Everyday-Democracy has an Issue Guide Exchange for folks who write deliberation guides. There is also a forum for discussion. And there is an online tool to walk you through creating a guide.
And while I'm on the topic, ALA has a blog on Civic Engagement and a listserv called Deliberate and a Member Interest Group.
I highly recommend this community engagement role for libraries. I think I can guarantee no Google will come along to bump us out of it. Moreover, by nurturing the civic capacity of our communities, we create a better climate for support of libraries and understanding or their value.
Showing posts with label civic engagement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label civic engagement. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Saturday, March 15, 2008
certified 2.0 genius
Got my certificate, button, MP3 player. But stopping now would invalidate the learning, right? Let me recommend Halting State by Charles Stross. Set about 10 years into the future, it is a mashup of IT security risks, infowar espionage, and ARGs. Imagine that people participating in a sort of role-playing game are being used unwittingly as tools by a foreign government.
The book got me thinking about other possible uses of ARGs, so I did some surfing and found World Without Oil. Don't know how I missed this last year. But maybe before Learning 2.0 I wouldn't have appreciated it? Anyway, it integrates many of the tools from L2 to create a simulation of a social policy crisis and invites everyone to play along. It calls this wisdom of crowds but I think it is closer to civic engagement. I think the wisdom of crowds is simply Adam Smith's invisible hand - the cumulative effect of the self-interest of many. World Without Oil, however, invites imaginative participation with no advantage to self interest - in other words, what's good for the community. I am thinking this may be a better model for civic engagement in the future than sitting around in deliberation groups, National Issues Forum style. It seems like there ought to be some sort of game that would cultivate information skeptics as well.
The book got me thinking about other possible uses of ARGs, so I did some surfing and found World Without Oil. Don't know how I missed this last year. But maybe before Learning 2.0 I wouldn't have appreciated it? Anyway, it integrates many of the tools from L2 to create a simulation of a social policy crisis and invites everyone to play along. It calls this wisdom of crowds but I think it is closer to civic engagement. I think the wisdom of crowds is simply Adam Smith's invisible hand - the cumulative effect of the self-interest of many. World Without Oil, however, invites imaginative participation with no advantage to self interest - in other words, what's good for the community. I am thinking this may be a better model for civic engagement in the future than sitting around in deliberation groups, National Issues Forum style. It seems like there ought to be some sort of game that would cultivate information skeptics as well.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)