Documentation of the Café Weltgeist OpenSpace Online-Conference
"Global Learning & Shaping the Future"
Nov 18, 2003
OLD & NEW WAYS OF LEARNING
>>> Global Education
>>> Old & New Ways of Learning
>>> Netizenship
>> 1: "In which way can schools contribute to global learning?"
>> 2: "i would like to talk with you about international examples (best practice) of access to global learning"
>> 3: "how can we teach an international group considering the cultural differences and ways of learning?"
>> 4: "what can culture be and contribute towards a positive future?"
>> 5: "How can we involve more school subjects than foreign language teaching in global learning?"
>> 6: "Educational Online Magazines - How can they contribute to Global Learning?"
>> 7: "How do we eliminate the disparity of quality and content of global education" issues?
>> 8: "How to spread the concept of netizen - of online citizen, one who participates in vital affairs"
>> 9: "how can we can overcome our box thinking, falt thinking and labeling, our imagined feeling right"
>> 10: "How do we achieve universal access at little or no cost?"
>> 11: "How can we build Global Sustainability Education in all schools worldwide?"
>> 12: "How can we connect learners and work together to create new learning communities?"
Important results / arrangements / recommendations:
QUOTES:
"People understand each other throgh the performing arts" (Uirá de Silvio, 14, Brasil)
"I feel that one of the biggest problems is widespread ignorance of other peole and their cultures and basically the way others live their lives on a daily basis!" (Sipho Ngwenya, Texas, USA / South Africa / Zimbabwe )
"A sense of culture's place and history embedded in the world would be a good place to start." (Julia Lohmann, London / Germany)
> Use a common language
> Develop interpersonal communication skills
> Try to understand each other culturally, e.g. by setting up a common network/learning environment.
> Learn about each other's everyday life.
> Get to know each other's similarities first, establish trust, then explore the differences
> Solution / Best Practice:
> Introduce a common goal to work on.
> Art, music and theater are excellent means for nurturing intercultural understanding, appreciation, friendship and competence
> Nurture intercultural education from a very early age
> Provide Spaces for children and youth to express themselves meaningfully and effectively
> DIFFERENCES in learning procedures (mental, emotive, methodical) in different countries / cultures should be examined and a record exchanged to spark off understanding and new ideas in the participating nations
> The record should also be presented to gov't officials to show that something is happening
This can be done while training in international NGOs, to use and demonstrate the potential of NGOs as innovators
> The internet has huge potential for intercultural encounters and exchange
> Co-creative Online Learning Environments are promising educational tools
- e.g. children from all over the world producing and sharing art, music and songs, or co-laborate on a musical or theater, conflict solving theater play;
besides the (documented) real life event, the resulting long-term internet LearnScape can be explored, discussed and edited (children as each others teachers)
> the younger generation informally educates the older generations
> involve the older generation potentials in their local quarters
The Royal College of Art in London brings together students from more than 40 countries (Julia Lohmann)
Interact Clubs (Rotary Brasil) do peace projects with grade 3/4 and send results to UN and palestine, www.quest.org (Uirá de Silvio)
The Communication format plays a distinctive role as to whether we speak in discussion-percussion or listen attentively to get to know the other, and enter a co-creative dialogue. Facilitating fruitful and solution-oriented communication has been a matter-of-heart of Farah Lenser and Heiner Benking. For severa years, they have been applying succesfully the Magic Round Table method. Maybe have a look at http://www.open-forum.de , but be aware that the moderator's personality plays an important role in establishing a relaxed atmosphere and more... We are very blessed to have Farah with us.
Gabriela Ender, inventrice of the OpenSpace-Online Conference format also stems from the family of dialogue format innovation. She has been working for many years as a Face2Face OpenSpace Facilitator.
1. Collect different cultural / national approaches to Learning to make teaching more complete
2. Dear JULIA MORTON-MARR :-)
In session3, post 31, you mention a common language:"What about Ido?"
Please explain :-)
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Important results / arrangements / recommendations:
> learners are connected through intoduction: web, bulletin boards, newspapers, face-to-face
> It is important that each learner has an advantage, a reason for participating in a community
> The internet offers a huge opportunity and potential for connecting and introducing people to various learning communities
> People need new models for creating new types of learning communities
> We must find ways to assist people in forming new learning communities and facilitating a life long love of learning
> People must experience practical impact of their new knowledge (cp. above: Issue 1 / "Expand Horizons")
1. Alternative models for learning communities
- Homeschooling
- Community based learning opportunities
- eLearning portals
- Netizen communities
- faith based learning communities, e.g. http://www.rocktheworld.org, http://www.emergentvillage.com
2. How can we assist people in creating new learning communities ?
3. How can we facilitate a desire for life-long learning ?
4. How are people learning in other parts of the world ?
5. How do we teach self-learning competence ?
6. How do we introduce self-learning competence to conventional schools ?
Important results / arrangements / recommendations:
We discussed not only how it feels like to be an island - when one once thought like beeing an ocean - so we had the new versus old world - but that there is a need to intergrate and also reduce complexity in orde to keep things or issues digestible and simple enough to hold and grasp.
We discussed how to overcome box thinking and how the early Internet developments allowed peole to learn from the other side - the alien perspective...
We played with metaphors like lands and oceans and tried to find out what old thinkers like Lyotard might be able to help us and tell us how.
We also tackled the issue of people having different capacities, scopes, backgrounds and assumptions/attentions.
by Heiner Benking (in his facet as a mental architect)
- Shared Frames of Reference
- Cognitive Panorama
- EcoCube / Blackbox Nature
- Widening the Horizon of Compassion
- A New Global Covenant
- Towards an Integral Agenda
- Old & New Ways of Learning : 12 theses
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