Aloe: Swahili to be taught in Tanzania, and Kenya, at WUaS, Arctic Indigeneities, Social Media, Harbin Field Notes, In what ways can we cultivate a flourishing Quaker High School / Stanford online ethos on the degree side, even as the alternative and countercultural freedom and openness of the 60s and 70s recede?

Hi Joan, 

Thank you for your email! Happy belated New Year and welcome back to Germany! Your travels sound very fun. 

I just found this article, which is also in Swahili - 

"Tanzanian Schools Will Teach Students in Swahili, Not English" ...
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2015/02/24/tanzanian-schools-will-teach-students-in-swahili-not-english/ - 

and began a new Tanzania World University and School - 

http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Tanzania,_United_Republic_of - with plans also to be in Swahili, to which I added the article. 

I added this to the Swahili World University and School - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Swahili - and also to - Africa World University and School - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Africa - both not yet in Swahili or other African languages. 

Good luck with your thesis and looking forward to creating online universities and schools in Swahili, Kenya and Tanzania together. 

More soon about building these, and here too - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2015/02/endangered-species-dna-translation-of.html .

Nice to be in touch. 

Best regards, Scott

Hi Scot,

Happy (belated) new year! My apologies for replying so late. We traveled quite a bit the last few weeks around out of Nairobi to see more family which was great. How is the new year taking you? I see lots of progress in World University from the email exchanges (thumbs up). I will progress this year with my thesis and contribute there as well. 

Best regards, 

Joan

Hi Scot,

Thanks for sharing and keeping me in the loop. Exciting times ahead for the World University and what the article also portends for Tanzania! Would be interesting  if the same happened in the coastal part of Kenya where the Swahili culture is very strong - especially now that power has been devolved to the county level and education might well be one of those aspects which can be decided at county-level. 

Have a good one and lets stay in touch. 

Kind regards, 

Joan

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Hi Joan, 

Thanks for your email. Glad your travels home to Kenya were enjoyable, and that it's good to be back in Germany studying. 

Here as you know is the Kenya World University and School  - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Kenya - not yet in Swahili - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Swahili - and you can be the presiding clerk/head and facilitate wiki communities of online content generators and translators in Swahili, if you wish, and I'll also bring this up at WUaS monthly business meeting.

Here's the newish Tanzania WUaS - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Tanzania,_United_Republic_of . 

Re-generating a language like Swahili in Kenya, especially in the coastal areas with its Swahili culture, might have parallels with Scottish Gaelic's - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic_language - being spoken on the islands and periphery, and regenerating it more widely in Scotland (WUaS) - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Scotland - by for example, reintroducing it into Edinburgh and Glasgow with "energy centers" - schools - et voila ... Creative Commons' licensed wiki World University and School.

Please let your Dad know about this, and I invite both of you to please start gathering Swahili speakers' and web-posters' emails as WUaS's database for this comes in to being soon-ish for email outreach and far-reaching knowledge conversation generation. :)

Cheers, 

Scott

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Hi Jessica, 

How are you? I'm enjoying your web page at UC Davis - http://nas.ucdavis.edu/faculty/jessica-bissett-perea-denaina . 

We met at Cal in a Berkeley music talk not too long ago. I'm emailing because I'd like to come to this symposium on Friday in nine days all day from 1pm into the evening -

https://www.academia.edu/11117873/_ARCTIC_INDIGENEITIES_MEDIA_AND_SOCIAL_JUSTICE_SYMPOSIUM_MARCH_12_14_2015_UC_DAVIS . 

As you may now, World University and School has a number of related-to-this-symposium wiki subjects/schools including: 

Ethnomusicology - 

http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Ethnomusicology 

Arctic_-_Antarctic_-_Polar_ice_caps - 

http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Arctic_-_Antarctic_-_Polar_ice_caps

Peace_and_Social_Justice_Studies - 

http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Peace_and_Social_Justice_Studies

Media_Studies - 

http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Media_Studies

Indigenous_languages_of_the_Americas - 

http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Indigenous_languages_of_the_Americas

- and WUaS also hopes to develop some of these in many, many languages as well. Might it be possible to say something about these when and if I come to the symposium? 

All the best, 

Scott

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Field Notes ...

Harbin Hot Springs, morning

In what ways on the wiki side will the dynamics of open wiki-additions change as we engage Wikipedia and Wikidata/Wikibase?

In what ways can we cultivate a flourishing Quaker High School / Stanford online ethos on the degree side, even as the freedom and openness of the 60s and 70s recede at Stanford, for example, with parallels to Harbin in the past? Quaker High Schools are also havens of freedom, even today, for example, but the city and modernity and growth of the Society of Friends has probably changed this dynamic of freedom openness and even love and communitas at Quaker High Schools as well… creating Friendly community online will change this yet further … Phillips Academy Andover student body – viz John Palfrey - of high school high achievers translated online may be a real life contemporary example of where WUaS would like to head / I’d like to see WUaS head, and in all languages. 

And Google + Profiles with Yonatan Zunger, who is its chief architect, and ongoing presence there, may be an example of the ethos I’m looking for at WUaS online – he’s great and brilliant and quite "hippy" ... perhaps both Boulder and Stanford informed – and I should probably look at Google for Education vis–a-vis WUaS as we grow. Maybe WUaS could explore partnering with them and Khan Academy and edX – and in all languages.

Back in Berkeley now at the Claremont Library around 5 pm

Was interested to see new building going on in the pool area across from the swimming pool, with possibly 20 foot high pools up, possibly to make a new high fence … but I’ll have to see.

The long pole on the sundeck side of the row of poles had a cross piece at the top, which made me think of a crucifix, a native American ritual pole that people might drape things on, as well as a "Bar X" ranch gate or pole at the main opening of a ranch, with a cross piece at the top, on which a rancher or a cowboy might even nail a cow’s skull, and also the emblem on the top of the Harbin Gazebo on Mainside. It’s particularly the crucifix idea – was this PB’s idea? – that made me laugh a kind of hippy laugh … doesn’t every hippie church, like this Heart Consciousness Church, need a crucifix? … But the way symbols are interpreted by guests and visitors from northern California and all over the world is particularly interesting here … because it might suggest Christianity to some, whereas for others Harbin could be conceivably a kind of playground. Later as I was leaving, outside of Grinders Steep, a coffee shop, where Heartsong often surfs the internet on his MacBook Pro, for example, and where I often see his car parked when he’s there, I saw in Middletown a army vehicle, or a vehicle painted with camouflage, which could have been army or similar – not necessarily surprising for Lake County, but I’ve never seen such evidence before. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if US military folks have been at Harbin over the decades “under cover” as it were … and potentially even on duty … as Harbin is pretty open and attracts a very wide range of roles in the human condition, emerging from the 1960s and hippie-dom as it does, but in ways which California and the US even might want to somehow engage from a supervisory point of view. I wonder if this crucifix is Harbin’s symbolic response as a kind of hippie Heart Consciousness Church {http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2015/02/helix-aspersa-heart-consciousness.html}, unaffiliated and in the 2015, to the three monotheistic religions – Christianity, Judaism and Islam – and visitors from these backgrounds en masse (not many Muslims come to Harbin that I’ve seen or know, and not many people from south Asia or the East, such as Hindus and Buddhists come either).

Both a crucifix with a little pink piece of plastic tacked to the top indicating the wind direction and height, central in the pool area, and the military vehicle parked outside Grinders Steep, reminded me of the texts by John Money I sent to Heartsong a month or two ago.

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