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After the earthquake in Haiti, a community of crisis mappers immediately began crowdsourcing open street maps in a way that has changed disaster response forever. Using an open source stack and simple collaboration tools to combine and annotate image sets, usable maps were quickly put in the hands of rescue workers, allowing a rapid response that saved lives.

IThis article, written at the end of her life, presents the Historical Origins of The theory of Socio-cultural Viability by Mary Douglas, who is to be seen as the inspirator of the theory, and to have established the foundational ideas who have been further developped by her students, and later further developped and applied by many scholars across a wide range of disciplines. The first paragraph will hopefully provide some incentive to dig further: Introduction: What is Grid and Group Cultural Theory? How Useful can it be in the Modern World? It is a pleasure for me to reflect on the history of Grid-Group. I first described the idea in Natural Symbols ( Douglas 1970), a kind of necessary sequel to Purity and Danger (1966). I now realise that it was a simple idea presented in a complicated way. After a late start it has been radically redesigned by creative collaborators whose work I will describe. Back in the 1960's social anthropologists still felt it was necessary to vindicate the intelligence of colonial peoples, then known as "natives" or "primitives." A major objective of teaching and writing in anthropology was to attack something described by Levy Bruhl as "primitive mentality," which seemed to mean "primitive irrationality." Malinowski had started in the 1920's showing that the Trobrianders had rational customs and laws. In the 1930's Raymond Firth was original in focusing on the "primitive economics" of the Polynesians and found that the basic laws of supply, demand, and price applied in the rustic economies he studied. Evans-Pritchard made a frontal defence of Azande rationality. After World War II, Nadel and Gluckman followed up with the complexities of Nubian and Barotse legal systems. The very idea that the concept of "jurisprudence" could apply to "the natives" was innovative. In the 1950's and 60's we continued to dismantle intellectual barriers assumed to distinguish "Them" from "Us." The following ex

I believe this to be a helpfull introduction to the study od the Theory od Socio-cultural viability, which, it seems to me, is a usefull framework to look from a new angle to cooperation theory, institutional decision making, democracy and many other fields of social sciences

"Social software brings groups together to discover and create value. The problem is, users only have so much time for social software. The vast majority of users with not have a high level of engagement with a given group, and most tend to be free riders upon community value. But patterns have emerged where low threshold participation amounts to collective intelligence and high engagement provides a different form of collaborative intelligence. To illustrate this, lets explore the Power Law of Participation:"

There is more information available in the world than any one person could hope to consume (hundreds of exabytes of data), but most of that information is uninteresting, out of date, inaccurate, or not relevant for you. The key to reducing information overload is to more efficiently find the data you want among the information that you don't care about.

" I am hoping that the result of this tedious, difficult, uneven, sometimes triumphant, sometime despairing transition time will be a fresh new way of looking at the world, now that so much of the world I took for granted, so many of the collaborations and processes and bureaucracies and patterns and expertise is so vividly transparent."

"Reason and Purpose Learning by Doing Designed to support the digital lives of young people and their capacity for learning, Quest to Learn is a school committed to graduating strong, engaged, literate citizens of a globally networked world. Through an innovative pedagogy that immerses students in differentiated, challenge-based contexts, the school acknowledges design, collaboration, and systems thinking as key literacies of the 21st century. Within an integrated, rigorous Regents-based curriculum students work with teachers to gain the skills necessary to meet these requirements, and even surpass them. On-going evaluation and feedback create opportunities for students to plan, revise, and reflect on their own learning. The overall curriculum is rooted in mathematical practices and the use of smart tools, with an explicit intent to innovate at the level of how students are assessed in context. Most importantly, teachers work with students to build individual and academic competencies and enrich youth identity development within contexts that are relevant and meaningful. The school has been designed to help students to bridge old and new literacies through learning about the world as a set of interconnected systems. Design and complex problem-solving are two big ideas of the school, as is a commitment to deep content learning with a strong focus on learning in rigorous, engaging, and relevant ways. It is a place where digital media meets books and students learn to think like designers, inventors, mathematicians, writers, and more. Q2L brings together teachers with a passion for content, a vision for helping kids to learn best, and a commitment to changing the way students will grow in the world. Quest to Learn has purposely responded not only to the growing evidence that digital media and games offer powerful models for reconsidering how and where young people learn, but also to the belief that access for all students to these opportunities is critical. We beli

Following the links ifrom ted's post in the gamification forum item... I bounced on this school. Always interesting to discover new ways of looking at traditional things...

Social network for teachers. Social network for those interested in Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies in education. We encourage you to sign up to participate in the great discussions here, to receive event notifications, and to find and connect with colleagues.

"unConferencing - how to prepare to attend an unconference Filed under: Uncategorized PDF version by Kaliya Hamlin from Unconference.net The unconference* format creates space for peer-to-peer learning, collaboration and creativity. At the start, the whole group will gather together and be guided through creating an agenda using open space technology. The exact process is not important to understand in advance - the process will become clear as it happens. The important part is that all those gathered will have the opportunity to put conference sessions on the agenda. No session will be voted off or 'won't happen' for some other reason. All sessions are welcome."

"About BigMarker.com BigMarker provides fully-featured web conferencing solution for free to everyone. Here you can host web conferences with friends, family or colleagues, teach online training seminars to students, practice presentation skills, or broadcast events in real time - all free and unlimited! There are no trial period and no monthly fee. BigMarker is also an online virtual community and a hub for live information exchange, providing you a powerful platform to host video web conferences and present to the world. Use BigMarker to connect with others live online, share contents collaboratively, spread ideas, conduct live webinar, or promote business online. Expect instant feedback and responses! "

YOUmedia is an innovative, 21st century teen learning space housed at the Chicago Public Library's downtown Harold Washington Library Center. YOUmedia was created to connect young adults, books, media, mentors, and institutions throughout the city of Chicago in one dynamic space designed to inspire collaboration and creativity. High school age teens engaging with YOUmedia can access thousands of books, over 100 laptop and desktop computers, and a variety of media creation tools and software, all of which allow them to stretch their imaginations and their digital media skills. By working both in teams and individually, teens have an opportunity to engage in projects that promote critical thinking, creativity, and skill-building.

An interesting take on communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity. more on the social less on the media;)

"Presented at the University of Manitoba June 17th 2008. (for those of you waiting for the Library of Congress presentation, it will be posted Jul16 videos of the work of Michaerl Welsch in Cultural Antropology classes on media litteracy..; a fantastic and incredibly powerfiull showpiece on how education can become with at the same time hints on what to-morrow could look like..; 19th-ish.) From Stephen's Lighthouse: http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/archives/2008/07/michael_wesch_l.html" "Many of you have probably seen Kansas State University prof Michael Wesch's thought-provoking video, "A Vision of Students Today". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o. Recently Dr. Wesch spoke at the University of Manitoba where he explained the the basis of this video in a talk entitled, "Michael Wesch and the Future of Education." I found it fascinating! He describes how he so naturally incorporates emerging technologies into his courses from the smallest seminar type class to the largest lecture theatre filled class. More importantly he not only talks about the technologies but how he encourages extraordinary participation and collaboration from his students by engaging them in meaningful learning activities. Although the video is 66 minutes long...pour a coffee, iced tea or glass of wine and enjoy this dynamic presentation from a master teacher." http://umanitoba.ca/ist/production/streaming/podcast_wesch.html Dubbed "the explainer" by popular geek publication Wired because of his viral YouTube video that summarizes Web 2.0 in under five minutes, cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch brought his Web 2.0 wisdom to the University of Manitoba on June 17. During his presentation, the Kansas State University professor breaks down his attempts to integrate Facebook, Netvibes, Diigo, Google Apps, Jott, Twitter, and other emerging technologies to create an education portal of the future. "It's basically an ongoing experiment to create a portal for me and my stud

This is a most powerful ressource, a showcase of what a single professor has been able to realize in his cultural antropology class

"About the Forward Foundation Forward Foundation is a Foresight/Futures studies not for profit research and development group. Our members in the past have worked in the past with http://www.iftf.org/, MacArthur Foundation, Stanford University, MIT Press, MITE, USDA, and hundreds of small groups and networks across the globe. We produce research and forecasting like most "futures studies think tanks", but we also produce open source software and code, open source hardware and designs, and open licensed education materials. Examples include http://code.google.com/p/flows-dev/ http://flows.panarchy.com/ http://socialmediaclassroom.com and some of us have worked on http://cooperationcommons.com with http://iftf.org"

This is the first capture of the conversation from the thread "A New Culture of Learning". We'll see how this goes

I read the book almost cover to cover. It led me to think more about pushing what I've been doing closer to pure p2p. One of the co-learners in the latest Mindamp told me about "paragogy." That one is worth bookmarking.

"The Mind & Life Institute is a non-profit organization that seeks to understand the human mind and the benefits of contemplative practices through an integrated mode of knowing that combines first person knowledge from the world's contemplative traditions with methods and findings from contemporary scientific inquiry. Ultimately, our goal is to relieve human suffering and advance well-being."

Top 100 tech tools by category. Certainly some of my favorites in these lists. Shows how many options there are. More than I'm familiar with.

"The study of babies and young toddlers is a perplexing business. Even the most perceptive observers can be tempted to see what isn't there."

Useful discusion of Diigo in education. In my recent and limited experience students need a strong context in which to use it in.