Documentation of the Café Weltgeist OpenSpace Online-Conference
"Global Learning & Shaping the Future"
Nov 18, 2003
NETIZENSHIP
>>> 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:
Is it the main task to involve government or can the access can never be universal?
The question did not generate a discussion, so maybe the question was wrong.
> Suggestions
- A UN fund shall be sought via UNESCO.
- Free internet access is a goal. Free to the user and cost borne by society.
Important results / arrangements / recommendations:
Netizen concept as an online book at http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120
QUOTES:
"A Netizen's purpose is to provide a forum for interaction on issues afflicting the world and a communications tool attempting to reach solutions" (Joy Lohmann)
"There a need to get ordinary people more involved in presenting solutions to their own issues - and I see netizen as a possible empowerment tool" (Sipho Ngwenya)
"Would you say that a group of netizens is equivalent to grassroots organizations who inspire change from within?" (Holly Zaher)
"A citizen is not quite an organization in society, rather it is part of the governing structure and needs to have the ability to participate in the decisions of that governing structure. Sovereignty should ideally be with the citizens but that is less true in most countries now, however, the net was built by encouraging online participation." (Ronda Hauben)
"I am beginning to glimpse what might happen as a global group of netizens rally around a certain idea/concept/problem to be solved..." (Holly Zaher)
This helped to offer the concept:
1. instilling in those who use the internet with the idea that they are a netizen and encouraging them to be involved and 2. to be a part in creating endeavours that are worthwhile.
which is a phrasing similar to the vision founding the net
This is something that is needed both to support the continued development of the net and also to support the continued attention to the relationship between the Net and society
> Solutions / Best practice examples
- Netizen activities in South Korea led to the fall of the president
- Online activist networks in the USA today are effecting democratic participation and impact,
as well as giving support to the current policy dissenters, ("the net makes it possible to survive in the difficult situation that the U.S. politcal situation presents one with these days"), because (of the corporate media's stereo- (mono) typedness) an alternative free online media landscape has been unfolding
- During the War on Iraq the use of international online news resources has virtually exploded (especially by US citizens)
!!! http://www.refugee.net (developed by Ingo Guenther) (mentioned by Joy Lohmann)
is a concept for a VIRTUAL REFUGEE REPUBLIC.
Background: If the world's refugees set up one common country, they would number 50+ million people; more info.
Idea: The refugees are one of the main "faults" of the modern era, but have NO lobby. Which should ring a bell in the globally agreed upon standards of ethical and human rights. Can Netizenship play a role to reduce the abominable failures to help refugees appropriately.
PLEASE CHECK under HOT TOPICS, point 3.
propositions...
Netizenship structures
http://www.moveon.org
http://www.takingitglobal.org
http://www.citiesforpeace.org
http://www.pioneersofchange.net
http://www.ashoka.org
http://www.iyp.oxfam.org
http://www.youthactionnet.org
independent examples:
http://www.guardian.co.uk
http://www.indymedia.org
http://www.commondreams.org
http://www.alternet.org
http://www.utne.com
http://www.corporatewatch.org
also Think Tanks :-) ?
http://www.newciv.org
http://www.globalideasbank.org
1. How promote the concept and consciousness of netizenship to raise peoples' awareness of their available knowledge resources and impact potentials?
2. Refugee Republic
Could a virtual unison of these 50+ million people as a common family sharing an intense common identity ...
(a) trigger a more humane? respectful? personal? recognition in the perception of aggressor/host country individuals who do not share the refugees experience/emotional horizons ?
(b) trigger self-organizational solutions by the refugees ? e.g. commerce, online- / services, Global Learning, self-education in rights / skills / mentoring ?
(c) give the ("jailed") refugee a feeling of identity and belonging (as to the dissenters of today's US policies) and a means of communicating with the outside world, providing psychological support ? : in participatory online news, arts, poetry, storytelling, whistleblowing, reporting inhuman conditions etc.
(d) boost their lobby in advocating their case on global level and in inter/national negotiations ?