Why Health Insurance Matters

While the quote below may look unusual, it is not. My blog is not about politics. It is not about insurance. But for years it has been, under the cover of “collaboration,” and “work,” about doing what matters, about living life to use our talents and blessings.

For some, that means working for themselves. For some it means being an artist. I’m lucky – I have a husband who has health insurance that covers us. But so many I know (even my online, “imaginary” friends) don’t. People who should retire but don’t because of a lack of insurance. Probably working themselves to death. Literally. Why? Because in my country we have a system that is set up for business, my friends, not health.

So read the paragraphy below. Follow the link back. Give a little. Hold me accountable to give. And lets figure out how we can stop people from finding that, when the bad news about health arrives, they know care is right behind them.

This is from writer Patti Digh:

While I believe that writing is my calling, it is not as secure a life choice as working in a job with benefits. And recently, that has meant not paying our $1400/month insurance premium–like so, so many other Americans. It is a broken, broken system. So John is uninsured for this journey. Dear friends are launching a fundraising page, and it will be online in a few days. If you can help in this effort by giving or sharing the information with your networks, please let Amy McCracken know at forjohnfptak@gmail.com. It is a source of shame that we are uninsured, and it is a shame we must overcome for John’s sake. It is a reality we share with so many. And my writing is a choice I would not change for anything, not even health insurance. We will figure this out because there is simply no other option. xoxo

via 37days – Home of Patti Digh.

Oh, and caring is a community indicator. For sure.

 

UPDATE: Here is the link to the Indigogo fundraising site for John. And some more information.

Maggy Beukes-Amiss on Facilitating Learning Online

This week kicks off e/merge 12, a mostly-online gathering of people who are interested in elearning in Africa. I’m pleased to be moderating a workshop this week exploring changes in online facilitation with four great facilitators. Here is the description. But read on below the quote  for a sneak listen to one of our guests, Maggy Beukes-Amiss from the University of Namibia.

Facilitation of online learning is now into its fifth decade. The familiar web based online  learning environments have only existed since the mid 1990s. Since then we’ve seen radical changes in the technology, pedagogy and range of practices. The boundaries are shifting from closed classrooms, communities and password protected learning management systems to open and networked configurations. So where are we now? We’ll engage in conversation with four experienced facilitators of online learning to hear what they are thinking, and then engage everyone in reflecting on your practices.

Joining us are Maggy Beukes-Amiss, a veteran Namibian online facilitator and trainer of online and blended educators,  Nellie Deutsch, who is an English teacher and an expert in online facilitation, blended online learning, social networking and open education, Gerrit Wissing, a highly experienced instructional designer and trainer of online facilitators, Tony Carr who is an educational technologist and periodic organiser of online conferences, and moderator Nancy White, one of the early explorers of online facilitation.

Maggy Beukes-Amiss: Maggy has been teaching ICT related subjects at the U. of Namibia for over 17 years, including in leadership positions. She has a passion for open source software packages and elearning activities. As a champion for capacity building, we’ll be asking Maggy what her key insights and learnings have been.

Dr. Nellie Deutsch :  Nellie has been teaching English to speakers of other languages since the mid 70s and integrating technology into her classes since the mid 90s. She uses relationship-based, collaborative action learning in facilitating online learning. We’ll be asking Nellie to tell us more about HOW she does this!

Gerrit Wissing: Gerrit is a Senior Instructional Designer at Tshwane University of Technology but also has lived experience in the corporate world as well. He knows the software, he knows the social process side. More importantly, he’s been co facilitating UCT’s Facilitating Online course and e/merge itself, so Gerrit is in the trenches. We’ll be asking Gerrit to share a bit about what he’s learned across all these contexts.

Tony Carr: Tony is an educational technologist, online facilitator and online conference organiser at the Centre for Educational Technology,University of Cape Town. Most of his day to day work is in staff development for teaching with technology. We’ll be asking Tony to share about the opportunities for online communities of practice.

Nancy White: Nancy was one of those people who fell into online interaction in the early days of the web and sought to understand how it related to her offline experiences. She wrote some of the early guidance so we’ll be interested to find out what she thinks is the same today, and what has changed.

Our ending… or really our beginning question will be “what’s next for us as online facilitators?” Have you thought about that? We hope you have and will join us!

Maggy Beukes-Amiss  is on leave this week so I was able to interview here in advance. It was terrific to hear about her practice at the University of Namibia. Her passion is infectious. Her main thrust was that our attitudes are an incredibly important part of our practice. Take a listen:

Part 1 and Part 2

Podsafe music courtesy of Tchakare Kanyembe  – Thanks!

Riffing off of NorthernVoice 12 and Online Community Enthusiasts

Photo by Alan Levine
This past weekend I was up in Vancouver, BC, for two gatherings that I always enjoy, the BC Campus’ Online Community Enthusiasts group (led by the always wonderful Sylvia Currie) and the Canadian blogging/social media conference, Northern Voice. OCE is a place to hang with people who wisely use online interaction, mostly in the learning context.

This year I was once again on the OCE hosting team and my job was to give an overview of the agenda, then facilitate the afternoon’s Open Space. I made a visual agenda, but in a circle it is rather hard to see, so I spontaneously became a human lazy susan. Alan Levine caught me in the act with a still, and later with an animated gif.

We had a great time with Dave Pollard leading us in some exercises using the terrific Groupworks group process pattern cards. They really elicited some insightful stories from the group and I was so inspired, I called an Open Space session in the afternoon to think about how I could use them in a webinar I ran on Monday. Bingo! As always, hanging out with friends new and old was the highlight.

Northern Voice is where I always submit weird session proposals and those crazy Canadians usually say yes to me. Silly them. My supporting role for 2012 was to co-facilitate Moosecamp, the OpenSpace of NorthernVoice, with Brian Lamb. Brian asked me to make a little announcement at the start of the conference about Moosecamp. I had decided on a whim to bring my new uke, and at the last minute decided to improvise a song about Moosecamp instead of saying it. I blogged about that already. 😉

This year my formal submission was a session with Rob Cottingham, Alan Levine and I on improvisation. I have been very inspired by Viv McWaters and Johnnie Moore’s work to bring improv into facilitation.  Our session started with each of us telling a two minute story of where improvisation played an important role, while the other two mimed the story. Then we introduced the group to Viv and Johnnie’s improv cards, which I turned into flip chart images.

We  invited people to go to the flip chart they felt MOST uncomfortable with. They then discussed the why’s and wherefore’s of their discomfort. THEN we invited each group to create a human sculpture that expressed that card. We had eight great, laughter inducing performances.

Alan then showed us his PechaFlickr applications which draws five cards with a shared tag from Flickr and you get to tell a story to go with them. Alan had five volunteers who each added an element to a story illustrated by tug boats! Give it a try yourself here. It could be a great icebreaker!

Then we segued into a classic gibberish improv and our three volunteers blew me away. They dove right in.  I was laughing so hard I was crying.

For us, it was important that this was not just about the performance side of improv, but about how improv can inform our practices every day, help us be more present in every moment. Rob Cottingham gave a insightful, improvised wrap up that inspired us all. We have 1140 minutes every day. We might as well use them well.

I loved Boris Mann’s recap:

Next I went to Improv Me, Baby with Nancy White, Alan Levine, and Rob Cottingham. My basic rule of thumb is “go to any session that Nancy White is involved with”. Of course Alan and Rob are no slouches either 😉 Lots of interactivity and group activity in getting people to participate, and to understand what improv actually means. Rob closed things out talking about how the very best improv can in fact be the result of lots of preparation and practice ahead of time, while still using a “go with the flow” approach to tailor presentations & experiences to the people and energy in the room.

In the Moosecamp/Open Space giulia.forsythe ran a great hands on session about how to do sketchnoting on the iPad and I now finally understand layers. (I’m slow.) She later did a sketchnote of the improv session which I TREASURE! What a great memento/take away!

via Northern Voice Retrospective [visual Notes] | Flickr – Photo Sharing!.image from Giulia Forsythe from NorthernVoice improv session

All in all it was a great weekend – learning, play, improv, music, friends and food! Perfeito!

Improvisation, Ukes and NorthernVoice.ca

@speakwhen caught an image of me Friday morning when I promoted the NorthernVoice‘s Open Space — a.k.a. Moosecamp… with an improvised Uke song. My first public Uke performance. It was fitting, since later in the day Alan Levine, Rob Cottingham and I ran a session on improv. I’m still running a mile a minute with draft blog posts from the adventures of the last two months, but hey, a quick picture and a link to the audio from @felicelam will have to do for now! Nothing like jumping off the cliff of risk! (And to discover KDot does a weekly #UkeTuesday post!!) I guess this was my UkeFriday! Thank you friends and NorthernVoice!!

Twitter / speakwhen: Today started with a ukule.