The Joys of Twittering

This is a twitter joke, for the twitter folk. If you don't get it, then you should begin twittering soon.

I have just started twittering but I am amazed by this new tool. I had heard that it helps get news out quicker than any other medium during disasters and now I see why. It is an instant network as opposed to a facebook-type network.

My tech-savvy friend Vahid disdains twitter as a source of incoherent and superficial noise. Much of it is, but you can ignore this if you choose and participate in its more interesting aspects. Here are just a few:

Crowdsourcing - Twitter has started leading this important trend. Similar processes include a recent nation-wide town hall meeting-style conference on YouTube in which people vote for the questions to ask the President. Decision-making is going horizontal and it is only a matter of time before this practice radically improves our political processes and structures.

Human-processed searches - Searching on twitter will produce human generated results from real people gathering the best information from their lives and from the Internet. Google is cool, but a twitter search guarantees fascinating, updated and personalized results.

Taking part in Discourse - Taking part in a discourse on a specific topic, like micro-finance, social action, public health or any other requires being in communication with those who are at the forefront of their field, acting on what we learn from them and contributing our two cents worth to building specific knowledge. Staying abreast of the solutions found to local problems and the processes used to arrive at those solutions keep one in the mix. Of course, blogs have filled this niche beautifully for several years now, and because as any blogger knows it isn't easy to get people to comment on your blog, I see twitter as an essential compliment to these. It is a more agile, faster and synthesized version of blogs that, when combined with them, raises their value considerably. Sites like twitterfall can be customized to your exact needs to follow and take part in any discourse you choose.

Micro-blogging - My blog tends to be kind of ... em deep. Yeah, but that doesn't mean that everything I want to share fits into this category. Twitter gives me a platform to share important thoughts and events that I don't want to make into full blog posts. They are quick, short and effective at getting your point across. They are easy to answer and re-post and really get you in closer contact with those who are moving and shaking in your fields of interest.

Teaching - Learning - As an educator I am amazed at some of the ideas of fellow teachers who are using twitter in the classroom, and the results they are getting. Any tool a teacher can use to enhance learning is very welcome, and this is proving to be one of the best. If you doubt what I am saying, check this resource out. I will be using these soon in my classrooms!

These five good reasons to check twitter out point to the fact that twitter is opening the future to us in a variety of ways. There are many more reasons to start twittering, like small business networking, that I am sure others have explained much better than I ever could. In sum, if you don't like the superficial noise on twitter, then don't follow those who generate it! There are thousands of other fish in the sea! If you want to know more, click here.

Scroll down a bit or click here to check out my twitter feed and don't be shy to get your feet wet!

The Sesame Street Sermon

Did you know that the BBC did not buy the rights to broadcast Sesame Street in the 1970's because they thought that is was too moralist, telling kids how to think and act? My kids and I read Sesame Street books and watch their podcasts and programs all of the time and I have only felt grateful that healthy ideas are introduced to my kids in such an enjoyable way. The concepts promoted by the furry friends - appreciation for diversity, honesty, sharing, caring for others, kindness to animals, etc... - aren't exactly controversial, but there are those who believe that children will best become mature, healthy members of society by exposing them to a wide variety of content and ideas so they can build the cultural constructs that best suit themselves and those near to them. Showing children a message - even if it is about the concepts mentioned above - closes their minds, makes them judgmental, impedes their capacity to think freely and make sound decisions.

This same mentality reigns at my University where teachers are encouraged not to present content in courses like "Society and the Role of the Individual" in which students are supposed to contemplate relationships between the individual and the collective whole. Rather, teachers should lead students to become more reflective and informed of historical tendencies, theories and future possibilities.

It is difficult to disagree that cultural sermonizing requires ignoring that the learner has the capacity to make healthy decisions. If we really believe in capacity building and learner autonomy, then learners need to make their own decisions, especially ones that involve moral dilemmas. However, the opposite of sermonizing requires believing that there is no right or wrong beyond what benefits the learner at the particular moment in time that he or she is confronted with a moral dilemma. This moral relativism is one of the main philosophical foundations of our current global society of individuals and institutions that act uncannily like cancerous cells, boosting selfish aims at the expense of most others. The mantra of doing whatever you want as long as it doesn't harm others is precisely the cancer that is devouring the entire organism, cancer and all.

To begin resolving this issue, it must first be established that moral neutrality, the very concept upon which defenders of this laissez faire attitude towards education pride themselves, is illusory. Eliminating content in the name of a neutral process is in itself a moral decision with clear moral consequences. When graduates of this educational system don’t see enough wrong with opulence and misery living side by side to do anything about it, when they elevate both white and blue collar thieves to hero status, when they create “needs” within children even though they clearly cause irreparable physical or emotional damage, then the moral neutrality that justifies their actions becomes an exact opposite and an equally damaging approach as sermonizing.

This dichotomy is further resolved by defining the purpose of education beyond preparing individuals for successful insertion into the current job market. If most jobs aim exclusively towards increasing profit margin, defined in narrow economic terms, then directing education to provide students with the necessary tools to compete within this context only serves to legitimate it. Even if these tools are otherwise desirable traits and skills - creativity, administrative and investigative capacity, entrepreneurial leadership, etc… - the end towards which they are used strips them of any worth they might otherwise have. We can, rather, define our purpose for educating as building capacity for youth to become protagonists of their own community development, considering individuals and institutions as vital and interdependent actors within the community.

Of course, taking this path requires having the courage to face the daunting and inherently subjective task of defining development. Addressing faulty assumptions that the global development enterprise has had about such fundamental concepts as “the nature of man, the purpose of individual and collective life, the meaning of participation, the goal of development and the role of knowledge in social transformation” so that they serve an educational process that “empowers individuals and communities to engage in the generation and application of knowledge as protagonists in a materially and spiritually prosperous world civilization” requires taking a clear stand on such issues.

Further, although there are pedagogical advantages to providing the proper tools and context for learners to discover knowledge and thus take ownership of the decisions they make, there is no reason we should expect individual learners to rediscover all of the painful lessons humanity has slowly learned throughout its existence. Beyond those mentioned in the previous paragraph, one of these great lessons is that education should seek to channel the powers of the human soul into humble service to humanity, both on professional and personal levels. This is the primary context within which the individual may develop the necessary qualities and capabilities to become a protagonist in his or her spiritual and intellectual growth and thus contribute towards the transformation of society.

These and related lessons point us towards what we can call a pedagogy of moral empowerment. It is an approach that has emerged from an action-research process conducted by FUNDAEC in an effort to provide world-class tutorial secondary education that truly builds local capacity to generate prosperity. This process began in Colombia and later spread throughout most of the world.

In the end it is our individual and collective sense of justice that provides meaning for every action we undertake, whether that action is meant to be as objective as possible, or whether it is deliberately subjective. It is also this sense of justice that will enable us to establish the foundations upon which the oneness of humanity will ultimately be established. Although they don’t go too deep into the broader issues mentioned here, our furry friends at Sesame Street provide a good head start for all children in their search for justice, which will provide meaning and guidance in such a confusing world.

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All quotes taken from "Preparation for Social Action: Education for Development"