Haven A Collaborative Lifelong Cyber-Learning Community
by Claudia L'Amoreaux
Beginnings
When the first photos of the whole earth were beamed from a synchronous satellite in 1967, I was 15 years old. In dramatic contrast to the maps I'd had to memorize as a child in geography class, this azure jewel of a planet had no borders. Borders were clearly mindstuff--a form of collective hypnosis, shifting like the sands over time. These photos made me conscious as a young adult of what I'd known intuitively as a child wandering alone in the woods that covered the hills where I lived in the Ohio River Valley--Earth is a living being. They inspired me to become a global citizen, systems thinker, edge-ucator.
I bought my first 2400 baud modem in 1985. Friends of mine were using these "lightening fast" (compared to the earlier 300 and 1200 baud modems they were indeed lightening fast!) communications devices to open a long distance dialogue with people in the former Soviet Union in some of the first peace exchanges. I was intrigued. As a child of the '50s, raised with "iron curtains," a Soviet "enemy," and air raid drills all through elementary and junior high school, this opportunity to make peace through direct action was a promise of planetary citizenship realized. EcoNet, later to join with PeaceNet in the IGC Network (Institute for Global Communications) blazed Internet trails in citizen diplomacy and helped launch me into cyberspace with their inspiring global activism.
I have a deep appreciation for the Whole Earth Catalog and the community that produced it. Starting in the spring of 1969, these practical visionaries offered "access to tools and ideas" that nurtured whole systems thinking, sustainable business and lifelong learning. The Whole Earth Catalog was a new paradigm tsunami and long before GOPHER and the Web, I surfed its content-rich pages. The WELL, an acronym for the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, grew out of the creativity of the Whole Earth Catalog community. One of the early computer conferencing networks, it was a result of the combined vision of catalog creator Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant. Stewart and Larry were members of the EIES (Electronic Information Exchange System) network started by Murray Turoff at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in 1974. Murray developed EMISARY, the first computer conferencing system. He designed EIES to facilitate group decision making based on collective intelligence. In 1985, Stewart and Larry turned their experience with EIES into the WELL. This pioneering electronic community is still thriving today, nested within Salon.com.
When I connected the modem to my Mac Plus and logged onto the Internet for the first time, the WELL was my home base on the Internet. Later, I joined Women's Wire, a San Francisco-based Electronic Bulletin Board or BBS as they were known. It was the first online community for women, started by Nancy Rhine and Ellen Pack. Nancy had been a key staff member of the WELL community.
These conferencing networks and BBSs--EcoNet and PeaceNet, the WELL, Women's Wire--were the ancestors of today's online learning communities. They reflected and embodied two highly significant shifts: from teaching to learning, and from media consumption to invention and creation. These communities encouraged participants in self-directed, lifelong learning and in generating their own media. With EcoNet and PeaceNet, Americans citizens and then-Soviet citizens set out to learn their own truths about each other's culture, person to person, direct, not through their countries' textbooks and media. Environmental and peace activists could collaborate effectively on local and international projects, sharing information and organizing actions and responses.
The WELL took the conference to an entirely new level--people explored the ethics and responsibilities of netizenship, with plenty of real sweat and tears shed along the sometimes arduous way. As a result, the WELL community has contributed a great deal of wisdom and guidelines for creating and sustaining online community. Howard Rheingold is one influential WELL veteran. He distilled his insights into a book, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier.
Women's Wire offered women a place online to discuss their take on business, health, sexuality, parenting and politics at a time when the Internet was still very much a man's world. Women coached each other in entrepreneurial skills. Editors gathered daily world news that focused on women's issues and gathered a women's "herstory" archive. The Women's Wire community became a networking hub for women preparing to attend the Beijing Women's Conference in '95, and for those who could not attend in person, they helped us participate virtually. Women's Wire abandoned its community in a major makeover and conversion to the web, a strategic decision that chagrined many, but I know that all the women who were participants in their bold experiment are grateful to have ridden its wave.
From teaching to learning, from media consumption to media generationI was fortunate to experience the shift in emphasis from teaching to learning early in my adult life. Drawn by a vision of ecstatic edge-ucation, I found my way to an unusual Montessori preschool and elementary "free school" as an intern. The New School was my first learning community. Parents and staff ran the school together, by consensus.(They weren't ready yet to extend the democratic vote to the children like Summerhill and the Albany Free School had, but attempting consensus government with staff and parents having equal votes was a big step in the right direction). I left the teacher/student paradigm behind and crossed over fully to learning facilitator with the young people. My experiences here affirmed me as a self-directed learner and since those days twenty six years ago, I have been walking a lifelong path of extraordinary apprenticeships. Sometimes I'm on the mentoring side of the relationship, sometimes on the apprenticeship side. Most often I am in both roles simultaneously in different zones of my life.
In this same experimental school, I had my first introduction to media generation, working with video using early black and white video cameras and "portapacks" to record the children and facilitators in the environment. We analyzed the video in slow motion for reflective feedback on learning styles and the dynamics of interaction in an innovative process pioneered by Nancy Rambusch at Xavier University (Cincinnati, Ohio).
But my shift to full media empowerment came a decade later, with the desktop publishing revolution that the personal computer and laser printer combination made possible in the 1980s. About the time I was hooking up my modem, I invested all my savings in a laser printer, recognizing that this tool was the key to self-publishing (I always advised my young friends to get a computer and a printer, not a car, for serious transportation. Now it's a computer and a modem.) I apprenticed with the first "desktop publisher" in our town, trading him editing and proofreading for mentoring on the complicated Pagemaker software, the standard then for page layout.
I began to publish a newsletter, called the Green Times, the print media predecessor to the Haven online learning community. The Green Times offered news of where and how good things were happening in restoring, renewing and respecting the environment. It was founded on the belief that examples of sustainability can help guide us. I wanted to ask the question, where is it working? The major focus of publications at the time was on how our social systems were not working. Today, Orion Afield, Yes! and Resurgence magazines are shining examples of this positive approach.
When the World Wide Web cast its hyperlinks over the Internet via the Mosaic browser in 1994, I carried these experiences of learning community (off and online) and a commitment to media generation into the new territory. I recognized the beginnings of an extraordinary new global learning environment and I wanted to participate in its creation.
Think Globally, Act Locally.In 1972, while he was advisor to the United Nations Conference on the Environment, René Dubos gave us the now familiar phrase, "Think Globally, Act Locally." He wanted people to realize that to make a difference in the global environment, we must begin by considering our local bioregion--essential wisdom that many communities have taken to heart. In the two decades since René offered us his insights in a maxim that has resonated 'round the planet, the web has emerged, presenting us with an opportunity and challenge to reconsider "Think Globally," while we enthusiastically embrace "Act Locally."
What on earth does "Think Globally" mean today? HOW do we begin? I see this as one of the key roles of online learning communities. They offer us an extraordinary context to practice global thinking by enabling international dialogue and collaboration. This is not optimistic dreaming. Amazing global thinking experiments have been flowering, supported by email alone. Next generation online learning communities like I*EARN and Thinkquest are leading the way. Equally important for flexing global thinking muscles is the opportunity for individuals in local learning centers to make the media--to self-publish and directly contribute to online learning communities rather than passively consume and process information. This is a critical difference between "surfing the web" and entering into/participating in an online learning community.
Taking Rene's words to heart, the online learning community becomes the global counterpoint to the local learning center, and the local learning center grounds the online learning community in an honest sense of place. It's a potent combination. Let's weave them together right from the start.
How might we begin the weaving? Some local learning centers will feel inspired to create their own online learning communities. Some may consider collaborating with one other or a few local learning centers in other parts of the world to create a shared online learning community. The Education Revolution newsletter/AERO website and the Coalition for Self-Learning discussion list/community (see the Resources Section) will be helpful in facilitating these connections between local learning centers. Other local learning centers may choose to participate in and contribute to existing online learning communities for which they feel an affinity. The Edge-ucation Matrix of Haven is an example of an online learning community that encourages local learning centers to participate, helps connect local learning centers to other online learning communities and supports local learning centers in creating their own online learning communities.
(Remember when you visit and participate in online learning communities today, this is early in their development. Access* is still a tremendous issue. Only a fraction of voices are represented. But this fraction of voices is diverse enough to begin practicing the art and skills of dialogue and collaboration. Make access issues a focal point of inquiry and action in your local learning center and online learning community. With increased awareness of access issues, we can work to insure that no one is left behind. Local learning centers can make a significant contribution here by functioning as Community Access Centers--see the notes on Community Access Centers or CACs in the Access section at the end of the chapter. The very unique possibility that online learning communities offer is global participation. Our children will grow up taking this for granted. It is up to us to help shape the quality of that participation and the diversity of voices represented.)
HavenThere is no pregiven territory of which we can make a map -- the map making itself brings forth the features of the territory.
~Fritjof Capra, The Web of LifeThe best way I've discovered to learn about learning communities is to design, create and participate in one. In the '70s and '80s, I catalyzed two local resource centers. With the rise of the web, I poured my energy into creating Haven, an online learning community that I refer to as a web-based center for global studies. Today I am co-creating a local learning center once again as the complement to the online environment. I anticipate a very creative and surprising interplay between the two will evolve over time. Meanwhile, faster speed modems, higher bandwidth and software advances are allowing me to take the online learning community into challenging new realms. I'll tell a little of the Haven story for those of you who are also drawn to explore and create experimental internet-based learning communities.
In 1994, I began meditating on my optimal online learning environment--what would it be like? I sat down with Christopher Alexander's two volume design guide, The Timeless Way of Building, and A Pattern Language, and started to reflect on the design patterns that were most important to me. Christopher Alexander offers 253 patterns that are essential for healthy and sustainable communities. He encourages people to use his core group of patterns as a starting point to co-evolve a "pattern language" of these timeless qualities. I started with one of the most basic patterns, Network of Learning (pattern 18 in A Pattern Language).
Here is the essence of the pattern as I see it...A network of learning facilitates a shift in emphasis from teaching to learning, helps decentralize the process of learning, and enrichs it with contact with many places and people all over the local community (and extending the pattern to the web environment--all over the world). It supports voluntary participation in a diversity of learning opportunities by illuminating pathways of access. Skillful network guides help learners master navigation and assist them in finding their way to particular resources, peers, collaborators, mentors, and experts they are seeking. The learning network extends beyond the limited domain of credentialed teachers to recognize everyone as teacher/learner. The network of learning is all-inclusive, valuing the experience and expertise of a 14-year-old Java programmer alongside the skills and insights of an earthworm specialist in Vietnam, a Shawnee native speaker or a professor of linguistics. Responsibility for orchestrating learning is in the hands of the learners. Self-assessment replaces standardized testing.
"In a society which emphasizes teaching, children and students--and adults--become passive and unable to think or act for themselves. Creative, active individuals can only grow up in a society which emphasizes learning instead of teaching." ~Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, page 100
The Focal Points of Haven, An Online Learning CommunityInterconnection is the song at the heart of Haven. My particular dream of learning community came from wanting to share a space with people who realize there is no separation between how we learn, how we work, and how we live. The focal points are edge-ucation, right livelihood and deep ecology. It's a place to explore and restore the relationships between these and to reflect on and initiate transformation in how we learn, and work, and solve the world's most pressing problems. I set myself something much larger than I could ever hope to do alone, knowing that I'd find the kindred spirits to make it all work by doing it.
Haven is dedicated to young people to give them support to live interconnected lives. It's a way station for adults who aspire to create sustainability in their personal lives, their communities and on the planet. We aim to nurture those aspirations.
From Vision to Form: Making it Real...we discovered that the process, the actual coming together, is as important as the original intent. Often, the thing hoped for is what brings the people together, but the coming together in a deep and passionate way is what makes the hoped-for thing happen, whether it happens on the first try or the eighty-first. The two are mutually reinforcing, and, for some, the community building aspect is fulfilling in itself.
~From "The Art of Community Building," Orion Afield magazine, Summer 1999, p. 9On a very practical level, the Haven learning community encourages self-directed design of ecstatic learning paths and supports individuals in this endeavor, especially teenagers, through a combination of mentoring and apprenticeships in a distance-learning environment. Recognizing that local learning centers and online learning communities are significant new forms with incredible potential for transformation (societal and individual), we are dedicated to spreading the news by studying and promoting the best of these experiments. The Edge-ucation Matrix of Haven has a specific intention to encourage the design and evolution of these new learning centers at both the global (online) and community (local) level. Online courses, called Journeys, and the more in-depth Edge-ucator's Path apprenticeship assist individuals and groups in learning the processes and skills needed to participate in and significantly contribute to the creation of collaborative lifelong learning communities.
Haven’s Patterns for an Online Learning CommunityThe Councils and the Dialogues are the basic processes at the center of each of the three major zones in the learning community--the Edge-ucation Zone, the Right Livelihood Zone and the Deep Ecology Zone. Council and Dialogue are the patterns unique to Haven to catalyze and support a web-based network of learning. In the Councils, we present the ideas, exemplary projects and organizations of people who have given deep consideration to the central Haven motifs of edge-ucation, right livelihood and sustainable business, and deep ecology. The Dialogues give participants the opportunity to explore ideas presented in the Councils, as well as initiate conversations and study circles about topics of interest. Until recently, the Councils and Dialogues were asynchronous, but we are now experimenting with what we call "synchronous space" using the Haven Dialogue Zone which makes use of chat software included with eGroups.
We have identified nine essential skills to help us practice and develop our global thinking. They are: Storytelling, Dialogue, Collaboration, Bioregional awareness, Ecological/systems thinking, Design literacy and competence, Axiology and ethics, Linguistic flexibility and inventiveness, and Image-ination. Continually asking ourselves how we can nurture these skills helps shape all of Haven. We explore each of these in depth in our Journeys and apprenticeships.
Realtime events and special projects let us bring festival and ceremony into cyberspace. Earth Day is a major holiday for us. Haven went live on the web on Earth Day '95 amidst a face to face celebration with friends and contributers in San Francisco. It has become a Haven tradition to continue the celebration with a real-time online event every Earth Day. We send out an announcement to various email lists and websites inviting people to participate in The Earth Stories Project, our Gaian Storytelling Festival.
Our electronic newsletter, Interconnect, plays an important role in the life of our learning community. It lets community members know what’s changed since their last visit. With so many websites to keep up with, Haven’s participants appreciate updates coming right to their email boxes, informing them of new material, programs, events. Every month we include reviews of other learning communities, favorite web sites, insights from the dialogues, etc. And we use it to announce our Journeys and apprenticeships.
The Structure of the Learning CommunityParticipants choose different levels of involvement in the learning community. Here’s a glimpse of how it all works currently. The Edge-ucation, Right Livelihood and Deep Ecology zones of the Haven web center present opportunities for self directed learning and dialogue. We encourage participants to initiate their own study circles using asynchronous discussion and the synchronous chat software in the Dialogue Zone. The PATTERNS learning community, a founding member of NEXUS, our learning community network, is beginning a study circle on autopoesis, and we are helping initiate another focused on 2nd order cybernetics and deep ecology.
Out of the wider community, some people step into roles as collaborators and contributors to the content in the web center, bringing a diverse range of stories and projects. Teens and adults who are especially drawn to the focus of the learning community and choose to get more involved enter The Edge-ucation Matrix. This is the core of the Haven global studies center. Here we offer short introductory experiences called Journeys, and deep apprenticeships and mentoring for the seriously committed, using a rich multimedia mix of text, image, audio and video communication (asynchronous and synchronous). Apprentices who complete three sessions in the Matrix can become interns, and eventually may become facilitators, mentors and resource guides in the learning community.
This same structure of collaborators, contributors, Journeys, mentoring and apprenticeships is mirrored in the form of our local learning center, also called The Edge-ucation Matrix. Because there are quite a variety of programs in our community for younger children and their families, the Edge-ucation Matrix serves teenagers and adults. The Bayside Children’s College (see resource section), a learning center in our local community, shares its space with us in the late afternoons and evenings. We are beginning to host informal salons on edge-ucation, right livelihood/sustainable business and deep ecology. And we offer the Journeys, mentoring and apprenticeships, partly offline, partly on. We use the online learning community to stay in touch and deepen the dialogue between our regular face to face meetings and gatherings. We anticipate that in the future, participants in the local learning center will become active shapers of the Haven online learning community.
The Edge-ucation Matrix: a learning community hubIn addition to being a learning community with the edge-ucation, right livelihood and deep ecology motifs, Haven is a meta-learning-community focused on the design, creation and networking of learning communities, particularly online learning communities. Since we perceive local learning centers and online learning communities as two of the most significant new forms capable of nurturing lifelong learners and designers of sustainable democratic and ecological systems, we are committed to encourage and support the forms’ flowering and proliferation. Through the Edge-ucation Matrix of Haven, we offer introductory courses on the online learning community model and we mentor and/or consult with individuals and teams who are attempting to create online learning communities. The Edge-ucator’s Path Apprenticeship is an in-depth design journey for people initiating online learning communities.
NEXUS is our online learning community network. It serves the purpose of connecting online learning communities with each other to share resources and support. It also connects the online learning communities with individuals, families, edge-ucators, and local learning centers seeking to participate in creative learning communities. Descriptions of the online learning communities are provided with links to their websites. The Haven facilitators continually review and feature the work of visionary learning communities in the Edge-ucation Zone of the Haven web center, the Interconnect e-newsletter, and the PATTERNS newsletter. Participants of the online learning communities in the network are invited to share their stories, image-inations and projects in the different zones of Haven. Members are welcome to use the Haven Dialogue Zone for their conversations and study circles. To help support NEXUS, learning communities in the network pay an annual membership fee.
Our model for long term sustainabilityWe have chosen not to seek advertisers to date. Consulting work and membership fees from NEXUS and monthly fees from the Journeys, formal mentoring relationships and apprenticeships are beginning to help sustain Haven. Our ongoing work as distance learning consultants and course designers/coaches creates a foundation for us to build upon. In the GreenTraders area of the Right Livelihood zone, we have a business directory. We plan to actively seek more businesses for this section in the future and will charge an annual fee for the listings. In addition, we are writing grant proposals to expand some of our projects.
Next StepsOur local community has several home-centered-learning charter schools in the area and we are exploring ways to work together. I’m coaching facilitators and young people on using the Internet creatively in a charter program that is focused on watershed ecology. Long range, we are working towards a collaboration where the homeschool programs and charter schools can subcontract with Haven for distance learning services. This will make our Journeys, apprenticeships and mentoring alliances available to area young people free of charge. We are also seeking sponsorships from local businesses so that more educators in our community can participate in Journeys and the Edge-ucator’s Path apprenticeship. We are connecting with our local university’s field studies programs to set up education and environmental studies internships in the Haven online learning community.
If You’re Ready to BeginHere are a few suggestions. Talk to kids about how they are using the web. Involve young people as equals at the visioning, planning, design and content level of the learning community. Find collaborators. Share tasks. Pool equipment. Seek interns. Be patient. It can be slow going, with unbelievable techno-hurdles presenting themselves at every step of the way. Enjoy the surprises. As your community grows, encourage members to contribute. Your strength will come from their unique contributions. Seek diversity...young, old, multiracial. Cross hemispheres. Aim for inter-nation-all. Record your experiences along the way and make them available to others. Spread the wisdom gained. Value your sense of humor above all. And don’t forget to get your hands in the dirt. Plant seeds.
ACCESS ISSUES: technology in the service of communityI began this writing earlier with the comment that the Earth has no borders. But try entering Israel or Burma or Chad without a passport and visa and you'll see how real the effects of mindstuff can be. In Fiji, prohibitive internet access fees draw borders as sharp as any barbed wire. To a Mebengokre child in the north of Brazil, cyberborders exist, as they do for an urban teen in Pittsburgh, or a family in rural Kentucky. In our cyberutopian optimism, it is easy to fall deeper into the collective hypnosis - that hypnosis creates the new borders.
The third Digital Divide report, released in July of '99, points out that the divide between those with access to new technologies and those without is widening, at a time when the number of people accessing the net is soaring. It calls this divide "one of America's leading economic and civil rights issues... Minorities, low-income persons, the less educated, and children of single-parent households, particularly when they reside in rural areas or central cities, are among the groups that lack access to information resources."
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) report, Falling Through the Net: Defining the Digital Divide, is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Commerce. It is focused on solving issues of access in the United States: "As we enter the Information Age, access to computers and the Internet is becoming increasingly vital. It is in everyone's interest to ensure that no American is left behind."
More from the report:
"Community access centers (CACs) -- such as schools, libraries, and other public access points -- will play an important role. The 1998 data demonstrate that community access centers are particularly well used by those groups who lack access at home or at work. These same groups (such as those with lower incomes and education levels, certain minorities, and the unemployed) are also using the Internet at higher rates to search for jobs or take courses. Providing public access to the Internet will help these groups advance economically, as well as provide them the technical skills to compete professionally in today's digital economy.Establishing and supporting community access centers, among other steps, will help ensure that all Americans can access new technologies. As we enter the Information Age, access to computers and the Internet is becoming increasingly vital. It is in everyone's interest to ensure that no American is left behind."
A Model for North AmericaCommunity Access Centers (CACs) offer one solution to begin to bridge the gap. With a computer in every household still a long way off in many neighborhoods of the U.S., CACs offer a way for people who do not own their own computers to participate in the information society and economy. Plugged In, in East Palo Alto, California, is a great model for a successful community access center, offering far more than technology access to its local neighborhood users. It offers them relevancy. It's a job resource center, career and entrepeurial training center, computer classroom, and informal hangout that really works for the community. Teens who learned computer skills and web design at Plugged In are now running their own successful web design business on site. Named PIE for Plugged In Enterprises, their clients include nearby Silicon Valley businesses like Hewlett Packard and Sun Microsystems. Plugged In was started in 1990 by Bart Decrem, a Belgian student with a passion for social change.
An International PerspectiveTwo examples of access organizations that are having an impact in the developing world are the Global Education Partnership and LearnLink.
Global Education Partnership has a unique program creating community access centers in Oakland, California, Indonesia, Kenya, Tanzania and Guatemala. Here's a mission statement from their website: "The underlying philosophy of empowerment that permeates the programs that G.E.P. offers in low-income communities in the U.S. and in developing countries is that sustainable development - where people can access and then re-create opportunities to both excel personally and improve their communities - is only possible if the people that ultimately benefit from a program are viewed not as recipients of the program, but as participants in designing and implementing a program to suit their needs."
The LearnLink Project is creating community learning centers in Ghana based on the telecenter model. The telecenter is a technology access center with computers, phones, faxes available for public use. LearnLink works with non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, establishing self-sustaining community learning centers. Because NGOs are concerned with social issues and community development, they make excellent hosts for the access centers.
From their mission statement: "The Community Learning Center builds on the telecenter concept but emphasizes the learning functions of the communication technologies that are made available, thereby increasing access to basic education and life-long learning opportunities. In addition, learning needs assessments are conducted to ensure relevance to community priorities, and CLC staff are trained to help visitors become familiar with the technologies, resources and services offered at the Centers. To facilitate long-term sustainability, fee and management structures are being put into place, and community involvement, as well as increased collaboration with the private sector, is actively promoted."
LearnLink is currently working with three NGOs in Ghana to establish CLCs "to enhance basic education, train teachers, develop local businesses, strengthen municipal administration and civil society organizations, and provide health care information." The LearnLink Project is implemented by the Academy for Educational Development and is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Olu Oguibe sums the issues up eloquently: "The borders amplified by the cartography of cyberspace are not exactly new; they are the old borders of class and disposition long identified by numerous schools of sociopolitical thought, cutting across national and political boundaries and thus specificatory of a different geography. The 'third world' of cybertechnology and cybertheory, what has been refered to as the 'digital third world', is a global territory that runs through what I consider the virtual--that is to say, simulacral--borders of the present first/third categories, ultimately exposing the ludicrousness of these delineations. In other words there are, in truth, no first and third worlds along lines of physical geography; these categories are rather socioeconomic, and it is these homogeographical borders that are replicated in the politics and cartography of cyberspace." Olu Oguibe is a Nigerian artist, poet and educator currently teaching Art History and African and African American Art at the University of Southern Florida, Tampa.
For your own research into access issues, here are a few places to begin: Ralph Abraham’s web-o-graphics, a project of the Visual Math Institute (http://www.webographics.com) and an excellent page of links compiled by Art McGee of the Institute for Global Communications (http://www.igc.org/amcgee/e-race.html). Then visit the LINCOS (Little Intelligent Communities) Project, a collaboration between the Costa Rican Foundation for Sustainable Development, the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica (ITCR), the Center for Future Health at the University of Rochester, and others. LINCOS is a very unique model for a wireless community access center for rural communities in South America. Publish your insights. Write about exemplary models you find. In the words of E.M. Forster, Only connect!
[This is chapter 9 from the Creating Learning Communities book, collaboratively written online by A Coalition for Self-Learning. Please be patient. The server is in Denmark. The book may take a few minutes to load.]
© Copyright 1999. Claudia L'Amoreaux
Claudia L'Amoreaux (cl@haven.net) is a distance learning consultant and edge-ucator. Visit http://www.edge-ucation.com for more information about her work.
