Thursday, November 15, 2018

Broadbarred firefish: traveling Re: Stanford - "Africa Table: Scaling Decolonial Consciousness? The Reinvention of 'Africa' in an emergent 21st century Neoliberal University," Appreciating too the realism in your talk re questions of emergent online education, corporate culture, and leadership in Africa - and in multiple African countries, including Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, Accreditation and Consciousness questions, Actual-virtual, physical-digital ethnographic project, see - Visit the Harbin gate in Google Street View here ~ http://tinyurl.com/p62rpcg ~ https://twitter.com/HarbinBook ~


Hi Jess, (am including Laura, Jim and Krish here, since they as Stanford faculty were at your great talk),  
Thanks for your brilliant ethnographic talk about education in Africa re the ALU (https://www.alueducation.com/) especially ... https://events.stanford.edu/events/813/81356/ ... "Africa Table: Scaling Decolonial Consciousness? The Reinvention of 'Africa' in an emergent 21st century Neoliberal University." Appreciating too the realism in your talk re questions of emergent online education, corporate culture, and leadership in Africa - and in multiple African countries, including Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. (While I've visited both Mauritius and South Africa - both on an university on a ship, Semester at Sea - I haven't been to any other sub-Saharan countries in Africa). I also appreciate the great somehow "grounded" knowledge of African education you shared today, - especially since you grew up in South Africa, Jess.  

The questions I wanted to ask have to do with both accreditation and consciousness which you talked about in a variety of ways (and partly with regard to MIT OCW-centric online World University and School - which is like Wikipedia in ~300 languages with MIT OCW in 5 languages - and with which your talk resonated in amazing ways).

Am curious, how the accreditation processes you touched on for ALU in Mauritius (and Africa too), with regards to Scotland and Glasgow Caledonia University, and accreditation, might compare with Stanford's accreditation and re California's BPPE and WASC senior, (as accrediting agencies) - and for which degrees. Accreditation can be a remarkable way of developing highest quality education. So the question I wanted to ask of the people at your talk, and you - particularly the African students in the room - was to what degree did they matriculate at Stanford for explicit reasons of Stanford's accreditation (or implicitly, because of the link between Stanford's quality and its accreditation via WASC senior - https://wasc.stanford.edu/ - somehow re Stanford's reputation) . 

Am also curious re questions of de-colonial consciousness, and from your role as ethnographer. and professor, in Africa, what implicit (as you see this) or explicit plans both the ALU as well as McKinsey have for questions of online mental health services, and specifically re MD psychiatry, with regard to consciousness, and medical care (online particularly), taking into account the history of psychiatry in Africa re "decolonizing consciousness" there (intertwined with social science and political science critiques and understandings of consciousness) but also with regard to research into how consciousness works both biologically (am thinking Stanford psychiatry here) and philosophically (am thinking David Chalmers here) - and even newly in terms of a conversation between the actual and the virtual, the physical and the digital. So how are these universities planning online mental health services - perhaps also in a research vein - to help their students, and to what degree are conceptions of consciousness part of this planning by ALU and McKinsey Consulting, for example? 

I also ask this last question with regard to World University and School, which is planning the online degrees of Bachelor, Ph.D., Law, and Medicine (defining medicine anew perchance), as well as I.B. high school diplomas (in ~200 countries' official languages). And since MIT has neither a Medical School nor a Law School, WUaS is seeking to develop in collaboration with Stanford Medicine and Law for OpenCourseWare or similar. Since WUaS is planning online medical degrees, with online teaching hospitals, for online clinical care, in each of all ~55 African countries (indeed online in all ~200 countries' official and main languages) - and also with a research focus, eg re brain science and questions of consciousness (e.g. re David Chalmers' philosophy of mind work), WUaS is seeking to focus on decolonizing consciousness in a wide variety of ways (Paulo Freire-wise too). Am in communication with Robert Harrington, chair of Stanford Medicine, about questions of online WUaS medical schools as well. And WUaS would seek to accredit all of our planned online degrees with WASC senior, or similar, and potentially online in all ~200 countries' official / main languages, such as Mauritius's French and Kreole, depending partly on use. And WUaS seeks to develop online Wiki schools for open teaching and learning in each of all 7,097 living languages, and cultivate flourishing online learning communities in each of these (but not for degrees in all 8k languages). And this wiki-approach would facilitate both inclusiveness, but also importantly, facilitate everyone becoming a teacher at WUaS, eg teach to Youtube etc, and add it to a Wiki subject page at WUaS.

So, brainstorming-wise my question is how could de-colonializing consciousness in Africa, and with regard to economic development (eg re your focus on Africa developing corporate leaders) and re online education - work with regard to studying biological questions of consciousness in Africa, re language too, as WUaS develops graduates African students for each of these degrees, too?  

So, further, re teaching MIT OCW-centric Robotics - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Robotics - at WUaS, for example, WUaS would seek to build up from the ground for this, and with inspiring Lego robotics - and as way to de-colonize consciousness (and both physically and digitally, actually and virtually, too eg think physical Lego robotics eventually in a realistic virtual earth).  And as an example of how robotics' schools in Africa might work in these regards in each of all of Africa's countries, do you happen to know, or know of, Claudette Mueller in South Africa, who teaches Lego Robotics - using Lego WeDo 2 & Mindstorms' EV3 robotics - to elementary age children at the Redhill School, by any chance? https://twitter.com/Claudannmul/status/1055510264311934976 ... WUaS will seek eventually to cultivate a kind of de-colonizing consciousness, by facilitating the opportunity for all African countries to develop their own Robotics' schools with even potentially WUaS educational services' stores (like the Stanford Bookstore) for what they create eventually on-the-ground. Robotics is actually a great way to teach programming as well, and beginning in January 2019, Lego Robotics will work with the Scratch 3.0 drag and drop programming language, which I just learned is also planned in potentially many/ even all languages. See, this Harvard GSE Scratch 3 meetup video 
Scratch 3.0 Webinar | 12:00-1:00 p.m. Eastern Time
November 8, 2018
with Eric Schlling and other Harvard / MIT Scratch folks

And also ...
Scratch 3 Tutorials? today's 3 webinars are great in this regard - here's the 9am PT / 12 noon ET video - https://youtu.be/OblR5TEErFE  - #Scratch3Webinar ... https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch/status/1060583944029069312 … & https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch/status/1060589494837989376 … https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Subjects ... /Programming /Languages /Robotics @WUaSPress ~

World Univ & Sch is seeking too high achieving African students ... and defines high achieving here as those who might apply to and get into Stanford or UC Berkeley, both of which are accredited by WASC senior, from African and other countries, or MIT ... and perhaps newly online ... and I'd think that you would have great ideas about how to reach out to high achieving African students for free-to-students' online MIT OCW-centric and Stanford-centric degrees - with regard to the Stanford African students in your talk especially. And WUaS seeks too to create major online universities in each of all 55 African countries' official / main languages, and eventually hiring tens of thousands of African faculty members (potentially graduates of WUaS), and also staff in our robotics' school and educational services' stores. 

Re WUaS accreditation too, WUaS may seek to get 100-500 online undergraduate students, beginning in autumn 2019, who might have applied to UC Berkeley or the 10 University of Califonria's and Africans would be welcome to apply as well. Classes would be taken from home online in Africa. See, in these regards,
UC Berkeley: "Well said! We encourage veterans to share their life experiences and lessons learned in the Personal Insight Questions section on the @UofCalifornia application. These experiences are what make you unique as an applicant and help our readers get to know you."

Jess, I also just blogged about fellow Reedie Katherine Verdery's talk about Romania in the Stanford Anthropology department on Monday - (Katherine went to Reed College graduating in 1970 - where I graduated in '85, - and then she got a Stanford Anthropology Ph.D. in 1977) - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2018/11/oregano-stanford-anthro-talk-my-life-as.html - as perhaps a parallel to your Mauritius and Southern Africa ethnographic approaches. 

So some somewhat lengthy questions, Jess, but your excellent, timely and topical talk which dovetailed in so many ways with online MIT OCW-centric accrediting World University and School, - and even WUaS's plans to collaborate with Stanford - bring them out :) Thank you.

All the best, Scott


About my actual-virtual, physical-digital ethnographic project, see -
Visit the Harbin gate in Google Street View here ~ http://tinyurl.com/p62rpcg ~ https://twitter.com/HarbinBook ~ where you can "walk" down the road '4 miles' to Middletown and 'amble' around the streets there, if inclined. And add some photos or videos if you have them - re a new social science method I'm developing called ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy. (Have also explored related some Stanford history questions here - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2017/02/wild-boar-carols-music-singing-boars.html - and - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2017/02/biological-organisation-do-you-recall.html - only a bit, for ex.).

Best regards, and thanks again for your very informative and interesting talk, Jess, 
Scott



-- 
- Scott MacLeod - Founder, President & Professor

- World University and School

- 415 480 4577

- CC World University and School - like CC Wikipedia with best STEM-centric CC OpenCourseWare - incorporated as a nonprofit university and school in California, and is a U.S. 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt educational organization. 


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Friday, November, 16, 2018

Hi Jess,

Thank you for your response. I'll stay in touch as World University and School begins the accreditation process (seeking online high-achieving graduate student instructors, to teach MIT OCW-centric courses first to high-achieving undergraduates, from around the world, and first in English) with the state of California -

https://twitter.com/CaBPPE/status/1024666814989488134. Re consciousness questions, I hope WUaS will be able to address some of these - and perhaps re African languages - as WUaS builds out in a realistic virtual earth at the cellular and atomic levels too. (Think Google Streetview with TIME SLIDER / Maps / Earth / Brain / Translate / Tensorflow) ... and with realistic and fantastical avatar bots, of species and individuals, too. Have blogged a bit about this here - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2018/11/broadbarred-firefish-traveling-re.html - FYI. How's the AAA conference coming along? And what musical instruments did you play as a music teacher (http://jess-auerbach.strikingly.com/)? (WUaS is planning a very large online Music School - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/World_University_Music_School). Am curious to think through too how robotics' schools online first in African countries (beginning with MIT OCW Robotics and Lego WeDo 2.0 and Mindstorms EV3) would develop successfully, as well. And it would be great to communicate further with all of you about this. Hoping all the information technology for this will emerge further out of the Stanford Graduate School of Education, as well.

Thanks again for your fantastic talk, Jess.

Best regards, Scott

- https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch?lang=en

- https://twitter.com/WUaSPress?lang=en

- Languages-World Univ: https://twitter.com/sgkmacleod







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