A regular homework assignment from Chinese school was to copy sets of Chinese characters into rows of specially designed grid books using a traditional calligraphy quill and ink pot. It was fun…at first. But for a 7 year old, writing the same Chinese character into a 2x2cm square every week gets boring by about character no. 5, week 1 –turning what could have been an inspiring learning experience into a dreaded chore. The historical significance of calligraphy in Chinese culture was never explained – we were simply instructed to do. That Chinese school was on a Saturday didn’t help either: while our friends from school were playing, we were reciting or copying Chinese texts.

Chinese school photo

Chinese school, where my sister and I spent Saturdays learning Cantonese. Continue reading A Chinese-Australian’s Reflections on Language and Culture: a response to Bland Culture →

Unprecedented Interconnectedness: opportunity or threat?

Contexts Matter, EdConteXts, pedagogy

By Sushimita Maryam, Bangalore, India

(This article was first published on IndiaAhead.com and is re-published here with their permission and the author’s)

Life is a bag of mixed experiences – some interesting some not so interesting – but all relevant, all impart learning, all best lived in the present. So when a student from one of the groups that I was facilitating an intercultural dialogue with asked me – ‘Sushmita what about you- what has been your great experience?’ as they were all sharing their own, I was taken aback. Not only because I was not expecting to be asked a question (that is a part of my job as the dialogue facilitator) but also because it is really hard to pick just one.
That dilemma though was only for a moment –and it seems I did not have to really think hard.‘Soliya!’ I heard myself say, straight from the heart. It is impossible to not see how incredibly rewarding an experience is when you are right there living it. ‘It is great to be here getting people from different parts of the world to talk to and listen to each other. As much as it is a wonderful learning opportunity for you, it is for me as well. This feeling of high watching you all connect with each other despite of the differences that supposedly divide you is amazing.’ I said to my group that had ten students – 2 Jordanians, 3 Egyptians, 2 Americans, One Italian, One Dutch and One Pakistani.

What is the challenge in ‘talking to each other’ and in ‘listening to each other’ and why is there the need for a facilitator to get people to do that? I would have asked that question had I not been doing the work that I do now as a mediator and as a dialogue facilitator. Continue reading Unprecedented Interconnectedness: opportunity or threat? →

School wasn’t about that…

Contexts Matter, EdConteXts, pedagogy

By Scott Johnson, Canada

My name is Scott Johnson and up until 6 years ago I worked in the building trades both being an apprentice and then teaching apprentices. My last 5 years of work involved helping build online courses at a small college in North East Alberta, Canada. A year ago the Provincial Government here cut funding to education and my job disappeared. Given that trades education hasn’t changed over the almost 50 years since I began working I’m not sure why I persist…

It was never my intention to become a teacher or be associated with education. My experience with “school” (that’s what I’ll call it) was not good, but what can you do in life without learning some things? School’s all about that, right? Anyway growing up with teachers, professors and all kinds of professional people as neighbors, it seemed natural that school was where I too could learn cool things that made me interesting and capable like them.

Except, school wasn’t about that. It was a closed system of rules and structure invented to present a world that could fit inside a school. It was orderly, lessonized and so important to itself that you could actually fail school and be blamed for being stupid. Lucky for me I had smart parents who taught me how to extract information from the world—what I wanted from school and couldn’t get. Continue reading School wasn’t about that… →