Web 2.0 and Regenerative Education

Interactive and participatory learning systems are being facilitated by web 2.0 technology that enables computer literate groups to transcend the old student teacher relationship and create learning networks.

Organizations like Gaia University are optimizing this trend to empower action learning for eco-social regeneration.

Within the Gaia University Community there is an active discussion about what software tools can best empower our collaboration for effective knowledge sharing, knowledge management, and project management.

Gaia E Learning Platform Digiphon (by Patrick Gibbs)

SERVER
- Moodle 1.9.3+ (full version number another day) with modifications by Moodlerooms
- I don't know what operating system Moodlerooms uses

ME
- Mac OS 10.4.11 (occasionally boot into Fedora 8, 9, or 10, which are linux distributions)
- Firefox 3 for browsing
- SeaMonkey for composing HTML (sometimes use other apps)
- Smultron for editing code
- Cyberduck for occasional FTP
- a wrist brace so that I don't get a repetitive stress injury, or worsen the one I already got from the GEL site.
- sleepless nights
- patience, lots of patience, and long walks and RC when the patience wears out
- breaks every hour for jump roping (only seems to happen when I'm well organized)

OTHER
- plenty of internet infrastructure in between me and that server, though I guess that's not digital, it's physical (or whatever isn't digital)

To meet the Gaian communities strenuous needs is truly a test



Here are some design parameters for the digital interface for Gaia U's global, opensource community of action learners:

• quick learning curve
• usable interface
• accessible to low bandwidth users
• effective support for multi-media documentation
• searchable
• tagable
• full feature profile
• chat function
• forum function
• premier blogging function
• online course platform
  

Here are a few of the options we are looking at, and the pluses and minuses from my perspective as a learner, teacher and collaborator within the context of a global network woven together by web 2.0 technology.

• Elgg
• Ning
• Dolphin
• Mahara

So far I have the most experience with ning, having built several social networks including"
Alaska Permaculture.


Ning is very usable, but does not quite have the built in functionality for posting up academic style work in a full featured portfolio. It interfaced correctly with moodle that would quickly change. Ning has a very large support community, and there are several ning networks devoted solely to the exploration of social networking technology as it applies to education. Classroom 2.0, and ning in education are two such networks, showing cases new uses of technology in classrooms. While class room 2.0 does not quite have an educational constructivist focus, there is a wealth of interesting applications of new technology to virtual and non-virtual education.


Elgg is similar to ning, although it is open source, which scores it points because it allows developers to alter the code for individual need. It looks quite nice, but from reviews on at least one forum, it sounds like the learning curve is a bit steeper and longer than ning. Eduspaces is a elgg powered social network for e-learning.




Dolphin seems to be mostly built to enable social connections: online dating, affinity groups and networks. With no mention of education, it seems similar to ning. I have no real experience with dolphin.




Mahara seems to have a very functional plateform for creating portfolios and sharing real work. With this as a focus it sounds like a good fit. Ning, Dolphin and Elgg are all designed more for the social networking aspect, and with a focus on sharing information, Mahara sounds like it might be a better fit for a functioning community learning site. In this sample portfolio, built using Mahara, it is easy to see how information can be effectily organized. What is missing is any inkling of mahara's social networking capacity.

Commentary:
On potential draw back is the zest and vigor that a social networking site with sex appeal can bring. Increases usage brings more attention to creating great work. Imagine turning the collective attention of every facebook user to something useful. That kind of collective intelligence would be enormous. Portfolio sharing is only one facet of what it would take to make a participatory and interactive online learning community really thrive. Other criteria like usability and ability to network effectively play key roles in increasing the time spent online.

This is a fine line to walk however. Gaia Unversity is not trying to create something that is going to suck people in like facebook. We are looking for an effective and efficient means to share and disperse information, to host meaningful discussions and share new ideas and connections. in this way, leaning away from oversexed designs makes good sense. Unfortunately often times it seems like as we look away form the sexyness of many social networking platforms, the alternatives have not been designed for usability. A key criteria for success is usability and the ease of non-computer literate users to use the E Learning site as a bridge to further use of digital technology.

all this said, Mahara looks like it warrants the most attention because of its particular focus.

Holistic Economics on Local Currency

A Brief History of Local Currencies
The presence of alternative and/or local currencies far outdates that of the national dollar. The idea of a single currency did not even come into being until the 19th century (Tibbett, 1997). In the United States, local paper currencies first appeared in the form of municipal currencies during the ‘Free Banking’ era of 1837-65 (Jayaraman & Oak, 2005). Local currencies regained popularity worldwide in the 1930’s during the Great Depression with the issuance of scrip (non-legal tender, which acts as a substitution for currency often in the form of credit) (Jayaraman & Oak, 2005).

To read more and see the academic sources that focus on Local and Complementary Currencies, CLICK HERE

This is an excerpt from a blog post by Ali Rosenblat, a friend and colleague involved in the ecovillage movement.

More from Gaia Emerging

Wall Street Notices Local Currency: Mainstream media pick up on the raise of local currencies an as adaptation to tough economic times

Free Money: Around the world alternative currency experts are predicting the creation of sector wide and local complementary currency systems.

Eco-social Entrepreneur

Part nne In a four part series of inspired lectures, Andy Langford outlines a pathway towards Earth Regeneration. This film was shot by Jay Ma, of Living Mandala during the 08 Financial Permaculture Summit.

Ecosocial Entreprenuers


Find more videos like this on Living Mandala


The concept of an ecosociall entrepurenuer draws from the inspiration of pioneering work of permaculturalists and other people working on the edge to create sustainable, just change.
Individuals and groups sustain themselves via livlihoods that are designed specificaly to provide sustianble goods and services, and re-invest the surplus of hard, and intellgent work, into people and projects that are ethicaly aligned with the permaculture ethics.

As pointed out by Andy, Entreprenuerial work requires attention to the books, passion, hands on learning, and calculated risk taking.

Wall Street Notices Local Currency Trend

A couple of days ago, as I sat eating breakfast while visiting family, I picked up a copy of the Wall Street Journal.

While not a newspaper I am in the habit of reading, a lot of useful information can be gleaned of our a quick peruse, or even a more in-depth survey of the contents.

Some interesting tidbits about that day's Journal:

Of three color advertisements in the front section of the Wall St journal, one is from Monsanto, advertising genetically modified crops. One is for Fox News, and one is for Morgan Stanley, advertising investments in privatized water.

all three made me shudder...
But...it was all genetically modified doom and gloom, commodification of water and Fox propaganda....on the front page of the Wall Street journal today I found an article about local currency!

"When it comes to cash, A Thai VIllages says, "Baht Humbug" covers the growth of a local currency during the economic recession of the late nineties in Thailand.

Of course the article forgets to tell us that there are local currencies all over the world, including in well developed economies in the EU (although a brief mention of Berkshares in the US made made it into the article). Also not mentioned is the fact that local currencies played a big role in depression era trading in the US and Europe, and, in fact, during times of economic woe, communities can cushion, and often times reverse, economic downturn by creating well designed complementary currency systems.

One of the best examples of complementary currency's ability to create resilient local economies is the Austrian Worgl Experiment

But for all the articles short comings, and my own prejudice against the advertisements and general focus of the Wall Street Journal, it is still amazing to think that Local Currency has floated to the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

Interesting times indeed.

Designing the economic landscape for drought

As economic instability, born out of flawed and corrupt policies, sweeps across the world, communities can come together and re-think how they do business.

Drought proofing the economic landscape parallels drought proofing natural landscapes. Keyline design and Permaculture offer us patterns that can be mimicked to optimize the effective use of scare capital to keep a community vibrant in tough economic times:


Find more videos like this on Living Mandala

In this video Andy Langford outlines a Financial Permaculture strategy for designing local economic systems to catch and store capital, mimicking the well documented success of the keyline design system to catch and store water on a landscape. By creating economies that catch and store energy, and built the "tilth" of their community, we can build a solid base to support the growth of diverse and resilient human society working with the natural world.

Europe's Debt to The Americas

EUROPE’S DEBT TO THE AMERICAS

Speech by an indigenous chief directed to the 150 chiefs of state at the European Union/Latin American Summit, May 2002

So here we all meet. We know what we are, and that’s a lot.

The brother in European customs asks me for a paper stamped with a visa to be able to discover those who discovered me. The European moneylender brother asks me to pay a debt contracted by Judas, that I never authorized him to sell me.

The legalizing European brother explains to me that all debts are paid with interest even if it means selling human beings and entire countries without asking their consent.

I go discovering. I too can demand payments and I too can demand interest.

It is stated in the Indian Archives, paper after paper, receipt after receipt, and signature after signature, that merely between the years 1503 and 1660, 185,000 kilos of gold and 16 million kilos of silver from America arrived at Sanlucar de Barrameda.

• 1. Robbery? I don’t believe it! Because that would be to think that the Christian brothers lacked the Seventh Commandment.
• 2. Exploitation? Tanatzin protect me from thinking that the Europeans, like Cain, kill and deny the blood of their brother!
• 3. Genocide? That would be giving credit to the slanderers, like Bartolome de las Casas, who described the meeting as the destruction of the Indians, or extremists like Arturo Uslar Pietri, who confirms that the starting engine for capitalism and the present European civilization was the flood ofprecious metals!
• 4. No! Those 185,000 kilos of gold and 16 million kilos of silver should be considered as the first of many other friendly loans from America, destined for the development of Europe. The contrary would be to presume the existence of war crimes, which would give the right not just to require its immediate return, but also the payment of damages and losses.

I, Guaiacaiputo Cuatemoc, prefer to think of the
least offensive of these hypotheses.

Such fabulous capital exportation was no more than the beginning of a MARSHALLTESUMA Plan, to guarantee the reconstruction of savage Europe, ruined by its deplorable wars against the Muslim cult, creators of algebra, polygamy, the daily bath and other superior achievements of civilization.

Therefore, to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the
Little Loan, we may ask ourselves:

Have the European brothers made rational, responsible, or at least productive use of the funds so generously advanced by the International Indoamerican Fund? We regret to say no.

Strategically, they wasted it on battles, invincible armadas, on Third Reichs and other forms of mutual extermination, with no other outcome than to end up occupied by gringo troops from NATO – like in Panama, but without the canal.

Financially, they have been incapable, after a moratorium of 500 years, either to pay off the principal and its interest, or to become independent of the liquid profits, raw materials, and cheap energy that the entire Third World exports and provides.

This deplorable picture corroborates the statement by Milton Friedman, according to whom subsidized economies can never work, and obliges us to require, for your own good, the payment of the principal and interests that we have so generously delayed all these centuries to charge.

Saying this, we clarify that we will not stoop to charging our European brothers the vile and bloodsucking rates of 20 and even 30% interest that the European brothers charge the peoples of the Third World.

We will limit ourselves to requiring the return of the precious metals we advanced to you, plus a modest fixed interest rate of 10%, accumulated only during the last 300 years, with 200 years’ grace period. Using this base, and applying the European formula of compound interest, we inform the discoverers that they owe us, as the first payment on the debt, a mass of 185,000 kilos of gold and 16 million kilos of silver, with both figures raised to the power of 300. That is to say, an amount whose complete expression would need more than 300 digits, and which vastly exceeds the total weight of planet Earth.

These dishes of gold and silver are very heavy. How much would they weigh calculated in blood?
Deducing that Europe, in half a millennium, has not been able to generate sufficient riches to pay off these modest interest rates, would be as much as admitting its absolute financial failure and/or the irrational insanity of the assumptions of capitalism. Such metaphysical questions, of course, don’t trouble the American Indians. But we do require the signing of a letter of intent that disciplines the debtor peoples of the Old Continent and that obligates them to fulfill their promise by means of a prompt privatization or repossession of Europe, which will permit them to deliver it to us whole, as the first payment of the historical debt….

Return of The light

To my readers:
a blessed return of the light and happy new year! As we enter into the new year there is so much possibility for positive change amidst the craziness of economic downturn and awakening of peoples spirits to something better.

Some updates from the Gaia Emerging Blog:

• I have just updated the font color to help with readers with less than 20-20 eye sight.
• What to expect for the first few weeks of the new year. I am planing stories on:

1. The steps and to become a permaculture designer and teacher
   
2. Web 2.0 participatory learning tools
3. Beyond Fair Trade: regenerative exchange
4. Carbon Farming: Carbon Negative, Food Positive solutions for climate change and food scarcity
5. The connection between business and civil society in the global sustainability movement
6. Men's work: deconstructing the patrix.

These are all stories that have been on the back burner while I hibernate for the winter in preparation for a busy and vibrant 2009.
My plans include trialing a new Fair Trade Business; organizing the tenth Bioregional Congress;
Teaching and working in Mexico, Chile and Nicaragua; organizing and helping to facilitate the 09 Financial Permaculture Course, and teaching in several other events during the year.
And in the midst of all of that I am going to breath...and help other people with thier projects.

What makes it possible for me to do all of that? Stubborn hard work? maybe...but the most important thing that enables me to work on so many different exciting projects is deffintaly team work. Working with groups like Living Mandala, The Financial Permaculture Steering Comittee, and Gaia University allows me to collaborate on different aspects of projects, and play a similar role to help coordinate things as we bring together diverse groups to work on complex and exciting projects.
Being so integrated into the world changing field is what give me access to such interesting insights, people and events...and I feel grateful to have the chance to share that with people over the web.
I hope the folks reading this are gaining from my action learning. Let me know if there are aspects of permaculture, regenerative design, community organizing, transition culture, or regenerative economics that you would like me to focus more on, and I will do my best to glean insight from my personal experience and share it.