I really appreciate Nancy White’s recap of her week hosting #change11 conversation on Social Artistry. I like having a new role available for myself….social artist. And a new skill to wield more consciously through awareness. Nancy borrowed the term from Etienne Wagner. Here’s a quote from Etienne she pulled from David Wilcox’s blog…I want to capture it here in my own #change11 trail notes (my bolds):
“The key success factor we’ve found is learning citizenship where learning citizenship is a personal commitment to seeing how we are as citizens in this world. Let me give you an example: I know an oncological surgeon in Ontario, Canada who asks himself how to provide the social infrastructure for patients to learn about cancer. An act of learning citizenship is to be able to use who you are to open this space for learning. I’ve come to call these people social artists, people who can create a space where people can find their own sense of learning citizenship.
“I love social artists. In fact I worship them. First because social artists know how to do what I only know how to talk about; and second because I care about the learning of this planet. I think we are in a race between learning and survival. We live in a knowledge economy where any expertise is too complex for any one person. One person can’t be an expert so anyone who can give voice to that need to work together is a social artist.
“I do a lot of consultancy work for training community leaders, but in my heart of hearts I know the real secret of those social artists is not something I can teach. The real secret of those people is knowing how to use who you are as a vehicle for opening spaces for learning. I don’t really have the words – but I just know when I see it. It is a way of tapping into who you are and of making that a gift to the world … it’s about being able to use who I am to take my community to a new level of learning and performance.
“I want to leave you with three questions…
- How can you act as a learning citizen in this world?
- How can we as a group help , sustain, celebrate that capability among ourselves? If EQUAL has done a bit of that – how do we capture it, nurture it cherish it?
- For those of you who are movers and shakers – how can you build an institutional structure that enables people to find their voice in the interests of the people they want to serve? Social artists need to fight … How can we enable a structure that enables those people to do the work that they do?
“These are urgent questions. Social innovation is a matter of the heart, not just projects. We need you to do that for the world, not just Europe”.
Want the whole thing in context? Here is Etienne’s keynote from ShareFair in Rome, September, 2011.
Nancy asks the question, Can social artistry be learned, or it is something some of us just carry with us? My answer, heartily, is YES, social artistry can be learned. Just a few of my dozens of social artistry mentors: Heinz Von Foerster, Humberto Maturana, Gordon Pask, Laurie Thomas and Sheila Harrie-Augstein, Marshall Rosenberg, Salvador Roquet, Carol and Tom French Corbett, John Holt, Parker Palmer.
(Image: graphic facilitation by Nancy White)
The last two mornings I had 12 people add me to circles in Google+ - all from #change11. What a great way to start my day…stepping through each of their pages, reading their Abouts, glimpsing their photos and recent posts, and then adding them to my #change11 circle and occasionally a second circle. I realized that #change11 is a powerful filter for kindred spirits, like Second Life was in 2005 for early adopter changemaking edge-ucators. And I’m really thrilled to be meeting some of the many #change11 participants. I don’t take this opportunity to connect for granted. Such an event is still far too rare. So I am making the time to participate (no small feat) and inventing my own ways of participating that are relatively easy to do (like my visual screen captures).
This is by far the largest online gathering of people deeply engaging the future of learning that I’ve participated in to date (and I’ve participated in many excellent online learning events). I knew it would be quite a party, that’s why I joined the cohort, but living it is even better than I’d imagined. Next post will be about finding a similar, enthusiastic but smaller cohort back in 1999….and collaboratively writing a book online about Creating Learning Communities. This experience of #change11 has reminded me of that time.
Back from a brief hiatus. I hosted the #connectedpd First Friday live Twitter Chat on Friday, 11.4. Spotted this reflection on the experience by fellow #change11 MOOCer, Mark McGuire. Thanks, Mark, for sharing where you find value in live Twitter chats. You’ll find the chat archive here shortly, along with previous First Friday #connectedpd chats.
Screen grab from a David Wiley video from his intro for the week. I appreciate the questions/activities he posed to #change11 participants:
I would like to invite students to reflect on the practical impact on people they would like to their educational technology / educational research work to have. What kind of change do they want to see in the world? What will they have to do, personally, to create that change? Do they need to start a university, a high school, or an after school program? Do they need to run for public office, or find another way to influence public policy? What kinds of resources or cooperation would be required, and from whom would these come? I would challenge students to create a concept map relating the specific change they want to see in the world and the related activities and resources they will have to engage in or influence in order to bring the change about. An explanatory video talking us through the map would be a great addition.
Spotted on G+ today - #change11 MOOC Motto proposed: We suggest, you decide. Ah, so this is why I’m enjoying MOOCing about so much….Stephen Downes expands.
Discovered Power of Open (downloadable pdf) in today’s @change11 newsletter - thanks to MOOCer Mark McGuire. Power of Open is a collection of stories about people using the Creative Commons licensing for their projects. It is edited by Cathy Casserly, CEO of Creative Commons and Joi Ito, Chair of Creative Commons. Led me to Jamendo, a CC-licensed music site.
And here’s a #change11 screen shot of Paulo Simões’ Scoop.it Change11. For later reference. Thanks, Paulo. Hadn’t consciously expected to find support for deepening curation skills. What a pleasant surprise. But of course I would. :D #change11 MOOC = filter for Curator Posse
Since I play the role of curator a lot, I’m naturally attracted to Scoop It - and have followed Robin Good’s Real-time News Curation Scoop It, DML Competition’s Badges for Lifelong Learning, and OLnet OER Research curated by the OLnet Team. So a few curation topics caught my eye today in the #change11 newsletter. Like this tutorial on Scoop.it created by Russell Stannard and shared by Paulo Simões…Posting it here for later viewing.
Had abandoned Flickr for FB some time ago. So I dove back in to Flickr much to my surprise, set up new PRO account (ad-free now), and created a #change11 set.
Jumped over to Jux but they don’t have subscribe by RSS or email. I liked the BIG photo display though. Jumping back to tumblr. Here I go….
