By: Richard C. Close Creative Commons License: CC BY-NC-ND Author contact: richardcclose@gmail.

com Author Biography: Richard is currently ServantCEO of Chrysalis Campaign, Inc., a U.S. and International Educational NGO that empowers youth and the poor with Adult Learning and Internet based education programs. He is also Acting Director of Education at the Bridgeport Rescue Mission in CT, USA.

Anniversary Book Project

5th

The GLOBAL Learning Framework

And the Birth of Flash Learning in the Global Collaborative

Richard is an International conference speaker, author, industry strategist, Adult Learning curriculum developer of the Global Learning Framework. Chrysalis Campaign, Inc, is currently being sponsored by UNESCO Power of Peace Network to launch a YouTube story telling contest called I am Africa. This is my story
In the same way that dictators are waking up to flash protests and are shocked at how an entire nation can overthrow an authoritarian trickle down knowledge structure in days, global collaborative learning is overthrowing tradition academics. Educators are facing that the same revolution in classrooms that are dysfunctional with our youths reality as a global collaborative. Our learning now flows within the global collective as Micro Learning Paths MLP of: Problem>Discover >Adopt>Collaborate>Publish processes. These processes are 100% integrated with innumerable other Micro Learning Paths all concurrently running in individual and collective educational experiences. This basic set of five processes is the fabric of how we share and learn as a global collaborative. How we learn as a collective within the Internet is called the Global Learning Framework. Class or subject area: Web 2.0 Methods and Curriculum Grade level(s): K12 and AL Specific learning objectives: How Web 2.0 collaboration education works globally The processes of collaborative learning via the Internet call Micros Learning Paths How the Global Learning Framework impacts industrial education methods The impact web learning has on educational methods The gap between youth experience in training and collective smart phone learning Why social Internet learning is bypassing classroom instruction How the political and social Flash Learning revolution is taking place

Activity Summary

Abstract In the same way that dictators are waking up to flash protests and are shocked at how an entire nation can overthrow an authoritarian trickle down knowledge structure in days, global collaborative learning is overthrowing tradition academics. Educators need to take notice that the same revolution of human-technology is taking place with students that have challenged the relevance of learning-ina-box-facts that is dysfunctional with our youths reality as a global collaborative. While a classroom of students in a traditional classroom wade through indexed text books chapter by chapter in order to pass Fridays test, a torrent of knowledge is streaming past and through them in their cell phones. While the teacher at the head of class has a one way channel of dumping facts into empty buckets, billions of people outside the classroom walls are exchanging terabits of fluid knowledge in collaborative communities. As students look into their two year old history books, they reflect on CNNs real time reporting of Middle East revolutions. Shaking their heads, they know the school does not get it. And after leaving the classroom bubble, the child hangs out during recess with friends, opens up his phone and once again unites himself with the global collaborative. We need to be aware of this revolution because resistance is futile. The entrenchment of colonial/industrial education is when a superior/expert group imparts their knowledge down into the working classes/cultures. Democracy in Education has the masses fully empowered to explore, create and share knowledge on equal footing between students, the same way billions of people typically use the Web today. The disconnectedness between these two approaches of learning is vast, wide and now becoming antagonistic. In addition, the argument that the digital divide is because affluence can afford technology and the poor cannot is now growing weaker because the barriers to cell and PC access are fading. It is only about access and soon everyone will have it. This will happen as the cell phone bypasses the PC as a personal network appliance. 1. Entrenched in the Industrial Model Colonial or industrial training is when people in authority such as governments, educational departments or companies utilize a learning process as a one way street to replicate the principles or process they want the learner to perform. It is trickle-down, authoritarian and industrial in its nature. In Colonial training, there is not much personal responsibility for learning as is evident in a do as you are told process of developing good worker bees or soldiers. The eLearning buzz word for this strategy is workforce productivity. This is a pass or fail fit in or get fired method. It is the opposite of the Web. 2. Community, Not Facts Defines Competence Colonial online learning fits the academic and business models well, because of the requirement to control the following: brand, knowledge base, copyright, rights and student ownership. Yet even when we were developing Microsoft Certification and others, we understood the limits of certification training that were eventually tested in the courts. We could certify that the person knew the body of Microsoft NT knowledge, but not guarantee if they were a good MS Systems Engineers because of variances in IT environments and the personalities of the engineers. Tests only tell us that a person is competent in a self contained body of knowledge. Factual certification does not necessarily mean

Illustrating this one-way flow of informational obedience. that job competence has been developed, or that they are even a nice person to deal with. The development of competence requires human collaboration with the real world to be valid. This is also true of teacher testing. A teacher can get high technical marks but hide the fact that they are a screamer, intimidator or even pedophile. Truth-be-known, with great teachers the ability to communicate is more important than mastery of the facts. How do we certify mastery of context, values and feelings (i.e. being human)? 3. Collaboration is Learning in the Context of the Community The Web is not only knowledge, but it is knowledge connected together with other knowledge in context of the communities in which it resides. By its very nature, context about a piece of information is often more important than the piece of information itself. An image of the President of the United States in a U.S. social community has a totally different meaning than in a radical terrorist community. Think of how you would make a value or feeling towards something a tangible fact. If we teach facts without localized meaning, values or feeling, we will educate people who simply do not care in a school system that does not really care about them. Social context is what makes

learning relevant in building character. It is why Facebook and Twitter are so relevant. In democratic/collaborative learning, we turn to the open community to challenge if what we have learned is true and useful. We even have the choice to go directly against the community regarding what they think is right, when we know that what the community accepts is wrong, like I am doing in this paper. In collaborative learning, sometimes it is right to be wrong. Sometimes the inconvenient truth goes viral and flashes across the world, and sadly sometimes it is angry disinformation that yields millions of deaths. This flexibility of collaborative context is what makes it too complex for traditional eLearning systems. The global learning on the Web seems to manage this

fuzzy grading system of publishing effortlessly.

4. Context is the Fluid Glue of Knowledge Objects In collaborative learning, the human element (context) becomes equally (if not more) important than the knowledge object. Lets say I hold up a U.S. dollar bill in a U.S. sales meeting. I get excitement and cheers. There are places in the world where if I held a U.S. dollar up, the hatred for it could get me shot. The paper bill (fact) is innocent; however the human context around that paper is highly significant. Human collaboration around an object or idea is what gives it context. Context is the fluid glue between bricks of knowledge. Whether we heal cancer or blow up the world is defined in the context of how we perceive the use of nuclear energy. Context through human collaboration is what makes the brick relevant to the community building. Learning systems and methods must adapt to handling context with knowledge. 5. Micro Learning Paths the Process of a Global Learning Framework Can we find a method in this madness of global exchange of information? Is it possible to facilitate collaboration in the classroom, business and global community? Can we teach in such chaos? Absolutely, yes we can. To understand how Web collaborative education works in contrast to assess-teachtest is to move from flat index learning into 3-D weave of human context and knowledge sharing. I used to believe that on-demand search learning would accomplish this, but now I see that human collaboration and publishing are all inseparable processes in the education of global social communities.

The Global Learning Framework is a weave of humanity concurrently performing five simple educational processes: 5.1. Problem: Web learning starts with a need or a problem. We turn to the global Web with How do I find out? 5.2 Discovery: Next, enter a discovery process. Often we discover that we are asking the wrong question or looking in the wrong place. As the Web keeps offering search results, we find ourselves reformulating our questions until we finally come to a place where we think weve found what solves the problem. On the Web, we are forced to discover the truth and not blindly accept what we are told by an authority. 5.3 Adopt: Once we discover what we are looking for, we choose to adopt it either as the fact we need or the action we would like to take. Either way, at this point, we take ownership of that knowledge. With ownership comes a level of trust that is enough to embrace it into our life. 5.4 Collaborate: Knowledge alone is useless unless tested or applied with other people in the real world. After learning new cake recipes or drip irrigation, I can try it with the physical world or present it to other people. Collaboration is a field of testing the new knowledge with the reality around us. If it is not accepted, we may have to go back to discovery again. Collaboration also reassures us to move ahead or go back to the problem. 5.5 Publish: Once we go through these steps and trust our conclusion, we publish it in a variety of ways. Publishing can be writing your conclusion on a homework blog, planting burn resistant seeds, or baking the ultimate brownies you just researched (only to discover that your date is allergic to chocolate). Publishing is a statement that what we have learned is worth giving back to the world or local community. 6. Web Education Flows Within a Non Linear Global Community This sequence of Problem>Discover >Adopt>Collaborate>Publish seems like another linear method; however it is anything but linear. It is a path 100% integrated with innumerable other Micro Learning Paths all concurrently running at the same time and at different stages in the educational experience. Although it seems like five nice boxes, the contents of those processes (within the boxes) are dynamically changing. When we share our thoughts or search (Publish), it integrates with other Micro Learning Paths around the globe. In fact, all learning is impacting other learning on a massive scale. Just repeating a paths moments later may yield completely different discoveries and outcomes. Just like a heated town hall meeting, democracy bursts out with everyone talking at once. Yet in the end, collaborative conclusions of greater accuracy are the final outcome. What we should be able to conclude at this point is that the power of human collaboration is, in its ability to rapidly evolve and change, the worlds knowledge base as a whole. With the Micro Learning Path, we can see how frequently solutions to lifes problems are often outside of the classroom, certification program, community education and even the countrys educational bubble. This is a staggering leap in educational theory and practice. How ironic that any child who has a smart phone is already there. A single Micro Learning Path always feeds into anothers path at various stages of the learning experience. When a group publishes something, it impacts anothers groups discovery process.

One groups collaboration process intersects another problem or publishing stage. In a fantastic way, all of the problems and solutions in the world become not only integrated in a theoretical sense, but in a physical digital/network way as well. The world ends up teaching itself simultaneously. From a Knowledge Management point of view, Knowledge Objects are crashing together in a sea of social context of feeling and associations. 7. Flash Learning The Creator of Global Revolutions

Yes, cell and Internet technology creates flashes of collective awareness, adoption and fact sharing into revolutions such as the Islamic spring or presidential elections. We call these fast collective gestalts Flash Learning. Dictators who once had control over their people wake up to discover an entire country demanding their expulsion. But Flash Learnings collective power runs even deeper than what we can imagine. While global collective learning involves, the mental integration of Micro Learning Paths bleed over and impact seemingly unrelated learning paths. Layers upon layers of learning facts and context are virtually influencing one anothers learning processes simultaneously. Think of it, the place you booked your flight is also where you learn about weather, food, housing, local wildlife and disasters. It is all connected to your hand held device from sources around the world and you can give your opinion, reaction and guidance on all of it.

Our old school esthetic distance with the pages of history books has been replaced by the real time cries of Syrian youth being murder by their government on a TV screen right behind the counter while we purchase our Dunkin Donuts. We can even Tweet the reporter to give them our impression. Our education will define whether we see these images like video game illusions or in a tragic human context to be acted upon. Knowledge is no longer black type on the white pages of an indexed book. It is dynamically woven in the fabric of all of our lives and broadcasted into the furthest reaches of space. This is the ultimate invention of the human race, one fluid Global Learning Framework moving through a socially networked technology called the Internet.

Works Cited Webinar: Close, Richard. C. (2006, March). Colonial Industrial Training Vs. Democratic Web Education Our New Global Learning Framework Nov 19th 2010 Global Education Conference Webinar http:// tinyurl.com/34fjue8