Social Learning: Birth of a Community

I sat in on an hour long session today, the birth of a new Social Learning community. It’s part of a large Scaffolded Social learning project, of which the community forms the central ‘sense making‘ elements. So establishing it, building it’s shared purpose, finding it’s core values and establishing it’s character is a key moment. So we started by talking about dogs. And prayers. And food.

It’s Ramadan, for some members of the community, which gave the opportunity to share a little of their everyday reality. For example, i learnt that celebrating Ramadan in the UK at the moment makes your fasting even longer than in Dubai, because there’s more sunlight (something not usually a problem in the UK!). It was a very human story. We shared stories about pets. And about challenges at work. And about where we were based.

In some ways, purposeless conversation, but the point is that you can’t have the purposeful learning until you have trust, you have understanding, until you have a permission to do so. So you have to start with the intent and move through to productivity. Building a shared narrative along the way.