ICT4 Emergence

First of all I have to say that I am very humbled and amazed at the sophistication and advanced thinking and networking occurring here. I do not work at a Telecenter. With 20 years of experience of working in a blended learning environment I began to see the creativity of my students increase. Emergence is the goal. I know of many "Incubators" for entrepreneurial ideas--which presupposes ideas from an environment which nurtures creativity and innovation--but very few options on how to enable the process that leads to ideas which can be incubated.

I have been working with an NGO-- in the Dominican Republic with the goal of helping to facilitate the use of web 2.0 and virtual worlds, especially Second Life, to the the Dominican Republic. I stumbled on an extensive network of Community Technology Centers--CTC's--established by the insightful and forward thinking first lady, Margarita Cedeno de Fernandez. As I learned more about their initiative I realized that, just as in my own college here in the States, the pedagogy is trying to catch up to the technology. There are huge changes occurring in education but few of us really know how to harness this. I kept hearing the phrase, 'to leap frog using the wisdom of the 21st Century to solve the problems of the 18th Century.' (I believe it came from the President of the Dominican Republic.) But how? What is the appropriate pedagogy to use to provide full capacity transfer?

The pedagogical philosophy I have been working with is one called 'productivity, student centered, experiential service learning'. It is a constructivism philosophy that motivates, empowers and energizes students because they are using the technology in the real world--to socialize, to compare, to share, to learn a strong sense of place, to understand what distinguishes them from another, to address real world problems.

Lately I have been experimenting with social networking in my teaching. Hidden in this process of web 2.0 platforms is an emerging paradigm shift. It is transforming the world. In my classroom facilitation I have been struggling with how to incorporate this transformative power. I believe that ICT Centers are leading the way in which to use ICT for human capacity development. The lessons learned and the techniques being developed hold great promise for our entrenched and archaic educational systems--everywhere. In the confrontation of technology and ICT's with so-called disadvantaged populations there is a clarity in pedagogy that we must enhance and develop. The lessons learned translate directly to address the need for all our youth to master 21st Century Skills. This is the idea of reciprocal apprenticeships taken to a global level.

I am not sure there is much in the so called 'developed' countries that compares to the excellent work being done by practitioners in the telecenters. So I have come to this ning to learn and to share and hopefully to discover a way to leap frog with all of us.

Well, a bit of a ramble. The seed of the idea I am working on is: the whole systems-- environmental, energy, water, health, food, waste, culture, politics, etc.-- which sustain the community and its biome are the curriculum. This is what emerging technologies can assist us with, and in so doing create an environment for emergence. There is a tremendous urgency. Estimates are that there will be no ice at the polar north in the next summer or two. Massive release of methane from melting permafrost, acidification of the oceans, mass extinctions--all are underway. Only by enlightening and empowering the youth do we have any chance at all.