Things are coming together within education/learning/ICT. For now I'll focus on GlobalNet21, Dadamac and something that I call "Virtual Academia' (plus a quick mention of "Everything Unplugged").
GlobalNet21Learning Networks
I'm excited about GlobalNet21Learning Networks which I mentioned as one of my Gems from last week. We are planning to hold a second meeting in February and then a webinar.
The webinar will be a mixture of "catch-up" and "continuation". I hope that after the webinar people who hade't previously been able to attend either of the face-to-face (F2F) meetings will feel at home in the group, and up to date with its thinking and activities. They will also have the opportunity to feed their ideas and interests into the group the way that the founder members did.
Obviously not everyone will attend every meeting, especially if we grow through a mixture of F2F and online activies. However I do hope people will feel a sense of "belonging to the group" (rather than just "going to some meetings or webinars"). I hope some of the F2F group members will also come along to our first webinar, to help me to welcome new online group members. I hope we will move on together with good overlap between participants online and those meeting F2F.
Dadamac
Dadamac has always had a strong element of ongoing learning. In Nigeria, with John Dada, there is repeated evidence of the truth in his observation that "Here we learn twice - once by learning, and once by sharing what we have learned". From my viewpoint, it was the connections with education-combined-with-digital-technology that attracted me to initially to Peter Oyawale's project and then it was John's invitation to work on an education project - Teachers Talking (TT) - that took me to Fantsuam Foundation.
On the First Thursday of each month I host an online meeting which is a mixture of a social catchup for people in my network, and a learning-from-each-other opportunity. I hope that as the GlobalNet21 (GN21) learning network becomes more active online then First Thursday - and other parts of Dadamac's network - will naturally connect up wiht GN21.
Virtual Academia
I first used the term Viirtual Academia at the end of last year, when I was struggling to explian my experiances as a free-ranging, non-formal, online learner to people in established academia. I've tried to explain this kind of online learning in varous ways over the years, usually without success. That's was why I stopped using descriptions like online learner and instead coined the term Dadamac Learner and created the concept of the "Dadamacademy". If I create the vocabulary then the words mean what I choose them to mean. This saves a lot of the confusion that arises with "slippery words" (like education, learning, and work) where any kind of total agreement on the meaning is extremely hard to get hold of.
Where I've been using the description "VIrtual Academia" I've limited its meaning to only include non-fromal, learner directed, online learning, i.e. nothing in the way of set courses or accreditation - just people who are learning in ways that could never have happened before the Internet.log
I see the GN21 Learners Network as part of "VIrtual Academia" - and this is not just true of our webinars and online messages. It's true for our face-to-face meetings as well because of the online Meetups platform - without the Internet we would not be meeting.
Wider context
I was prompted to write his blog by an article I read this morning The End of the University as We Know It by Giorgio Bertiniack and Learning Change
It lays out many of the issues around education and change in a helpful way. I wanted to share it with my fellow GN21 learning networkers, and Dadamac blog readers, to relate some of its ideas to what we are all doing in our different ways. lished Academia, whereas those of us who are free-range learners in Virtual Academia are choosing our own content, but the environment of change in which we are doing our learning is the environment he describes.
PS - Everything Unplugged
If you are intersted in the issues mentioned above and are ever in Central London on a Wednesday morning then you may like to wander along and join in the discussions that usually happen with Tony Hall and who ever turns up to join him. Check "Everything Unplugged" on Facebook for details.
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