[LINK] The Open Government Partnership

[Jan Whitaker]

At 10:28 AM 22/01/2014, Janet Hawtin wrote:

>There is a lot of trivial win/lose on television and very little 
>negotiated win/win.
>Where is the space for learning a different modality.

Spot on, Janet. (sort of drifting off topic, but I'm sure there are 
thematic links) And I think your examples of activities that get 
teams working together instead of against each other in social 
studies and science are terrific. The prize is to solve a problem 
that helps society, not to beat the other guy.

Seems to me there are interactions here of the type of media 
transitions that are going on, the implementation of elearning, the 
sorts of school activities that emphasise various approaches, and 
living in a culture of glorified competition rather than cooperation. 
We're somewhat back to systems thinking and understanding human 
behaviour and human development. (Don't even get me started with 
government politicisation of the curriculum!) There are no absolutes, 
despite what many rulers (and I use that term quite consciously) spout.

It's hard to know what the general rather than the anecdotal facts 
are because there is so much going on in all those variables (one of 
the reasons I walked away from educational research -- the complexity 
was too great in reality to confidently reduce it to practical 
application). 'Close' or 'best guess with least damage' is about as 
good as we  can get, I guess.

Maybe I'm just getting old. ;-)

Jan



Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com

Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you're gonna die, so how 
do you fill in the space between here and there? It's yours. Seize your space.
~Margaret Atwood, writer

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