Launching IntelLEO an Extended Intelligent Learning Organization

Next three years of my work will be partly related with European IST 7th Framework Project IntelLEO. IntelLEO is an acronym for extended intelligent learning organization model – a hybrid knowledge-management model between two institutions.
I will be responsible of the Pedagogical tasks of IntelLEO.

In IntelLEO three business cases will be tested:
– Collaborative learning and knowledge-building strategy within large industrial enterprise (Volkswagen – Strak – the Computer Aided Styling of automobiles) and university
– Harmonising organisational objectives with learning and knowledge-buiding activities between business network (INI d.o.o.), university and customers
– Harmonisation of individual & organisational objectives within in-service teachers and university

In one of the conference talks i have already presented the model:

The objective of the project is to explore how the responsiveness of the learning and knowledge-building environments in an IntelLEO can be radically enhanced by advanced technology, exploiting, in an innovative way, a synergy between:

(a) services for efficient management of collaborative learning and knowledge-building activities and access to and supply of shared content, and

(b) services for harmonisation of individual and organisational objectives.

Three hypotheses of the research are:

The responsiveness of an IntelLEO is corporate performance in which individuals are motivated to proactively learn and construct knowledge.

This responsiveness can be increased:

– if individuals are technologically supported to participate in collaborative learning and knowledge-building activities across vertical and horizontal boundaries of the IntelLEO, and

– if their personal objectives of learning and creativity are dynamically harmonized with the organisational learning and knowledge-building objectives of different IntelLEO counterparts.

2. The effectiveness of the technological support that will be developed in the project to increase the responsiveness of an IntelLEO is achieved by the synergy of the two kinds of services mentioned above ((a) and (b)).

3. Learning and harmonisation of individual and organisational objectives happen at different temporal collaborative knowledge-building and learning groups of an IntelLEO.

Partners in IntelLEO project:

Institut fuer angewandte Systemtechnik Bremen GmbH
Volkswagen AG, Strak
Tallinn University, Centre of Educational Technology
Estonian Teachers’ Association
Zentrum fuer Soziale Innovation, Austria
ATOS Origin
University of Belgrade, Faculty of Organisational Sciences
INI d.o.o.
Athabasca University – School of Computing and Information SystemsAU CA

The launch of the project takes place in Bremen this week.

Swarm – my first search in Communities and Networks

Swarm seems not yet so popular tag (i tested in Delicious and in Technorati it is mentioned less than 100 times a day).

However, i have started to believe it fits much more for describing the actual behaviors in hybrid ecologies.

Today i did my first search with the very potential swarm keyword in Communities and Networks Connection hub.
For me swarm describes activities in hybrid ecologies better than networks.

What i found:

Evolving web wrote:

…insects, dominoes – each adding up to a swarm, a chain reaction – when one insect or domino chooses to act in the right way at the right time.

Writing by one small, easily imprisonable, Solzhenitsyn can create massive change. People of good conscience can create a better world. But Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned.

Bumblebee wrote: swarms in primetime tv

What do killer bees, locusts, field mice, mayflies, starlings, cicadas, cuban land crabs, driver ants, redflies, locust birds, silver carp and honey bees all have in common? The “Wisdom of Crowds” or in other words the ability to Swarm in huge groups.

We discover what happens when superswarms invade our lives…

Swarms make it extremely difficult for predators to pick-off individuals and are an amazing way for the individuals to look out for each other and instantly share important information.

An exciting European technology company Swarmteams which provides unique patent-pending bioteaming technologies for all shapes and sizes of groups, social networks, business clusters, virtual/mobile communities and enterprises. Swarmteams enables groups to be more responsive and agile by fully integrating their mobile phones and the web with bioteam working techniques.

In another article Bumble Bee distinguishes characteristics of distributed P2P networks and swarms.

Peer to peer (P2P) is a specific form of relational dynamic, is based on the assumed equipotency of its participants, organized through the free cooperation of equals in view of the performance of a common task, for the creation of a common good, with forms of decision-making and autonomy that are widely distributed throughout the network.

P2P processes are not structureless, but are characterized by dynamic and changing structures which adapt themselves to phase changes. Its rules are not derived from an external authority, as in hierarchical systems, but generated from within. It does not deny ‘authority’, but only fixed forced hierarchy…

Equipotency means that there is no prior formal filtering for participation, but rather that it is the immediate practice of cooperation which determines the expertise and level of participation. Communication is not top-down and based on strictly defined reporting rules, but feedback is systemic, integrated in the protocol of the cooperative system.

P2P is a network is ‘distributed’, though it may have elements of hierarchy, centralization and ‘decentralization’; intelligence is not located at any center, but everywhere within the system.

Though P2P arises in distributed networks, not all distributed networks exhibit P2P processes. Many distributed bottom-up processes, such as the swarming behavior of insects, of the behavior of buyers and sellers in market, are not true P2P processes, to the degree that they lack holoptism, or do not promote participation. Insects in a swarm, do not have information about the whole, they follow markers that determine their individual behaviour.

iCamp project results

I have been part of iCamp Europaean 6th Framework project pedagogical workpackage team from 2006. In this project we conducted three trials of teaching with web 2.0 tools in cross-institutional settings.

Our final pedagogical deliverable provides the new model how to support self-directing, collaborating and networking competences with new media environments in institutional settings.

Fiedler, S., Kieslinger, B., Pata, K., & Ehms, K. (2009). Camp Educational Intervention Model. iCamp IST 6th Framework Project Deliverable 1.3. URL: http://www.icamp.eu/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/d13_icamp_final.pdf

#narrativeecology

Recently we launched with Anatole Fuksas a course Ecology of narratives. Actually, this course is an experiment for exploring the properties of narrative hybrid ecologies.

First day we played a bit around the conceptual ideas and then suggested a simple environment for swarm-like story-writing.

From then on the experiment is running until middle of March. The central place is Tallinn but we soon realized that the narrative itself directs the story. The course people is the core, but actually the ecology is open for any participants.
The story is pulled together using #narrativeecology tag

We also have an aggregated blog that has been quite effective for detecting some activity traces: http://ecologyofnarratives.wordpress.com/

The hardest part as i predicted is detecting the stories. Since the idea is not to force us work similarly, some more favoured standards can be described as a result.

So far it is quite fun. I have started to write a story of writing hybrid narratives. Notes..maybe..i hope this is really helpful when we analyze what happened. Ideas are so easy to be forgotten.