Mothership4184

REVISED presentation guidelines for next week!

Class - as discussed in class today, I have slightly revised the presentation guidelines for next week, which are as follows.

Prof. B

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REVISED presentation guidelines

Community Involvement and Public Participation

Monday, April 21, 2008

Your in-class presentation (11 points) should take no more than 10 minutes, with 5 additional minutes allowed for questions from the class. Using powerpoint to supplement your presentation is encouraged, although the powerpoint should be supplemental (please do not put too much text on each slide or simply read the bullet points off the slides!!).

In this presentation, each group will be competing for a programatic grant (NOT general support for the organization!) from an imaginary community foundation, called “HokieBucks Foundation”. Draw on the two reports you have prepared to make a case that your proposal meets these grant criteria:

1. Has the organization identified the community it seeks to serve       and its organizational objectives that will be achieved through grant support?
2. Is the organization appropriately staffed and structured to achieve grant objectives? What changes will be made with grant support?
3. Will the organization foster social capital with grant support?
4. What media outreach will the group pursue with grant support?
5. What legislative outreach will be made with grant support?
6. What efforts will the new program make to tap into or generate local or scientific knowledge?
7. How will the new program foster dialogue and participation among its staff, membership and constituencies?

As you can tell, my objective here is to encourage you to move beyond simply reporting the results of your previous reports to provide some creative analyses of how your group’s efforts might be strengthened in the arenas of community organization and public involvement that we have considered. Your program proposal should be plausible, while also being imaginative, entertaining, and even a bit off-the-wall. Please stay “in character” as representative of your organization during the presentation, and make sure that each of you have a role in the presentation, and that you have scripted and prepared for your role, so that it does not seem disjointed and unrehearsed. Dressing the part and bringing in props are encouraged, although not required.

Discussion Question for 4/21 (remember, no 4/14 class!)

Common Fire gives ideas about how we can nourish the human potential for generosity and concern for the common good in a time when most people just look out for themselves and their own kind and life grows more fragmented and isolating. This week's question is:

Who stands out as a “threshold person” or “hospitable space” (pp. 52-53) in your time at Tech or hometown life before you got here ? Making reference to Common Fire's definition of these terms, describe how these people and spaces affected you.

Question for 4/7 class

1. Describe a social problem that can be addressed through a community-based organizing effort.

2. Identify an issue related to that problem (p. 351, Homan Ch. 12 original book pagination, not reader pagination) (make sure that your issue is not the same as your problem).

- What type of issue is it? (use Homan's terms, from discussion that begins on p. 352)

- In what way is it a good issue to address the problem you described (use Homan's criteria)?

- How will the issue lead to action (see possible ways on p. 356) 

- Define how individuals operating within at least three levels of participation (Homan Ch.9, p. 235 original pagination, also "talents and assets" p. 239) could help you address your issue.

Blog group question for Charette

This week's question is in two parts:

PART 1

In the first of this week's readings (the one that says "visioning" on the first page), the author lays out a variety of characteristics of charettes. Much of the remainder of the reading, as well as the next reading (chapter 5), are examples of charettes in a variety of communities.

I'd like you to get familiar with the charette idea, since we are going to spend all of next class doing a charette, with you representing specific community roles. What I'd like you to do is choose one of the examples of charettes in either reading (such as the Richmond neighborhood charette), identify what "category" of charette it falls into (p.51), identify what "strategies" were used in that example (p.50), and note the specific essential "ingredients" (p.50) that were added into the charette. Please do not choose an example that has already been chosen by another member of your blog group - check before you get started. If they are all used, you can do a duplicate (there shouldn't be any triplicates).

PART 2

I'd like you to prepare to play your role in the design charette (which I handed out to you in class - if you lost it or were not in class, please email me and note which blog group you are in). Please research your role on-line. In the blog, provide links to at least 2 websites where you have gathered information about your role (on the handouts I gave you, there are some suggestions in italics). Provide a short summary of what your charactor wants to achieve by participating in the charette. Posting it on the blog is fine - you don't have to hand it in during class - although I recommend you print it out and bring it to class, to remind yourself of your motivation and perspective.

Be sure to be on time next class - we're going to jump right into the charette.

Blog Question for 3/24 class

Here is the assignment and question for the next class on co-housing

1. Go to the US Cohousing Association Website: Cohousing Web Site (click here) .

2. Click on the red button labeled: "What is Cohousing" and read all of the material there.

(This will orient you to the basic characteristics of cohousing neighborhoods - and the participatory development process)

3. Click on this link: "Getting Started: The First Eight Steps." (You could navigate to it through "Magazine" tab, but its a couple levels down).

This will give you an idea of how future residents organize themselves into a cohousing group - and how they develop the process of planning and developing their own neighborhood.

4. From the left side menu ("Sections") choose:  Directory". This should yield a listing of all of all existing cohousing communities and forming groups in the U.S. (and some from other countries as well). You should link to the website of one of the communities on the list - either completed or building - and take a "tour" of that project via their website. You will then be familiar enough with the story and particulars of your selected community to answer the question below and share some details and reflections on the characteristics of that community with others in class.

Your question is:

Advocates claims that co-housing neighborhoods are representations of genuine 'self-management' and 'self-planning' by citizens. Drawing from the specific example you examined above, discuss What seem to be both the future potential for self-managed communities, and the likely limitations? What potentials are activated by this type of neighborhood arrangement - and what do you see as potential dangers and/or limitations?
 

Second Life and Community Involvement

Class,

I thought I saw a few skeptical looks when the slide of the "second life" online community went up last class - the perception that this was just a wacky form of escapism. See if this article just published in the New York Times makes you reconsider:

March 13, 2008,  12:44 pm

Second Life and Real Life

By Andrew C. Revkin

Andy Revkin lectured on sustainability and communication at the real University of Delaware and its synthetic campus on Second Life.

More and more these days, I make video “visits” to colleges to talk about the environment and development, saving time and the environmental and financial costs of travel. But I hadn’t found my way into the completely synthetic universe of Second Life until  Wednesday, when I made a real visit to the University of Delaware to talk about journalism, climate and sustainability.

Andy Revkin “visits” a cyber campus on Second Life.

The university is one of a growing list with Second Life cyber-campuses that can be explored by any of the million or so people who populate this parallel universe as avatars.

While I stood in an actual auditorium on campus, live video of my talk was streamed on screens on a cube floating over an artificial amphitheater, bathed in late-afternoon sunshine, on the university’s Second Life “island.”

Some avatars saw me upside down, but such is life on the frontiers of new technology.

This was the school’s first experiment with streaming a live talk, so there were some glitches — the main one being that I appeared upside down on some screens. But the potential was clear. Besides answering questions from 330 or so people in front of me, I also answered one from a long-distance watcher.

[UPDATE 3/13, 2:40 p.m.:] Keep in mind that the architecture and environments and imagined personae on Second life are kind of irrelevant to the actual utility of video visits via ever-simpler Web interfaces. I’m new enough to this arena that I haven’t tracked how “old” this particular bit of quirky Web real estate is (in more ways than one, according to some critics, including Gawker).

Frills aside, it’s clear that this kind of distance-neutral communication can serve two valuable purposes in a world seeking to advance the human condition without causing too much environmental harm.

There’s no driving or flying, of course. And people can be exposed to ideas and images streamed live in one place, ask questions of the presenter, and learn about one another.

Twice now, through a group called Global Education Motivators, I’ve spoken with secondary-school students around the world. Last year, in a climate forum at the United Nations, I talked with students from the borough of Queens to the Arctic (Yellowknife) and the subtropics (Karachi).

More important, they talked with one another. When I heard a girl in Karachi asking the students in Queens what they were doing to make their school greener, I knew something very interesting was happening. Video of the students, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and me is archived online.

Real life, called RL on Second Life, is still the vital underpinning of experience — especially life outside of walls and away from LCD screens.

But virtual experience is clearly a tool that will be a growing part of life from now on.

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4 comments so far...

•  
  1.
   
    March 13th,
    2008
    1:23 pm    
   
        

  You’re on your way to living as billions of bottled brains in vitro experiencing a virtual reality feed, just like in the movie “The Matrix”.

   

  — Posted by Steve Bolger      

      
•  
  2.
   
    March 13th,
    2008
    1:48 pm    
   
        

  Why not just use online video chat/conferencing in “RL” instead of Second Life? What is the benefit of doing the talk within SL vs. RL?

   

  — Posted by Ryan      

      
•  
  3.
   
    March 13th,
    2008
    1:59 pm    
   
        

  Andy, post your speaking schedule on your blog, I’m sure there’s lots of people reading here who’d love to hear you in person!
  
  [ANDY REVKIN says: You’d think I would have thought of that. I’m the emcee on a panel of fantastic polar researchers at National Geographic headquarters in Washington tonight. The multimedia event is called Polar-Palooza. I’m speaking at the University of Vermont on 3/18.]

   

  — Posted by Arthur Smith      

      
•  
  4.
   
    March 13th,
    2008
    2:11 pm    
   
        

  Andy,

  Chack this out…

  —-

  Second Life avatars and Brazilians: the same carbon footprint - AFP

  What do an avatar on Second Life and the average inhabitant of Brazil in the real world have in common? Incredibly, they both use the same amount of electricity.

  It is perhaps not a fair example as the average virtual being in the online community is not active all the time, but the statistic does show that all that time the rich world spends online has an impact on the environment.

  http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hh_4eJ8N4PXuE6TToc3 Zq_7sf05Q

   

  — Posted by bob      

      

Question for 3/17 Deliberation class

"Wicked problem" is a term that I find useful in defining the toughest problems in planning and policymaking. I have appended below a definition of this term. In the Kettering reading ("Making Choices), the way that the authors describe terrorism and taxation fit the definition of "wicked problems" – in brief, they have no single universal definition and engage with competing values.

 

From an policy advocates perspective, one way to deal with wicked problems is the technique of value-laddering, which you are familiar with. Its a kind of "black art" in which the trick is to foreclose other problem definitions by arguing that your problem definition appeals to fundamental and universal values, while suppressing your opponents attempts to define the issue differently by reference to other fundamental values. While this ideological warfare gets the job done, politically, the authors of the Kettering reading suggest that it might harm our democracy, and they trace an alternative approach within American history, a deliberative tradition for addressing wicked problems.

 

For your blog question this week, I would like you to define a "wicked problem" that you are familiar with (and, ideally, have been involved in). Then, drawing from the Kettering reading, cite at least three possible advantages of addressing the problem through a deliberative forum. Conclude by addressing whether, on the whole, you think that the problem could best be solved through a deliberative forum, or whether another approach would be preferable.

 

--------------------------

Wicked problems were defined in a classic planning paper:

 

Rittel, H., and M. Webber; “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning” pp 155-169, Policy Sciences, Vol. 4, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Inc., Amsterdam, 1973.

In this paper, wicked problems have the following characteristics:

1. There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem. Formulating the problem and the solution are essentially the same thing. 

2. Since you cannot definitively define the problem, it is difficult to tell when it is resolved.

3. Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false but good-or-bad.

4. There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem.

5. Every implemented solution to a wicked problem has consequences of its own.

6. Wicked problems do not have a well-described set of potential solutions.

7. Every wicked problem can be considered a symptom of another problem. A wicked problem is a set of interlocking issues and constraints which change over time, embedded in a dynamic social context.

8. The causes of a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways: there are many stakeholders who will have various and changing ideas about what might be a problem, what might be causing it, and how to resolve it.

9. The decision-maker has no right to be wrong--e.g., the consequences of failure are very high.

 

Assignment (in addition to blog question) for next week 3/17

Half of class next week will be devoted to discussion of a 100 minute video segment of an attempt to engage the citizenry in legislative decisionmaking on a scientifically complex issue. Each of you are responsible for bringing in a half page or so (typed, to be handed in) containing your notes on the ONE question you are assigned to answer as you watch the video. I will grade these notes and assign a portion of your class participation score based on it, so please be sure to bring it in typed with your name on it.

These questions are:

1. What are the pro-GM arguments that participants make?
What are anti-GM arguments that participants make?

2. Did the arguments that Michael Pollan raised in his article came up? If so, in what context?

3. What vivid metaphors or analogies did participants employ?

4. What references to science and expertise did participants make?

5. What is the facilitator doing to make the discussion work well, and why?

6. Did anyone change their minds or adjust their thinking? When, and why?

 

For those of you who were not assigned a question in class last week, your question is:

7. Did anyone change their minds or adjust their thinking? When, and why?

 

Please watch the video of the deliberation on GM foods, which is found as follows:

1. On a broadband/DSL internet connection (at school if you don't have this at home), navigate to:

http://www.food.gov.uk/gmdebate/citizens_jury/#

2. Click on the "Click here now to view the citizens jury" button on the middle of the page

3. In the resulting pop-up window, first play a short video that describes the planning process – the link to this is below the video window, where is says “Click here now to see the 'How The Jury Works' video”. Then page down on the scrolling window on the left to the segment that reads "Deliberation and decision-making session (1.15 - 3.00pm) (on Day 3)". Click on the "100k bit broadband" button to begin the video. If you are in a public space, you will need to bring headphones to listen. Feel free to check out the other links on the site to become more familiar with how this deliberation was executed.

If the video doesn't work, you may need to install real player (see link on pop-up window, under green box). If you prefer not to do this, use a computer on campus that has real player installed. I will not accept the excuse that you couldn't make it work. You can come to office hours if you need additional technical help.

In class, we will discuss your responses to each question. As always, you are obligated to blog this week on a question to be assigned.

Blog Question For Class After Spring Break

Incorporating arguments from this week's readings, reflect on whether blogging, coupled with blog group meetings, during this class has enhanced the "democratic capacity" of the classroom, fostered deliberation (as opposed to mere expression of pre-existing opinions) and fostered worthwhile relationships among class members. I must insist that you incorporate ideas from the readings into your response, since this is not going to make for interesting blogging is it becomes a discussion of whether blogging was a time sink or a learning opportunity for you. Rather, it is an opportunity to connect your shared experience with a social technology and consider the specific arguments contained with the readings about social capital, "weak" and "strong" links, the power of elites (me?), the limitations of anonymity associated with on-line interaction, the "leveling" effects of collective discussion, and much much more.

Discussion Question 2/25

Snyder and Wenger describe a variety of Learning Networks (they also call them "communities of practice"), and the Nature Conservancy provides a history of their attempts to cultivate these voluntary associations across a variety of conservation domains, as well as an account of what features are required to succeed.

 

As our two readings describe them, learning networks can help achieve some vital societal objectives, such as economic development, industrial innovation, civic health, and biodiversity protection. Yet the idea of learning networks, or "communities of practice", can be applied to a broad array of voluntary associations, whether intentionally organized or spontaneous. For instance, a study group, or a listserv, could be considered one. Look over the definition that Snyder and Wenger provide, and describe a community of practice that you have been involved in at some time during your life (I assure you, if you think flexibly enough, you'll be able to think of an instance). Be sure to note its "domain", "community", and "practice", and describe how your involvement in this learning network provided you with the ability to do something you wouldn't have been able to do on your own.