-One project I am particularly interested in sharing- started today. I am the lead on an online workshop titled: The Reckoning: Understanding the International Criminal Court. We have over 700 participants signed up from over 70 countries. The workshop will allow interaction of participants with the films’ producers, scholars, Facing History staff, NGO workers and a variety of educators from around the globe. We will also be joined by special guests. In addition to having the filmmakers with us for the duration of the workshop, we will be joined on particular days by the following: Ben Ferencz, Bec Hamilton, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Doc Miller and John Bellinger III. You can join the site at www.reckoningworkshop.ning.com.
Facing History has an international online course, an ongoing online environment that connects students in Rwanda to students in Massachusetts (part of an ECA grant), and is planning another international student discussion in the spring around voting.
I think what could possibly be an interesting session is if I show some of these international online learning environments and we have a discussion around the following:
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What factors do you need to consider when opening an online learning opportunity up to a global audience?
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What are some challenges and how can they be addressed?
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What are some benefits of going global with online learning?
- How might we think of sharing best practices and combining learning and resources?
I am very interested in attending this session. Although USIP has a number of online courses (http://www.usip.org/education-training/international/online-courses), we are always looking for ways to improve techniques for international workshops. Any chance you could send an invite around for the Ning site?
Hi Christopher- I just sent you the Ning invite…would be happy yo do so for anyone else- just send me your email addresses- deb_chad@facing.org
Chris- Not sure how the sessions are approved but would love for you to maybe do this with me. You have a whole other range of exerience and could be a good conversation.
I would be very interested in participating in whatever role would be most useful for you and other attendees. I’m afraid that I can’t claim to be an expert in this field, but I’m always happy to share my experiences.
One of the primary challenges that we’ve had to face is the language barrier. Despite the prevalence of English, whenever we at USIP try to engage a truly global audience we quickly run up against the logistical (and often financial) challenge of breaking down language barriers, including between non-English-speaking communities. While our Center on Media, Conflict, and Peacebuilding has benefited from the universal value of imagery, we are increasingly finding that the challenge of reaching out to communicate is now more linguistic than technical.
Fortunately, we’ve found some great technical workarounds thus far, including dotSUB (http://dotsub.com/), which crowdsources translation of video clips, and Meedan.net, which provides near-realtime translation of blog postings between English and Arabic.
However, I’m very interested in how you’ve handled these difficulties with your conference, as navigating 700 participants from over 70 countries is an impressive feat to say the least.
I’m also very interested in ways that other organizations have managed to tackle this problem with limited resources and maximum effectiveness.
Any suggestions?
We have not yet ventured into the translation world- so yes I think we can learn a lot from one another and our different organizational approaches. Thanks