Intention, technology, networks, and learning: when it all works

With so much information at our fingertips, with so many people a point, click and reply away, it still takes effort to find what we want, and to organize ourselves in ways that make it easy to find that knowledge.

Maybe not effort in the sense of  a 3,000 mile journey by foot through wind, sleet, and rain. But yes, effort, as in making time for something that takes us away from the immediate pressures, deadlines, crises, fires, whatnots and curveballs that make up our ordinary, Internet-connected modern life.

And another challenge: Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, Flickr, YouTube, IM, texting, email and blogs connect each of us to the great collective online us, but what about the small clusters of us-lets, the groups that need to gather to make the next thing happen, without knowing exactly what that next thing may be?

I've been thinking about this ever since our first Webinar for the Digital Media & Learning winners, when David Gibson of Global Challenge Award mentioned (and Cathy Davidson blogged about)  the importance of intent in networking. Why connect? Why gather? Why have an intentional social network? When we have more resources at our fingertips than we can possibly process, why should we interact as a group?

Well, for one: Our 36 Digital Media & Learning projects are scattered across seven countries, five continents, and multiple time zones. Their projects use wikis, mobile phones, open-source software, video blogs, social networks, virtual worlds, creative commons licensing, and more. They work with kids, adults, and teachers in California, New York, Canada, Mexico, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, India, Kenya, Montana, Africa, Michigan, with more global and domestic relationships being established every day. We have an important thing in common: we want to reimagine learning, and push the  boundaries of technology, and find new ways of learning that reflect the best of what new digital media can offer.

So how, and why,  do we create opportunities and occasions for these wildly different projects and people to gather? And why do we bother? This week, during our second Webinar with Andrea Fereshteh, our intentions and efforts to network bright, innovative, interesting (and interested) people paid off. When the technology works (huzzah!), it is so clear why intentional networking matters.We bother to gather and network because learning happens, and learning leads to activity, collaboration, more interaction, more questions, ideas, plans, opportunities, and solutions, and  we learn things we didn't know that we didn't know.  It's a great moment when someone suggests an idea, and the back-channel chat fills with affirmative responses. Or when someone asks a question and the group identifies a need they shared but had not yet expressed.

And fortunately for us, Andrea rocked it! She  has a  rare and important quality: being able to speak dynamically by phone, with her listeners located  hundreds of thousands of miles across the planet! Since we had assembled everyone by conference call/desktop sharing software, Andrea presented from our offices at the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University in North Carolina, surrounded by a crack HASTAC team, Ruby Sinreich, Nancy Kimberly, and Mandy Dailey. It happens often, these HASTAC moments, when the technology, the talent, the intention, and the event seem effortless, and the the results surpass our expectations. We worked out bugs during our last Webinar, had different people doing different tasks, and somehow the whole event felt like a great big fun gathering. 

Andrea's  expertise about building relationships with media was priceless, current, and she gave great advice about how to pitch stories, how to work with reporters, how to use social media, when to start publicizing (many of our projects are still in beta-beta mode), followed by a homework assignment (complete with deadline!) inviting the Digital Media & Learning projects to send three paragraphs that would make people want to know more about them.

Why gather to discuss this? Our collective intent to share what we know about digital media and learning can make a difference in getting the word out about the work we do, which can make a difference in how sustainable the projects are. Ultimately, it can make a difference in how we reimagine learning, how we can experience a learning environment that matches the one we know outside the walls of our schools. Like right there in the Webinar.

It happens, during HASTAC moments, when the event mimics the Digital Media & Learning work -- using  intentions and technology to make learning happen, in all its time-shifted, virtual, networked, real-time, intimate and exciting ways.