Third Arena Project - Community Organizing Meets OpenCourseWare
Location
Third Arena is creating social organizing toolkits for educators to make digital media socially engaging for remote and underserved students around the world. Think Oprah Book Clubs for OpenCourseWare. Our model, being piloted in Tibet, is:
Open Education Resources + Study Circles + Tools for Community Organizing
About You
Section 1: About You
First Name
Alan
Last Name
Webb
Website
Organization
The Third Arena Project
Country
United States
Section 2: About Your Organization
Organization Name
Machik
Organization Website
Organization Phone
202.536.4858
Organization Address
308 D Street NE, Washington D.C. 20002
Organization Country
United States
Your idea
Name Your Project
Third Arena Project - Community Organizing Meets OpenCourseWare
What is your idea? What makes it innovative? Why is it important?
Third Arena is creating social organizing toolkits for educators to make digital media socially engaging for remote and underserved students around the world. Think Oprah Book Clubs for OpenCourseWare. Our model, being piloted in Tibet, is:
Open Education Resources + Study Circles + Tools for Community Organizing
Will you launch your idea as a business or non-profit?
Business
Country your work focuses on
China
What will be the impact of your idea?
Thousands of free courses in the cloud, on their own, do not make a community of learners, just as books alone do not make a school. In the style of My.BarackObama.com, Third Arena is a toolkit for community organizers passionate about education to form face-to-face learning groups called study circles around audio and video. Study circles are community-driven, highly flexible and work well where it is not possible to get subject-matter experts, from failing schools to rural villages. They have played an important role in 19th Century literacy and women's education efforts in the U.S., through the Chautauqua Institute, and in government subsidized adult education programs in Scandinavia.
Third Arena will be particularly effective at reaching rural Tibetans, of which 43% are illiterate, as well as 75 million children globally who do not have access to any education and 37 million adults in the U.S. who are unable to get the postsecondary education they want. It will offer new opportunities for homeschoolers, afterschool programs, or advanced and remedial students, and ease pressure on targets to recruit 200,000 first-time teachers annually for the next five years in the U.S.
Who will help you develop your idea? Why are you the one to make this happen?
In 2005, Alan Webb and Jeff Bordogna launched TheCourseForum.com for students at the University of Virginia. This self-sustaining forum, with over 2,000 active users a day, changed the way professors and students interacted by making the market for information about courses open, fluid, and inclusive.
We will pilot the Third Arena toolkit first in Tibet, by working with Machik, a nonprofit NGO with an exceptional grassroots capability in Tibet, to build an educational program to support social entrepreneurship on a local Tibetan-language economy. We will create the framework for entrepreneurship study circles, supported by videos of Tibetan entrepreneurs teaching Tibetan entrepreneurs. We will model our program on the technical expertise of digital media learning programs, such as the Digital Study Hall in India, the social expertise for organizing study circles, from the the Swedish Cooperative Centre, which has been using study circles to promote learning in fields such as financial literacy and agricultural training in East Africa since 1957, and through the academic example of entrepreneurship course modules developed by Accion International, Agora Partnerships, and BRAC.
How much will it cost to launch your idea? (This can be an estimate)
The pilot program will seed a self-sustaining business and revolving community education fund in Tibet. Third Arena will lead research and web development of the toolkit. We will work with our partners in the local community to record videos of Tibetans teaching Tibetans about social business concepts and sharing case studies from their own experience and from the international exposure they will gain through the Initiative.
$5k will be used to buy a range of equipment sets to start a rental business for devices to view educational videos in remote villages and by nomads (@ $300-600 per set). Once the business is in operation, this equipment will also be used for programs on children's education, women's health education, and others. $20k will be split between a revolving fund for subsidizing study circles ($7.5k), a fund to competitively award business plans proposed through study circles ($5k), and to cover local video recording costs ($2.5k). The fund will be matched and renewed through local community donations from successful entrepreneurs. Third Arena will continue to support the promotion of the toolkit to other nonprofits, educators, philanthropists, and NGOs.
This Entry is about (Issues)
 | AlanCWebb said: Tintin. Thank you for your question. Please visit our website at www.ThirdArena.com for more information and please feel free to ask ... about this Competition Entry. - 716 days ago read more > |
| cipher1029 said: or can you provide a website to better explain this? about this Competition Entry. - 716 days ago read more > |
| AlanCWebb updated this Competition Entry. - 745 days ago |
| leo_hphp@yahoo.ca said: Please explain why your idea/project, is suited/perfect to using... 'media' ...to bring about A BETTER "WORLD"...the entire planet...? ... about this Competition Entry. - 745 days ago read more > |
| AlanCWebb updated this Competition Entry. - 745 days ago |
| AlanCWebb submitted this idea. - 745 days ago |
Comments
Please explain why your idea/project, is suited/perfect to using... 'media' ...to bring about A BETTER "WORLD"...the entire planet...? Thank you~! a.
or can you provide a website to better explain this?
Tintin. Thank you for your question. Please visit our website at www.ThirdArena.com for more information and please feel free to ask any questions at Alan@ThirdArena.com. Best, Alan