In Bonnie Stewart’s latest post for #HortonFreire, she introduced us to the Antigonish Movement, “a Maritime adult education, cooperative, and microfinance movement of the 1920s and ’30s that led to the development of local credit unions that still dot the landscape around Maritime Canada.” Bonnie suggested this movement as both an historical parallel to Horton’s Citizenship Schools and as a model for our network to improve digital literacy.
In thinking about Bonnie’s call to action, I see parallels with a program that may provide some of the organizational scaffolding for such an educational program. About six months ago I participated as a student in a program called Software Carpentry. This non-profit group teaches faculty and grad students three basics of programming literacy: linux command line, version control (usually with GitHub), and a broadly applicable programming language (usually Python or R).
These skills and the correlated literacies are great, but what is interesting for this conversation is the model adopted by Software Carpentry. After completing the program as a student, they encourage participants to consider going through the instructor training. Participants can earn certification which confers the right to use the Software Carpentry branding and materials in their own workshops. The multi-stage training looks something like this:
- A 2-day instructor training focused on pedagogy
- Watch and give feedback in a video conference debriefing for a new instructor
- Participate as the junior-partner in a team-taught session of Software Carpentry
- Debriefing in a video conference
- Contribute to the GitHub repository of course material
It might be useful for the #HortonFreire group, along with our broader professional circle, to think about developing a similar GitHub repository of course materials. One of the things I particularly like about this technological model is how it would allow us to create a pool of common resources, and also our own forked versions of the repository that are fitted to our particular cultural environments, the needs of the local students, and our varied pedagogies. These GitHub materials could then provide the jumping off point for local workshops.
My previous posts in the #HortonFreire book club:
