Delivering the self-awareness session was a challenge simply because these students had never been in a situation before where they had to reflect on their physical/emotional state and that too in the presence of their peers. Whilst I was glad that there wasn’t a wholesale rejection of the various tasks, it was quite a challenge to keep them engaged. And to be honest, when the entire class had to work as a group I was certain the session would descend into chaos. Fortunately my little repertoire of breath-games kept them interested.

Going by the usual benchmarks it seemed that the session hadn’t been all that effective. It was only when we sat down for a question answer session did I get a sense of the impact the various activities had made.

Quite spontaneously, students began to mention incidents/situations which had upset them in the past. They were surprisingly forthright. No one passed a judgement when someone admitted to hitting a friend, nor did anyone laugh when a few said they cry when they are upset. There was a moment of shared empathy. This was followed by questions such as – why do I fight with my best friend, what do I do when I feel angry, and how do I control myself when someone wants to start a fight with me? When asked what they usually do I was dismayed to hear that amongst other things they had been advised to punch pillows to calm down. Quite unsurprisingly many of them admitted that this didn’t make them feel any better and ended up making them feel confused and upset.

Pillows are only meant for sleeping and fun stuff like jumping when no one’s looking! So we tried out some more breath-games to see how easy it is to control the mind and body. By this time the students were more receptive and occasionally someone would shout ‘It works!’ Mind you, there were a few who weren’t quite convinced. At this point, the class-teacher and nybep representative chipped in and encouraged them to keep trying.

In conclusion, I am happy with the way things went. I am also encouraged by the class-teacher’s reaction. She was very surprised (and quite pleased) at how the students opened up and shared their experiences in a way they had never done before. This suggests that the workshops can also facilitate a more meaningful dialogue between students and with their teachers.

At a personal level, this experience shows that I need to put a bit more effort into making the workshop more accessible, especially to those who have never done something like this before. Needless to say, I can hardly wait to work with another batch of students and try out some new ideas in the process.

The first social media surgery in York took place in November 2009 and this past month we held the seventh. As we take a break over the summer months, I am writing this post to explain how we go about planning a surgery and what happens at the event. Hopefully some of the information shared here will be useful to you.

I would like to briefly present my case for organizing the surgeries in York. The format of the surgeries is quite flexible and I hope I can illustrate that they can accommodate a wide range of perspectives and intentions whilst achieving the desired outcome.

For a number of years I worked with various voluntary groups and human rights organizations in India in the capacity of a multimedia designer. As the voluntary sector is the target audience for the surgeries, I was keen to organize them in York to continue my association with the sector.

I also believe that there is far too much emphasis on the operational aspects of social media as compared to demonstrating how it can be adapted to different contexts. In my experience, the former can frighten people and put them off engaging with the www. On the contrary, once people can contextualize an online platform (website, social media) and match it to a genuine need, the subsequent transition to using it is an organic process.

Hosting a SMS is a collaborative effort and it is important to accommodate different points of view.

I have explained my case but I am aware that there are a wide range of opinions when it comes to social media education/ digital literacy initiatives. Furthermore, the surgeries have to cater to different expectations, from people who have no clue where to start, to those who want answers to specific technical questions and others who want to develop a long-term strategy. Therefore, right from the start it was obvious that the surgeries had to be a collaborative effort requiring assistance from other professionals, experts and practitioners, referred to as surgeons.

There are over a dozen surgeons from York and neighbouring cities who have given up their time to offer advice and information at York’s surgeries. This fairly detailed list on Twitter will give you an idea of who they are.

Whilst the surgeons bring a wide range of skills and expertise, it is important that we operate under a common philosophy. There are no set rules. However, a surgeon is expected to offer advice and information via a one-to-one chat with the visitor. It is recommended that the surgeon does not spend the entire session with one visitor. However, there is no pressure to meet a target.

As organizers, we try and create a relaxed environment. Evangelism and one-upmanship is discouraged. The visitor is free to speak to any surgeon (providing s/he is available) and more importantly, a surgeon can refer the patient to someone else if s/he does not know the answer to a question.

The surgeries are open to anyone from the third sector – community groups, voluntary organizations and charities. There are dozens of such groups in York and neighbouring regions. However it is not easy to get access to them for a variety of reasons. We began by publicizing the surgeries via Twitter and Facebook. We also created a hashtag #YorkSMS to track re-tweets (RTs) and get a sense of how the message was spreading. This strategy was useful in two ways – it allowed us to reach out to people who were already engaging with social media and wanted to find out more; it also helped generate word-of-mouth references and attract people who do not have an online presence.

There is always the possibility that no one will turn up, but given the spirit of collaboration and camaraderie, the surgeons don’t mind if we don’t get a huge turnout. It is never seen as a wasted effort.

There is always a possibility that no one will turn up on the day. As organizers we have been upfront about this when asking surgeons to volunteer. However, given the relaxed nature of the event and the spirit of collaboration and camaraderie, no one minds if we don’t get a huge turnout. This doesn’t mean that we are complacent. A couple of weeks ago we spent six hours on foot visiting various community centres (such as Burton Stone Lane) and speaking to the volunteer staff at the charity shops across the city to spread the word.

Earlier this year we received a tremendous boost when Learning City York decided to support us. Learning City York is a city wide consortium which includes the York Council (CYC). Through their support we were able to access an existing and vibrant network of voluntary groups known as the Yortime initiative. We were given access to two excellent locations in York – The Priory Street Center in Micklegate and the revamped York Central Library which is now known as Explore library. And finally, we were able to offer an additional incentive to visitors – free copies of the Yortime Web Guides. These have been written specifically for the voluntary sector to use social media/networks and the www.

When Learning City York (and Yortime) came onboard, I was joined by @mikeleighcooper. He shares the responsibility of organizing/publicizing the event, inviting surgeons and most importantly – documenting the event via audio/video podcasts. Most of the photos and interviews in this post have been taken by him.

Now that there are two of us, we have room to experiment with the concept in the following ways:

Hyperlocal surgeries

The voluntary sector is not restricted to any particular socio-economic background. This is why we were keen to test the idea of holding surgeries at different locations to attract a wider audience, different interest groups and so on. After an initial survey that considered various factors – interest from surgeons, easy access to the internet and even parking facilities, we settles on Priory Street Centre and the Explore library. The next task was to try and find the right frequency. If the event was held too frequently we knew that interest would wane and turnout would drop. So we decided to go ahead with the following – two surgeries a month, on the first and last Wednesday. One at Priory Street and the other at Micklegate. A surgery is held every two weeks (and one month apart at a location). This approach has produced some interesting results, perhaps I will go into the details in a separate post (to prevent this one from getting even longer).

A shared networking space

As I mentioned earlier, we don’t always get a huge turnout at a surgery. There have been times when many people signed on but only a fraction turned up. This got us thinking about how we can use the time during the surgery more constructively. The idea behind using the surgeries as a networking space is based on the following principle – to bring together surgeons from different backgrounds, from IT experts who are used to dealing with customers, to students who are interested in the geeky aspects of social media and others who are just starting up their own business. When you bring together such an eclectic mix of keen, enthusiastic people it is natural that constructive conversations will take place. And so they have. Once again I will go into the details in a separate post, or provide a downloadable case study. What I would like to mention is that at one particular event we managed to get the marketing manager from iPadio to visit York and provide demonstrations on using their service for ‘phlogging’.

An important issue related to the surgery is what happens afterwards? How do we continue to provide support to visitors? Would it be in the form of answering emails, setting up a facebook group, or collating the various issues that have been discussed as a FAQ on a wordpress blog? To be honest we were wary of the pressure that the first option would place us under. After all, we didn’t want to end up running a help-desk for the entire city.

Based on the feedback forms we collected, it seems people were keen on returning to the surgery for further information and advice rather than accessing help online. There is also the tricky business of handling commercial enquiries (setting up a website etc.) generated by the surgeries. These often come via email to me just after an event. As organizers, both Mike and I distance ourselves from them and direct visitors to the list of surgeons who were at that particular event.

The surgeries will resume in September and for the next few months we will continue the format of two events a month at Priory Street and Explore library. In the past couple of months we have been trying to reach out to new audiences. Now our focus is to follow up on the visitors who have attended so far and encourage them to return. We will continue to try and find new ways to promote the event and access different audiences and are looking into the possibility of getting the local radio networks/press to publicize the event. We are also trying to simplify the registration process. Whereas in the past we have asked people to register via eventbrite, from now on we will encourage people to turn up on the day. This might create organizational problems during the event, nonetheless we want to give it a go.

Despite all the effort we have put in, I am pretty sure there is still a sizeable chunk of the voluntary sector in York who have never heard of the social media surgeries. Both Mike and I are up for the challenge, we also have the continued support of Learning City York and Yortime. Most importantly, we have onboard with us some fantastic surgeons who are extremely generous with their time! A special thank you to some of the regulars – John Irving, Kadie Armstrong, Dan Croxen John and Dom Smith.

I will leave you with an interview with visitor Karen Michaelson who runs Circle Dance in York. The interview was conducted and recorded by Mike.

You can contact me via email or twitter if you would like to volunteer as a surgeon or attend the next surgery which will be held on the first Wednesday of September. Alternatively, you can register at the eventbrite website.

If you are keen on hosting a surgery in your city, be sure to get in touch with @johnpopham , @podnosh or @watfordgap who have championed the social media surgeries across a number of cities in the UK. You can also visit this excellent website for more information.

Routes into enterprise

This past week I attended an event organized by Nybep on the theme of enterprise in education. It was very well laid out, starting with a series of inspiring presentations followed by an intense networking session that culminated in a group discussion. Despite the range of different activities the setting was quite relaxed and I had some interesting conversations with representatives from Yorkshire Forward, Business Link, The Prince’s Trust and so on.

The most interesting aspect of the proceedings was the group discussion that took place towards the end. We had to answer a series of questions related to enterprise development. As the people round my table were from different backgrounds, we ended up sharing some unique perspectives. This 20 minute discussion showed that the triggers of enterprise can be either objective or subjective. The latter aren’t necessarily any less pragmatic, but given their intangible nature, their benefits aren’t necessarily conducive to quantitative analysis.

This discussion confirmed my belief that there are a number of different routes into enterprise. Therefore, the process of embedding enterprise into students’ psyche should follow a more holistic approach.

One of the best ways to achieve this is by encouraging collaboration and dialogue. Not only should students work within their peer group, they should also be encouraged to interact with those outside their own disciplines. Consider the case of universities – it is natural for specialist groups and hubs to develop over time. There are a number of obvious benefits associated with these specialist clusters. However, there is also tremendous value in creating dialogue between them.

Fearless Entrepreneurs

Inculcating a tansdisciplinary approach to problem solving offers a number of benefits to students. For example, the ability to contextualize different perspectives and the ability to delegate responsibilities. These basic skills create entrepreneurs (and researchers) who are able to follow an intuitive approach, which in turn, is one of the best triggers of original thinking. The end result is that you get ‘fearless’ entrepreneurs who are comfortable with the notion of sourcing talent and ideas through collaboration with like minded people.

This resonates with the point of view expressed by one of the presenters at the event – it is not always the case of what you know, but who you know. My take on the ‘who’ is a vast and diverse pool of talented individuals who can make a positive contribution towards the realization of your goals. Collaboration in this way is also an effective combatant to nepotism.

Real time collaboration

Given the technology that is available at our fingertips, it is fairly straightforward to bridge the gap between the concept of ‘fearless’ entrepreneurs, which may appear to be idealistic at first glance, and the reality of mainstream education. With the ubiquity of social networks on the World Wide Web, it is easier than ever to share ideas beyond cultural and geographical barriers. Furthermore, there is the added advantage that most students are familiar with the mechanistic operation of these networks. They can setup individual profiles and navigate them to source information. What is lacking, is the ability to engage with them in the right context.

A blog is just a blog…

The blog is a good example of how a social media platform can become a valuable tool for communication and collaboration. Many people still prefer to think that a blog is a repository of discontinuous and jumbled narratives far too tedious to engage with. However, if you examine some of the features offered by popular blogging websites, the benefits become immediately apparently. For example, most websites allow you to add information through a content management system whose appearance is very similar to a word processing software. This does away with the need to know html/css. You can also change the appearance of a blog thanks to the large number of freely available themes or skins. Some of these themes can turn your blog into a website interface – with individual ‘pages’.

By simply registering for a blog and applying a theme you have a website to which you can easily add multimedia content – text/audio/video and so on. And as a consequence of the platform you have a number of powerful tools at your disposal to contextualize (tags) and syndicate (rss feeds) the information you upload. You can now invite meaningful interaction with your target audience.

The above approach is just one example of facilitating collaboration on the World Wide Web. Provided you follow some basic norms of creating and publishing information, there are scores of other platforms which offer varying degrees of flexibility and freedom to achieve what you want to do.

Safeguards

There are a number of issues related to facilitating engagement with social media. These include, protection of intellectual property, privacy, data protection and so on. I believe schools and HEIs are in a unique position to embed best practice by providing guided, hands-on experience to students as part of the mainstream curriculum and extra curricular activities. More about this in another post.

Seeding collaboration

Increasingly I find that the focus of my work is shifting towards mainstream education. Having delivered several workshops to undergraduate students over the past few months I consistently find that there is very little dialogue between students across different disciplines or even different years in the same degree course. Everyone seems to be moving along a rather linear path. However, I feel that beyond the domain of essays, assignments and marks surely there should be some sort of impetus placed on collaboration, even if it is through the extracurricular.

The freedom to explore and exchange ideas can be a fantastic source of inspiration and development. It also engenders flexibility in thinking, which can have a long term positive effect. After all, who would you rather be in a professional setting – the insecure individual who is unduly attached to his/her ideas, or someone who has the confidence to draw from various sources to generate and express ideas freely and watch them take shape through discussion and debate.

This principal forms the basis of the Digital Footprints programme I have developed for students in HEIs. One of the primary objectives of this programme is to get them to reflect on their strengths. Then, using the concept of keywords as the currency of the web they create virtual identities on the WWW. Over the next few weeks this identity is continuously shaped and moulded to suit different purposes. For example, sometimes I set them a challenge to define their identity as sitemap for an imaginary website, in no more than 8 words. Without the distraction of an interface and all that goes with it, can they convey a sense of who they are through this sitemap. Is it possible to make a statement or even to intrigue? Experimenting with their identities in this playful manner appears to be quite a liberating experience. The students always actively engage with this process.

Seeding collaboration – Workshop at York St John University

A few weeks ago, I delivered an introductory session to a series of workshops with undergraduate students at York St John University. This is a variation of the Digital Footprints programme with a focus on working collaboratively. Over the next couple of weeks I will be working with them on re-branding a departmental magazine. Students have formed 6 groups and each group has to deliver a pitch for the direction they would like to take the magazine in, they also have bolster this pitch by creating a convincing virtual identity for their group. It was interesting to observe the shift in group dynamics as they began the process of defining their identities. There was serious ‘reflecting’ going on around the room.

I hope to post more information about the workshops over the coming weeks. May I request you leave a comment if you are interested in this work.

A year or so ago, someone asked me when would I be heading home. When I replied sometime around 6, he asked me once again, when would I be heading home. It took me a moment to realize what was being implied. To be honest, the questioner was innocent and didn’t really have an agenda. After all, at some level it is fair to assume that all brown skinned people ultimately go back to that one source of… brown skinned people. So I gave him a polite smile whilst silently composing a mini-essay, bordering on a tedious academic monologue. Fortunately, such unnecessary gravitas doesn’t linger long and soon the essay took on a much lighter hue which finally manifested into a little mini photo project. By now I think I have spent all the nervous energy incited by this photo project idea and am posting it here.

Just a brief note on the concept – home, for me, is a place which holds you accountable for your actions, whether it is a country, city, street or four falls. A number of other sentiments emerge from this sense of responsibility – pride, respect and so on. Some are negative and some are positive. The other stuff on the surface, language, accents and so on, are important but in a way incidental. To be put on and taken off as a sort of second skin. So the idea behind the photo project was to define myself through the sentiments/emotions/aspirations incited by different places I call home.

I present some of these images to you here and look forward to your feedback and comments.

Delivering a breath-awareness workshop in Japan

When I began my research with the intention of creating a ‘unique’ digital instrument, I had little idea that four years later I would end up delivering breath-awareness workshops to children at primary schools in Japan. Perhaps I will delve into the details of this journey in another post, at the moment I would like to draw your attention to a puzzle I am trying to solve – How can I introduce my work to mainstream education practitioners in the UK? There is definitely a context for it, the SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) initiative.

Breath-awareness sounds strange, especially when juxtaposed with the relentless demands placed on school teachers to meet an ever increasing number of targets. It seems silly to suggest that they encourage their students to become aware of their breathing and develop effective control over it. But then again, such activities can have a positive impact on students’ behavior, emotional control and academic performance (again, some of the key objectives of SEAL). I am not making this up as I go along, there are a host of scientific studies that have demonstrated these claims and I will be happy to point you in the right direction should you be interested.

So how does one present breath-awareness to mainstream education?

When I decided to focus on breath-awareness in my research, I knew that the most important challenge would be to dissociate it with some of the, lets say… rather esoteric associations. This is because many so called holistic therapies attribute a fantastic array of benefits to breath-control and awareness. They aren’t necessarily rooted in science fiction, its just that these benefits have been extrapolated and exaggerated to such an extent that they alienate most rational, clear-thinking people. Furthermore, many breath-control methods use vague and elaborate instructions, so there is no objective way to gauge the application of their exercises or systematically evaluate their benefits . Clearly, there is no room to introduce breath-awareness in this way within secular educational establishments in this manner.

Although it was a tedious exercise (given the sheer volume of literature available on breath-control) it was relatively easy to separate the rational approaches from the irrational and come up with a list of complimentary therapies which formed the base of my research. Along the way I drew some surprising conclusions. For instance, although the Alexander Technique and Pranayama would appear to be disparate techniques (in their teaching and practice), their fundamental principals are rooted in similar concepts such as self-awareness. No doubt this would deeply trouble F.M. Alexander who strongly denied any links between the two.

To cut a long story short, I identified a series of exercises used in Alexander Technique and Pranayama, and correlated their basic principals with those of Respiratory Physiotherapy Rehabilitation. This created a rational framework for my research. The next step was to bolster this framework by eliminating as many variables as possible.

[end of part 1]