Forming a ‘Mindbank’, modelling informed community in education

http://flnw.wikispaces.com

Networked learning in nature (Swarming)

• ‘Consider the behaviour of a swarming beehive., a common metaphor for society among the economy-as-ecosystem crowd.’

• ‘A few bee scouts fly off to check new locations for the hive. Upon returning home, they report their findings by dancing on the resting swarm.’

• ‘The more suitable the place, the more ecstatic and compelling the dance.’

• ‘The most compelling dancer convinces deputy bees to check out the spot it has found; those bees then return to express in dance their own endorsement of the site.’

• ‘As more and more bees go to see it, more and more follow. A feedback loop has been set in motion, increasing in strength until the entire swarm takes off en masse for its new location.’

• The hive has chosen & the honey can be farmed by the farmer! Ref:http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1998/05/goldman.html

and Kevin Kelly ‘Out of control’ book

Forming a ‘Mindbank’/ modelling community ‘swarming’ in education

• As your learning facilitator I will help you go through the process of creating your own personal mindbank to enable you to achieve your goals.’

• Your ‘mindbank’ will typically include, family friends work colleagues and service providers from day to day life; people who want to associate privately or publicly that can help you get things done.

• Invite others to be a part of your personal network, people to show things to, get advice from, delegate to.

• Over time as you build relationships with the people, you will be able to find the right people to deal with a specific issue or task and in the process you will learn.

Example Teacher instructing student on first day of school/ college:

Community learning commons• ‘How to’ use social software provides the digital

literacy foundation to form connections with others however at the core of community learning commons are the communication skills needed to manage and form human relationships and learn with others…’ Ref: Knowledge Foundations Map of future forces affecting education

• A ‘Mindbank’ maps and makes visible tangible and intangible assets (outside of school/ college and offline) like knowledge trust, reputation, loyalty to create greater relationships of exchange.

Behavioural engineering & data farming/ Web 2.0

Information flow & alternative media • Much like the bee example we’ve had an evolution of the web with

new swarming technology given to us for free which enables us to communicate with people in our ‘mindbank’

• People are using swarming technology i.e. Web 2.0 and mobiles to form social networks and share information

• In return service providers analyse and record behaviour and target advertising and sell the farmed data to other commercial interests.

• Payoff – Huge educational benefits in enabling creative expression through alternative media, enabling information flow outside of mainstream media.

• We appear to be really comfortable with openly sharing personal data online

• It can be argued that the user behaviour is engineered and predictive through the design of the technologies and studies of behaviourism, all as part of a business model. Facebook example

• Over time users (worker bees) can be socially conditioned by corporations, for example to think nothing of openly sharing personal information and therefore like the beekeeper does, farmed as part of the knowledge/ surveillance economy.

Modelling informed

community in education –

‘The payoff’

http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=2081556337&size=lLeigh Blackall – Otago Polytechnic

Proposed curriculum for developing sustainable capacity, community engagement and engaged curriculum.

Example: Exposing the school/ college/ community ‘Mindbank’ to new ways of thinking

Example learning resource : The Story of Stuff

“Dissemination strategies• Share a DVD• Tell friend• Host a Screening

– If you liked The Story of Stuff and the messages it conveys, we invite you to share it with your community by showing the film at a house party, or classroom, or church group, or neighborhood association or any other location. Here is everything you need to organize a successful event:

– Tips for Holding a Party (PDF)– Invitations (PDF)– Taking Action (PDF)– Group Activities (PDF)– Discussion Guide (PDF)– 8.5in x 11in Screening Poster (PDF) – 11in x 17in Screening Poster (PDF) “

Social Economic & Environmental issues that will affect community soon

In the community/ college/ school discuss real life issues in relation to subject matter or your industry, for example:

EconomyInflation, Hyperinflation, Stagflation, Fiat currency, Collapse of fiat currency, Fiat digital currency, RFID tagging, Price of gold/ silver, Price of commodities i.e. Oil, Peak oil, Carbon taxation, Food, cost of living i.e. travel, housing, food, employment, unemployment, education, debt problems, history…

Social issuesHealthy shopping, community learning, spirituality, developing readiness and resilience, rescripting life, RFID tagging, police states, surveillance society, marketing, corporate control, localism, glocalism, net neutrality, filtering internet, community initiatives, history…

EnvironmentalEcological: climate change, global warming, genetic engineering i.e. genetically engineered food, large scale pandemics i.e. bird flu, sustainable living communities i.e. permaculture, localism again, water crisis in Australia, food crisis, history…

Don’t forget: Critically use alternative media (‘the payoff’) in the conversation. For example: Knowledge Works – Future Forces affecting Education

Sustainability curriculum

Ref: http://wikieducator.org/Sustainability‘Educational and learning resources are treated as critical common-pool resources are treated as critical common-pool resources much like clean water, healthy oceans, and fertile land necessary for sustainability in an innovation-driven economy..’Ref: Knowledge Foundations Map of future forces affecting education

What if? Business not as usual - The economy as a barter system

• ‘The father of Reagonomics and former Wall Street Journal editor Paul Craig Roberts has warned that the collapsing dollar will eventually cripple the European economy and may even return the world economy to a barter system as financial chaos ensues.

• Roberts served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration and is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service.’ i.e. He is fair dinkum, Google it.

Will a ‘Mindbank’ enable community information flow that can be acted upon

Real life economic, social and negative changes are on the horizon. It could be argued that education that initiate to develop local community support could help, for example through:

• Accessing/ providing local employment/ business opportunities

• Developing self reliant knowledge and skills• Fostering real life community relationships  to support each

other• Raising awareness of what's happening in the economy and

politically and how it will affect the community• In terms of addressing these issues online networks alone

simply don't cut the mustard. • People need community for support.

Consequences

"Only a large-scale popular movement towards decentralization and self-help can arrest the present tendency towards statism," he warned. "At present there is no sign that such a movement will take place."

Aldous Huxley – ‘Brave New World’ foreword

This trend is already forseen by think tanks:

"The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx," says the report. The thesis is based on a growing gap between the middle classes and the super-rich on one hand and an urban under-class threatening social order: "The world's middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest".

Quote from DOD DCDC 2007 -2036 strategic trends report*

Institutions Need Networks; Human

Beings Need Communities • "The humming of the great hive society

foreseen by Francis Bacon, and by H.G. Wells in The Sleeper Awakes, has never sounded louder than it does to us right now. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn nothing is important; force them to plead for the natural right to the toilet, and they will become liars and toadies; ridicule them and they will retreat from human association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even. The habits taught in large-scale organizations are deadly." John Taylor Gatto