"Flash Learning" and Collaboration

[Richard C Close]

Chrysalis Campaign projects for the UNESCO Digital Storytelling portal and the Community Learning Center portal in the US are both a year old with plenty of evidence of the power of collaboration.

What we are doing is blending Web 20 learning with the human elements of small group project based learning in poverty settings.

 

Some new research on minority STEM learning in NYC points out that it is not the technology or STEM curriculum that lift students into the better colleges but it was the extra attention and mentoring that did it.

 

When telecentres, Learning Centers fail to see that it is the human collaboration side of things that make these programs highly successful they fail. When technology based learning program are driven by the community they are successful. This what we are doing now.

 

When I was writing for IDC their first paper on the "Architecture of Distance Learning" we had great debates on if indexed based learning in a closed publishing model would be better that an open relational search based model. My thought was that a relational model would serve peopl better. I was defeated in that the publishing model was the only way to make money. That was 1998, now we see that a community based model of learning is what people use 99% of the time. Also FaceBook is making plenty of money. People go to WebMD to learn when to take a child to the doctor or food.com to learn cooking.

 

What ICT needs to grasp is how collective "Flash Learning" can take place. ICT makes the closed textbook and classroom transparent. Farmers sharing best practices in the Congo is perhaps more relevant that an academics view of farming is from Europe.

 

When we use web resources as simply an element to shared between a group of recovering women, such as them publishing their poems or building a YouTube channel, the feeling in the room is electric. Real transformation is taking place. If I have them take an eLearning course of drug addiction, little if anything is happening.

 

ICT leaders must focus their attention on the collaborative and publishing power of the Net to see the real magic of it. The delivery of content is the least of its power.

 

Publishing a democratic constitution does not create a revolution. The collaboration and unification of ideas and emotions create the forces of change