Knowledge, Education, and Learning Workshop, Maputo, December 08: Social Report Outline

The ICT-KM Program of the Consultative Groups on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) and the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and YPARD (Young Professionals’ Platform for Agricultural Research for Development),  along with other partners organized a workshop to discuss priorities and develop an agenda for action through global collaboration in improving agricultural knowledge management, education and learning on 4 and 5 December 2008 at Maputo during the CGIAR AGM08.

• Agenda
• Participant list
• Organizational profiles
• GFAR Statement of intent
• YPARD contribution (Dr. Salma Daoud, Lecturer, Ibn Zohr University, Agadir, Morocco)

The day and a half meeting was documented through social reporting with help of consultant Josien Kapma.
“Social reporting is where a group of participants at an event interactively and jointly contribute to some form of reporting, in text, photos, images or video. The resulting “social report” is made accessible, usually online, as soon as possible, sometimes as a half-product. This allows others to join in, to extend, to adjust or remix.”

• About social reporting
• First impressions of the questions that participants have
• Participants Expectations

We started Day 1 with two key notes.

Steve Song, of Shuttleworth Foundation (formerly of Canada’s International Development Research Centre, where he led the ICT programs for Africa), was the first workshop presenter.
“The increasing density of connections in the world changes the way we work, the way we think in a fundamental and qualitative way. I will talk about why that is true and what impact that may have on people and organizations. “

• Notes from Stev’s presentation 
• Steve’s  power point
• Listen to Steve’s presentation while following the power point
• Article about Steve’s presentation by Susan MacMillan and colleagues
• Watch and listen to Steve talking about his presentation

Professor Ekwamu Adipala was our next guest speaker. He coordinates the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture in Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda and Zimbabwe
“The main thrust is that for Africa to participate in a global knowledge economy it must have a critical mass of well trained human capital and that is grossly lacking. The need remains on good professional discipline and depth, but more critically, on cross-cutting professional skills that allow the professionals to adapt to opportunities. “

• Notes from his presentation
• Watch and listen to the professor talking about his presentation
• Read his workshop paper

After the two presentations, the 40 or so participants had conversations in groups about what they had heard and prepared questions to the speakers that were then addressed in plenary.

• See the discussion notes
• Peter Ballantyne, consultant and Simone Staiger-Rivas, ICT-KM Program, the two facilitators comment on the morning sessions
• GFAR’s Ajit Maru on KM, the CGIAR and KM after the first morning

We ended the morning session with a Chat-Show to listen to more experiences of partners in the areas of KM, education and learning. Chat show host Peter Ballantyne used the  connectedness concept that Steve proposed in the morning to gather participant’s experiences.
“The single one most important thing, according to the chat show guests: Collaboration between African University, non-African University and CGIAR, each sticking to its area; Explore ICTs to build self-directed learning; Unlock CG knowledge; ICTs for meaningful conversation with partners; Curriculum reform and mentoring;  Introduce new ICT’s, e.g the “voice web” to radio”.

• Notes from the chat-show

In the afternoon, we broke out into three groups in order to allow participants to address in depth the issues they care about. One group worked on formal education, another group addressed the issue of rural learning communities and a third group explored possible entry points fro the CGIAR to work on KM strategies.

• Ralph Kaufmann’s notes about the session on rural learning communities
• Enrica’s Porcari’s notes from the KM Strategy session
• Josien’s notes from the three sessions 
• Josien’s notes from the second KM Strategy session about capacity building and KM

 Our social reporter gathered some feedback from participants after Day1: https://ictkm.wordpress.com/2008/12/15/impressions-of-the-first-day-km-education-and-learning-workshop-maputo/

On day two we used a Fishbowl dynamic to share interactively the discussions from the different working groups, for many the highlight of the event.

• Notes from the Fishbowl

We ended the workshop going around the circle of participants and their take-aways.

• Steve Song blogs about the workshop

Workshop photo gallery: http://www.flickr.com/groups/910900@N24/pool/ Thanks to Petr Kosina for his great shots.