Berlin Commons Conference/Workshops/Education

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People engaged: Silja, Thomas, Nakorari, Franco, Annette, Juergen, Arthik, David, Diego, Heiner, Franz, Hala, others ...

• This group later created a mailing list to continue the conversation

Report by Juergen Neumann

How can we teach the commons?

- set up a course within academia about reflecting education in terms of the commons
- teach the gift economy as a good example for the commons
- innovation comes with the approach, put more focus on the process and the different kind of managment systems
- transform the perspective and explore the cognitive blindness in ones own field
- share contents for teaching the commons
- education needs trust, empathy for and knowledge about the learners

How can we bring the aim of "Bildungsfreiheit" (German for freedom of education/learning) in the context of the the commons?

- break with the traditional structures and norms (in academia)
- establish participative education
- engage the whole person
- make the teaching methodologies explicit and give the learner/student/pupil a voice
- make expectations transparent and give learner power over the assesssment

How can we fight the resistance and opponents of teaching the commons?

- teach the teachers
- create autonomous communities besides the academic institutions

How can we strengthen the commons?

- set up free open access online courses => open courseware
- support live transmission in rural areas, strengthen villages and rural places, educate youth how to survive in their homeland/region
- teach DIY methods for setting up local digital communication infrastructure (e.g. Wi-Fi in rural areas) where needed
- discuss the "global crisis" with the youth
- interview the elder people and pass their local content/knowledge/experience to the youth
- work for the revival of traditional commons (ask elder), etc ...
- build a repository for and about the commons
- relearn to be helpful to each other
- build forums and community structures
- earn trust and establish relationships

How can commons be communicated better?

- use digital media for distributed story telling
- set up a "Global Villages TV" for exchange between the global community of local commoners
- tell ones own version of a story to the public (with blogs, etc.)
- integrate local content into the "official" history
- bring the local people's history/artwork/impact back into the conscious
- use oral/audio for story telling/education
- local culture is essential for learning, adopt to the local learning cultur
- rediscover communalities in the sense of content
- read Rob Hopkins "Pattern Language"
- watch/distribute the Film "This Land is our Land" by David Bollier ;-)