Working with visuals as powerful learning activity

Talking about practice what you preach! -  This is really what we did during the webinar about using visuals with Nancy White. We were choosing images, discussing images, drawing pictures alone and drawing pictures together. It was an eye-opener that working with visuals is much more than selecting a nice image to illustrate your text: drawing can be a powerful learning intervention.

The power of visuals is that it involves another part of the brain, which influences the directions of discussions. Visuals are engaging, by engaging both emotions and invoking sense-making. Some visuals are culturally sensitive but there are also symbols which work across all culture, for instance the spiral as a symbol of change. Some people may feel resistance to drawing because it missing the structure they are craving for. One of the lessons we learned is that images without text will have a more open interpretation, an image with text is already interpreted by the owner. Hence you have to think carefully how and if you want to combine text with images. Visuals can be used a variety of function - to illustrate an idea, - to clarify (like a model), - to stimulate curiosity, - to negotiate meaning making. We have to be conscious about how we use visuals - is it simply about making the online page look more attractive, is it to contextualize, or to stimulate curiosity? For learning purposes as a facilitator you can use visuals as well for meaning making. Videos are also powerful. Having the voice of a certain perspective on video can lead to people taking in the information differently then when presented in text.

  Some interesting online exercises for trainers and facilitators - for inspiration

• Ask people to share an image online on a topic before an online meeting (for instance in a padlet or boardthing). During the meeting you can invite people to group the images and invite a conversation about it. Especially inviting people to interpret images and to ask questions.
• Ask people to brainstorm during an online meeting on a topic through text. Then regroup or ask people to pick an interesting aspect. Here you don't use images. However, you visualize the conversation because it is visible for everybody.
• Do a visual summary of an online discussion for instance in a wordcloud, mindmap or with images
• Ask people to draw individually on a part of an online whiteboard
• Ask the group to draw collectively on a whiteboard
• Use videos - a creative use of videos was shared where each stakeholder had a video.

A list of resources if you want to do more with visuals

• Liberating structures, see for instance drawing together about face-2-face drawing
• The noun project 'creating the world visual language' through symbols
• Rich pictures by Checkland as part of the Soft Systems methodology, see also this resource
• The book Ruimte door beelden by Judith Zadoks
• Boardthing as online whiteboard for drawing together. Be aware that the chat is not working on the ipad.
• Kinestetic modelling by John Ward
• Group works deck
• Idea rating sheets 

Jaroslav Azhnyuk on education 2.0 in Ukrain

Jaroslav is 19 years old, lives in Ukrain, and started an NGO called Internet Initiatives. Is also a founder of Semantica Company.

What's education 2.0. Education + web2.0= education 2.0?? It is not as simple as that. First we need to educate people how to use the internet. A sixth of the population use internet, but mainly browsing and email. They don't use web2.0 tools, RSS feeds etc. Primary skills are using email; secondary skills are use of RSS feeds, slideshare, blogs, social networking, etc. How to use this, not only for fun, but also for business.

Hence Internet Initiatives organises:

- Barcamps where everyone can give presentations of about 30 minutes, a very open format. It's cool and fun. Barcamps were very inspiring and successful, starting a barcamp virus- 12 barcamps en monthly minicamps organized in a cafe. Lots of fun, beer and snacks. See blogcampCEE for an impression.

- New technologies on the Internet with 18 seminars on universities sponsored by EJC and Apple IMC. 6 topics, social networks, blogs, RSS feeds, search. Found out level of knowledge highly varies. Some students are deeply engaged, other don't know about it.

- Educamp in Kyiv on 8-9 november 2008. First day with prescheduled sessions, the second day with asked questions. For more information contact Jaroslav, he answers all his mails!

How technology shapes behaviour

The International Journal of E-collaboration is an interesting journal. It offers one free copy. Unfortunately you all get the same free copy, of Jan-March 2005, otherwise you could set up a group effort to get a all the issues for free :).


They use the following definition of e-collaboration: Electronic collaboration (e-collaboration) is operationally defined here as collaboration using electronic technologies among different individuals to accomplish a common task (Kock & D’Arcy, 2002, 2001). In the first article 6 key elements of e-collaboration are defined:

1. The collaborative task


2. The e-collaboration technology


3. Individuals involved in the collaborative task


4. Mental schemas possessed by the individuals


5. The physical environment surrounding the individuals


6. The social environment surrounding the individuals

In the article called: Technology-Shaping Effects of E-Collaboration Technologies: Bugs and Features by M. Lynne Markus, Bentley College, USA there is a great example that I would like to share with you.

In a case study of e-mail use in the late 80s the author found out that managers had to overcome the problems associated with a primitive e-mail system. For instance, the system lacked a 'cc' feature, requiring all recipients of the mail to be listed on the 'to' line, making it difficult to know who was expected to respond or take action. This was solved by the managers by using redundant salutations to name the particular recipients when there were multiple users on the 'to' line. The salutations made it clearer who was expected to take action, and for whom the message was a 'for your information'.

The second example was that use of the 'reply' feature would only reach the sender of the original message, no matter how many recipients had been listed on the 'to' line in the original message. This was solved by using the 'forward' function in stead of the 'reply' function. Even though this meant that the ID of the original sender had to be re-entered, all recipients of the original message would be included.

I think these are two wonderful examples of how technology set up (the system) did not determine the use, but did influence it in a certain way. The managers created their own ways of using the system in a way that supported their collaborative practices. Features are not binding constraints, if people want to communicate and collaborate they invent their own habits which suit them! If people are motivated enough, they may work with a suboptimal technology, and will invent their own ways of coping. Still technology shapes behaviour and hence it's important to think carefully through technology features while designing an online space.

I'm setting up a twitter experiment

I'm preparing an experiment with Twitter for 10 people, most unfamiliar with Twitter. Twitter is: A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? Basically you update your information continuously with short messages (max. 140 characters) and you can follow/be followed by others who read those messages.

For some, this seems an 'old tool' but for most of the people I work with it is unknown. On the one hand I encounter people who think that putting your information on internet is quite dangerous and feel that we should reduce the number of emails, on the other hand, there those who don't care whether you reply on facebook, twitter or their blog. How to find the middle ground when a group is a mix of those people?

A nice Twitter guide for beginners is written by Robin Good.

Nancy White is compiling stories how Twitter can foster collaboration. Some examples (but there are lots of other examples- check it out):

• Using a twitter network - project twitter on screen in face-to-face event. Ask a question out to the network. See the (FAST) response.
• Find job candidates through Twitter
• During a power outage, use mobile Twitter to coordinate information about the nature of the outage and the availability of internet cafes in the area with power for the team to reassemble.
• Using twitter as a virtual water cooler.I work from home, and my colleagues are my collaboration buddies, clients, colleagues. Twitter is a great way to keep up with what is happening, so face-to-face meetings get up to speed much quicker. Blogs work the same way, though they tend to contain a different set of content.

Andy Carvin sees a lot of potential in Twitter, because of the combination with mobile phone. Read his post how Twitter can save lives.

For the real fans: there is the twitterfan wiki.

I collaborate, e-collaborate, we collaborate

We produced a booklet with stories of how people and organisations in the development sector in the Netherlands have experimented with new e-tools to improve collaboration and communication. We have distributed hardcopies, but you can also download the booklet called 'I collaborate, e-collaborate, we collaborate from this page. Furthermore, you can find more stories on the blog with the same name.

Training to introduce new e-tools

Today a little bit of a blogging day, catching up with my bloglines and blog ideas.. This is blogpost number 301! It starts to function as my memory, my brains are already getting lazy after I blogged something. So in future I will probably need the search function on my blog more than my memory...

With Steven Scheer and Simon Koolwijk I co-facilitated a training to introduce various tools for e-collaboration at kontakt der kontinenten. Though I had become a little allergic to training throughout my career, seeing little application of all that was learned -and more and more attracted to supporting learning through communities of practice- this day made me realize training can be powerful for learning new things and especially for lowering the threshold for people to experiment with various new tools. We did a virtual team assignment, using a NING platform as an example of a web-based discussion forum, skype as VoIP and Unyte as an example of a screen sharing tool.

It was interesting to see that people got a chance to talk about their use of tools (and that there were a couple of previously unidentified champions) and their anxieties. An important aspect of such a day may be to make use of technology a topic for discussion. One of those anxieties was whether working online would make everything 'faster' again. Another one was about security, fear of spam, viruses etc., but also fear for undesired contacts with the negative connotation of the word chat (the fact that one participant was immediately invited by two unknown men after signing up for skype did not help).

What I personally learned is:

• The reconfirmation of differing individual learning styles. During preparation and testing, noone used the handouts, and I thought they were obsolete. But during the training one participant read the handout completely before doing anything else.
• There are always technical set-backs, so you have to be creative and have plan B. In our case, the ning invitations were never received, probably filtered out somewhere. One champion helped to send it through another address.
• In such a training where online collaboration beyond e-mail is new to the participants, it is important to create a positive experience and help them with the hard parts eg. uploading pictures. Working on a real life case made it interesting, people could see what they achieved in terms of project results, supported by the technology rather than seeing the technology as a hurdle.