Extended Learning

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We are a barter network for the creative community. Our members trade skills, spaces and objects to get their work done without money.

“Proprietary, for profit organizations can not, in any meaningful way, constitute a “sharing economy.” Rather, we argued theirs was a “renting economy,” where an information commons had been enclosed upon.”

http://tradeschool.coop/start-a-tradeschool/

Trade School is a non-traditional learning community that runs on barter. We celebrate local wisdom, mutual respect, and the social nature of exchange.

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Una Lee about _Community Centered Design

- There is a difference between who benefits and who participates and we have to consider who can be harmed.

- She uses the Lense of Design Justice ex: contratados.org is like a yelp for migrant workers

- Process:

1. Starting the work where it is already happening. ex: people were already complaining and recommending workers in facebook

2. Immerse research, to gather input

3. Looping back, involving people, showing them the prototypes and design

4. Build on existing relationships & community organizations efforts

5. Stewardship, once the project/tool is out, it is not the team that designed it but the community that will lead it

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2016 Conference: Platform Cooperativism

All over the world, individuals, businesses, and cities are involved in the platform cooperativism movement.

#BusinessModel #SocialJustice #Ownership

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Notes on Nato Thompson, Living As Form. What is meant by living? Artists have long desired that art enter life. But what do we mean by “life”? Anti-representational, Participation, Situated, Operating in the political sphere. What is meant by form? Gatherings, Media Manipulation, Research and its presentation, Structural Alternatives, Communication. 

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Photo : A new public square in the Fawwar refugee camp in the West Bank, June 2014, New York Times

Notes from “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy” by Nancy Fraser

- All too often it was assumed that to subject the economy to the control of the socialist state was to subject it to the control of the socialist citizenry - turning the socialist vision into an institutionalized form instead of a participatory democratic form - Second confusion is that “the public sphere” means: the state, the official-economy of paid employment, and arenas of public discourse - this conflation has theoretical and practical political consequences - Haberma’s concept of the public sphere helps us make distinctions between state apparatuses, economic markets, and democratic associations - Problems with Habermas’ public sphere: it idealizes the liberal public sphere and it does not examine other nonliberal competing public spheres, or counterpublics. There are four assumptions central to Habermas’ bourgeois masculinist public sphere that Fraser offers: 1) the assumption that it is possible for interlocutors in a public sphere to bracket status differentials and to deliberate as if they were social equals, 2) the assumption that the proliferation of a multiplicity of competing publics is necessarily a step away from greater democracy and that a single public sphere is preferable to a nexus of multiple publics, 3) the assumption that discourse in public spheres should be restricted to deliberation about the common good, and that the appearance of private interests and private issues is always undesirable, 4) the assumption that a functioning democratic public sphere requires a sharp separation between civil society and the state - In conclusion, Fraser argues that a public sphere requires the elimination of social inequality, that a multiplicity of publics is preferable to a single public sphere, that a tenable conception of the public sphere would countenance not the exclusion, but the inclusion, of interests and issues that bourgeois ideology labels “private”, and that defensible conception would allow for both strong and weak publics - Four tasks alongside the argument: the theory should render visible the ways in which social inequality ruins deliberation within publics, it should show how inequality affects relations among publics, how publics are differentially empowered or segmented, and how some are involuntarily enclaved and subordinated, it should expose ways in which the labelling of issues and interests as private limits the range of problems, and approaches to problems, and finally, it should show how the weak character of public spheres strips public opinion of practical force

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Notes from Miwon Kwon’s “One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity” - “Culture in Action: New Public Art in Chicago” focused on the active participation of residents in diverse communities in the creation of the artworks. The project established a new vocabulary within the genre of urban-oriented sculpture exhibitions. It tested the territory of public interaction and participation; the role of the artist as an active social force; artist-driven educational programming as an essential part of the artwork; and projects that existed over an extend period of time, not just as spectator-oriented objects for brief viewing -  The relationship between the artist and the audience itself is the work - “Culture in Action” cast the community as the authority figure - drawing on ideas from vanguard forms, new genre public art adds a developed sensibility about audience, social strategy and effectiveness that is unique to visual art as we know it today - shifts the focus from artist to audience, from object to process, from production to reception, and emphasizes the importance of direct, unmediated engagement with particular audience groups - Political aspiration toward greater democratization of art - pluralist inclusivity, multicultural representation, consensus-building - There needs to be a reconsideration of public arts values and priorities, methodologies and procedures, but also a major rethinking of site specificity. Site is abstract and is being displaced by notions of an audience, a social issue, and a community vs place-specific is more intimate and particularized - Four types of communities : a) communities of mythic unity, b) sited communities, c) invented communities, d) long-term engagement with invented communities

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Notes on “Why Problem-Based Learning Works: Theoretical Foundations” by Rose M. Marra

- One learns the basics in the context of a meaningful, but ill-structured problem solving activity - A primary assumption of PBL is that when we “solve the many problems we face everyday, learning occurs (Barrows & Tamblyn) This runs counter to our public education system, which primarily implements learning only in formal educational settings-implying that once we leave school, we stop learning - Learning is initiated by an authentic, ill-structured problem and ill-structured problems are those that have multiple or unknown goals, solution methods, and criteria for solving them - The primary characteristics of a PBL environment are: problem-focused, student-centered, self-directed, self-reflective, facilitative - Theoretical foundations of PBL: Constructivism - knowledge is constructed via interactions with the environment, reality is in the mind of the knower, meaning and thinking are distributed among the culture and the community in which we exist and the tools we use, knowledge is anchored in and indexed by relevant contexts, knowledge construction is stimulated by a question or need or desire to know - Theoretical foundations of PBL: Situated Learning - situated learning or situated cognition was proposed by Brown and argued that meaningful and lasting learning takes place best when it is embedded in a social and physical context as similar as possible to that in which the learning would be applied - Implications for supporting PBL : Metacognition is the awareness of one’s own knowledge, of one’s actions, and of one’s current cognitive or affective state. Metacognition can include knowledge of what they know, what they do not know, how they learn new knowledge or skills, and what strengths and weaknesses they have in regard to their area of study. Flavell distinguishes two characteristics of metacognition: knowledge of cognition and self-regulation of cognition

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This book presents an introduction to socially engaged art through the tools of education. “To participate is not to create homogeneity; to participate is to generate vitality.” Understanding the social processes we are engaging in doesn’t oblige us to operate in a particular capacity; it only makes us more aware of the context and allows us to better influence and orchestrate desired outcomes.

1. Definitions : There is no complete agreement as to what constitutes a meaningful interaction or social engagement, what characterizes socially engaged art is its dependence on social intercourse as a factor of its existence. This category of practice is still a working construct. Art based on social interaction has been identified as “relational aesthetics”, “community”, “collaborative”, “participatory”, “dialogic”, and “public” art. But “social practice” avoids evocations of both the modern role of the artist and the postmodern version of the artist, but instead, democratizes the construct, making the artist into an individual whose specialty includes working with society in a professional capacity.

2. Community : a) construction of community or temporary social group through a collective experience, b) the construction of multi-layered participatory structures, c) the role of social media in the construction of community, d) the role of time, and e) assumptions about audience

3. Situations : how to identify a variety of particular social scenarios and navigate the realm of shifting expectations and perceptions in a given community

4. Conversation : conversation is the center of sociality, of collective understanding and organization. Organized talks allow people to engage with others, create community, learn together, or simply share experiences without going any farther

5. Collaboration : notion of collaboration presupposes the sharing of responsibilities between parties in the creation of something new

6. Antagonism : antisocial and disagreement is a quality of art-making that is simply more exacerbated in some practices than others. Antagonistic approaches engage audiences under voluntary, nonvoluntary, and involuntary ways.

7. Performance : performance is embedded in socially engaged art because it borrows from several conceptual mechanisms and strategies that are derived from the history of performance art

8. Documentation : intangible social interaction between a group of people can constitute the core of an artwork and documentation helps reinforce the presence of an authorial hand

9. Transpedagogy : projects that blend educational processes and art-making in works that offer an experience that is different from conventional art and formal education

10. Deskilling : new art curriculum needs to be multidisciplinary in its reach and creative in its individual development

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The imagination—expressed in dreams, songs, fantasies, myths and stories—has always been part of the repertoire of every society, in some culturally organized way. But there is a peculiar new force to the imagination in social life today…the globalized mass media, which present a rich, ever-changing storehouse of possible lives, some of which enter the lived imaginations of ordinary people.

Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization

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Notes from Understanding By Design, Grant Wiggins

How will we distinguish interesting learning from effective learning? How will we meet content standards or arrive at student understandings unless we think through what those goals imply for the learner’s activities and achievements? Design considerations should be applied to curriculum planning - focus first on the desired learnings from which teaching will follow. First identify results, then determine acceptable evidence, and lastly, plan learning experiences and instruction.

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Key quotes from Chantal Mouffe’s “From antogonistic politics to an agonistic public space” In “Re-Public: Re-Imaging Democracy”

- The Political has to do with the dimension of conflict: a conflict that cannot find a resolution through dialogue and that cannot be eliminated - Antagonistic conflicts are linked to a pluralism of values that cannot be reconciled. Then there is pluralism with antagonism which is one that acknowledges that pluralism entails the existence of conflicts, which can have no rational solution. Antagonistic conflicts can take on different forms - The main task of a democracy is not to reach consensus, but to manage dissensus - to find forms that make co-existence possible and in fact will be conductive to some form of freedom & recognition of differences; a forming of tolerance - Agonism is the recognition of the legitimacy of the demands of the Other. This is the form of expression which is most compatible with democratic society. - Conflicts cannot be eradicated, but managed

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How do you judge the quality of socially engaged art practice?

- Under what conditions are socially engaged art practices effective? - To whom does it matter? - Should the aim be to create an experience of consensus or dissensus?

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Notes from “Art & Design Education: The Problem of Assessment in Art & Design” by Trevor Rayment

Assessment are not accommodated within the realm of art education. How can one teach what cannot be defined? How can one assess what cannot be specified or taught? Before assessing work, it is important to clarify why the work is being assessed and what is being assessed. The status of art and design in education relies to some extent upon its accountability. Formative assessment at its best is assessment for learning as well as of learning and plays an integral part in the development of projects, promoting encouragement. Developmental assessment gauges the development of an individual from one moment in time to another and is more concerned with national and local norms to understand progress. Diagnostic assessment approaches students’ work and behavior as evidence for the analysis of their ability in a given field and is a method for discussion between teacher and student.

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The Park(ing) Day Manifesto: User-Generated Urbanism and Temporary Tactics for Improving the Public Realm Park(ing) Day is a medium that recognizes the “niche spaces” that are undervalued for the range of potential activities within them. These niche spaces can bring about re-valuation through creative acts. Within the approach, there are four core aspects of the practice: tactics, generosity, authenticity, and absurdity. Tactics disrupts the dox and temporarily projects a new set of values onto a space. Generous urbanism is the creation of public situations between strangers that produces new cultural value without commercial transaction. Authentic urbanism is made up of real activities. Absurd urbanism tries to expose the embedded absurdity of the urban landscape. 

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Stop, Start, Continue: Conceptual Understanding Meets Applied Problem Solving

To better understand how educating individuals can make a global difference, consider what we should stop doing, what we should start doing, and what we should continue doing.

IB teacher “On many days, when we concluded our activities and jobs, we met in a circle and asked ourselves:What should we stop doing? What should we start doing? What should we continue doing?

As simple as these sound, they provided us a safe, predictable set of questions that became habits of mind, a way to pause and reflect before engaging in something else. Our aim was to get better at what we were doing.”

“Start looking for problems to solve, actions to take, and beauty to create. If we were to do something that really mattered to ourselves, our classrooms, our schools, and our community, the potential for impact would be at once local and global. Start finding ways to engage students in understanding real-world problems, and then support them in solving those problems.”

“There is emerging evidence that where there is no emotion, there is no learning.”

“Continue to place our work with students in global contexts. We share a common humanity, and that's worth finding ways to be mindful of our interdependence. Foster the sense of connection that comes from seeing oneself as a part of a larger global community.”