Starting with the Who

Last week saw the launch of Shared Histories, a France-New Zealand schools cross-curricular project  spanning the five years of the commemoration of World War One Centenary, starting 2014.
Initiated by the French Embassy in Wellington it corresponds with both the signing of an Arrangement of Education Cooperation between the Ministries of Education of France and New Zealand, the official launch of the Centenary Commemoration by François Hollande, President of France, and of many initiatives up and down New Zealand.
Shared Histories in New Zealand currently receives the coordinating support of the French Embassy, the Ministry of Education (NZ), NZAFT  and ILEP

Shared Histories is about fostering the Duty of Remembrance. Participants will interact around building a consciousness that human experiences are universal.
It provides a framework for New Zealand and French schools to form partnerships and work on common projects on the theme of WW1.

It is not about simply developing language skills:  it is about developing personal relevance for the all the students involved, through genuine social interaction and explorative reflection, supported with authentic documents and experiences.

This is a personal account of two extremely rich days, working with competent, visionary and courageous colleagues who see Shared Histories as the framework for cross curricular collaboration in their schools as well as the opportunity to engage with their students in the discovery and analysis of the world around them.

I was invited to facilitate the conversation around collaborative project building and the scaffolding role of ICTs.

inspired from Julia Atkin's Values & Beliefs about Learning to Principles and Practice

It is about project co-construction at all levels involving conversations and negotiations to establish grounds for collaboration and cooperation, to take action and make choices together but also independently from each other.

We worked around this starting with Who. Quite a few participants had already thought through and defined the project that they would like to carry. Starting with Who reminded them to consider who are the participants in their project  and potentially questions their assumption about the fact that the project they have in mind is the best idea until they know for sure that it is wide enough and encompassing enough for all participants to take ownership of it also.

WHO as identified by participants:
students in French class, History class, English class, vertical classes, librarian , Media studies , art, music teacher/students extra curricular students, principal, parents, school community, RSA, old boys network,

Considering Why also drew in a fair amount of conversation, as the Why? participants came out with is their Why, not the Why that is a common purpose designed and adopted by the community of Who which is going to give the project a life! This served as a reminder that in designing a project, it is important to consider who executes the project, their reasons, their motivation, and to provide a scaffold that allows participants to find their own drivers.

WHY as identified by participants:
opportunity for a cross curricular French led project, create a school partnership with a French school, create a product, opportunity to use language in an authentic communicative context, multilevel, identity, cross generational

Moving onto the How was about thinking of actions that will make the project happen. It was a worthwhile step as it focussed participants on the type of learning outcomes  they want their students to get out of the project. This was also a starting point to think about the type of tools that can serve the purpose and forced people to consider the capturing, selecting, curating of information, the creation of content during the process, the feedback and conversations emanating from this process…

HOW as identified by participants:
research, gather, archive, share, connect, build framework, involve, define setting, communicate for the project, communicate about the project, relate, reflect, build collectively, discuss, manage contacts, feedback, develop global citizenship awareness.

Arriving at the What, participants were invited to consider the value of capturing the process that leads to the completion of a project. Often the proposed projects at this early stage are prescriptive. The stages of development to lead to this are worth capturing as they will tell the story of the project and also allow to get feedback and tweak/progess. Building in regular check points also gives visibility to individual and groups contribution so that all involved have a clear view of their involvement, what they are learning and how they are learning. What is produced out of this process can end up being a range of creations, and a quick brainstorm around what it can look like indicated that participants were considering a product they could have control over (e.g.: a video, a wiki etc). This led to go back to Who? and to build a project framework that allow for creativity and interpretation for all involved to shine through.

Key Words for building a Shared Histories project as identified by participants:
Time, sustainability, partnership, flexibility, communication about the process, about the product, visibility.

Participants can use the Who, Why, How, What circles to work with their partners in their school as well as their French partners. Getting to know each other from the outset is essential to work towards defining a common framework that is negotiated and  actionable over time and distance, including a range of actors, supported by ICTs that are accessible to all involved.

Shared Histories provides an ambitious opportunity. The scope and range of the project came to life as teachers from French and New Zealand met on Saturday morning via video conference. Shared Histories is definitely real and the welcome as well as the input of the French from the Amiens academy was an amazing reminder that what we had been working on for the last few days was actually starting now!

Schools had been provisionally paired in the light of their initial project outline.  Each introduced each other, in their respective or the other's language, exchanged a few ideas around how they envisage to go about the project.

Shared Histories in NZ school actually started on Saturday 7th November. It is an exciting challenge ahead.

Digital Presence? Digital Identity? Digital Citizenship?

Introducing, facilitating, training and talking about ePortfolios inveriably leads to consider digital identity, digital competencies and digital citizenship. These are the concepts bandied in educational circles. Increased use of tools purposefully to support learning and framed targeted use of tools to make sense of and create own understanding of the information we have access are redefining how we learn.
Developing an ePortfolio is one way to build sound digital competencies, alongside leaving a purposeful digital footprint.
I read an article this week that prompted me to think about Digital Identity, Digital Presence and Digital Citizenship.

In "What digital presence?" Louise Merzeau describes and explains how we build a digital presence from managing our Digital Identity and exercising our freedom to act or think online.
Her view point has resonated with me: while the technology as it stands to date only allows us to take limited steps to fully control our digital identity,  we as individuals can apply consciousness to our actions when using online services, and develop a managed digital presence. And collectively as users we can establish good practice.
Louise's analysis starts with the traces left behind as we use the internet.
She describes some traces as deliberate: we fill in a form when shopping online.
Some others are created when communicating and sharing: we "like" a Facebook friend's status, we leave a comment on a blogpost.
In both cases these traces are left voluntarily.
Our online activity, using a browser or being connected on LinkedIn, also and mainly generates quantities of traces that we leave behind unintentionally. As a result we in fact have very little control over the activity that shapes our digital identity.
Given the current technology, networks and economic strategies, we leave traces that we do not manage and thus we can not manage our digital identity if we reduce it to the traces we leave. While personal data, traces, privacy... are the object of necessary, current political, ethical and technical debates, they take time to concretise.
What to do in the meantime? We can be proactive and build a digital presence, with applying  deliberate behaviors associated with its management. Louise is not talking about an online presence from a marketing perspective though. While having a digital presence, reputation, clout are legitimate quests that relies on the traces left, she talks rather of being digitally present.
She proposes to include elements of temporality, just like in real life: our digital life is not made of traces that accumulate and that can be used in any order. Introducing the concept of time into our digital activity allows to evaluate and give context to the traces that are left behind for ever. And developing a coherent, rich presence in networks is the surest way to leave traces that are managed.
 Gmail and Facebook, amongst others, are free but we actually pay for them with our personal data: it is the currency, it has economical value for these businesses. Rather than being paranoid and buy in the media frenzy around the topic, best is to get informed, investigate options and negotiate what we are prepared to concede.
Developing sound digital competencies, expressing oneself in the right place in the right tone is also empowering beyond protection per se. Digital competence involves moving from being a consumer of services to being a content producer. Digital competence also involves using the tools to serve our purpose, for information gathering, collaboration, etc.  Just as we do in real life, we need to experience different settings, learn about them, adjust our behaviours, develop our memory of what we did, what we chose to forget, what we develop, what we can share when online.
Information on the web has also become highly personalized, we go and get the information we want and often we go to information that has been validated by someone on our networks, Twitter for instance. Information across the board is no longer top down. Louise argues that beyond the public/private debate, it is the high degree of personalization of the information that is influencing behaviors: we are not reading any article, we are reading an article that has been recommended.
The lines between our private (family, friends…) and public (work, community…) lines feel they are blurring since we are using similar platforms to live our digital life. But Louise also argues that not all conversations on networks are to be considered as public, just like the conversation at a nearby table in a café. It is how we use the information we have about others that matters: can we exploit any information we may come across? Is it because it is technically accessible that we can drop our ethical considerations and use the image of a drunken 16 year old to refuse him a job when five years on he presents an otherwise good CV?

All these behaviors are fairly new still and we all are learning together, while big corporate online services companies are moving at a very fast pace with their offerings so that we have little time to pause and think about what we are actually doing!
Schools and universities have a big role to play in framing theses competencies as they have no choice but to work with the tools.
Careful choice around sustainable online practices, scaffolded by teachers who themselves are proactive about their digital presence is attainable for learners from an early age, it is about instilling valuable behaviours that grow and evolve with the different life cycle we go through. Which could be captured, thought about and shared meaningfully and purposefully in an ePortfolio! I know you knew this was coming!