More Cross-Cultural Traditions and Collaboration

Gentle readers, since my research has shifted from game-based learning (gbl) itself as the primary focus to using gbl for collaboration, examples are sought to illustrate the concept. While the example below does not involve gaming, it certainly involves play. Political positions aside, the dance choreography and planning in the video requires considerable collaboration and practice. The US Military has performed joint activities for many years in efforts to coordinate people, technology, and strategy across services. Budget restrictions and costs of wars have forced greater collaboration. Motivation in game-based learning is voluntary whereas compliance is required in such a highly regulated organization. Social media has been stretching the limits of professional courtesy as individuals have equal power to express their humanity. I salute the authorities who gave blessing for this expression of cross-cultural communication via dance. Let's see how viral the video becomes over time.

Interplay: Systems and Design Thinking

The Dance of Change and the Fifth Discipline are two books that really helped me deal with growth and complexity in my job at UCF over the years as it became such a large, public research university. These books were not core to my own rapidly changing field of learning technology. Rather the books were necessary resources to apply many of the concepts of my field. Design Thinking often is sought to provide innovation, yet we know that sustainability and scalability are required to be cost effective.

The role of dialogue in collaboration has been both a positive and negative force that I learned best from Peter Senge's research into learning organizations. The Society for Organization Learning (SOL) explores how organizations collaborate. The book Presence describes qualities and actions that make use of dialogue to anticipate the future.I finally got around to reading the book and it was perfect to apply in my research into collaboration.
The 2012 annual conference of the New Media Consortium was held in Boston in June. The presentation with Cynthia Calongne, Andy Stricker, and Francisca Yonekura involved for my part, describing the importance of curating habits through presencing. Below is a recent talk given by Peter Senge in Argentina where he emphasizes the importance of planning for interaction with interconnected systems. I wonder if his recent work into sustainable education focuses on how people learn. It is so refreshing to reconnect with thinking that involves the head and the heart for sustainable innovation.

25 Minute Video of Dr. Peter Senge speaking to a Group in Argentina
http://www.wobi.com/spotlight-peter-senge

Malcolm Brown presented the terrific talk below at the 2012 NMC Conference in Boston where he mentions design thinking. Can we embrace both systems thinking and design thinking? Must we? What are some examples?