PLANETA

Mastering the Web
by Barbara Kastelein

PLANETA FORUM

Real learning is not something added, it is a reorganization of the system. New nets and assemblies occur, loops form, alternate pathways develop. The viewed world is different and so is the viewer.
- Learning Notebook

Most of us use our internet connection for more than just sending emails, whether it be to check the price of flights or to google -- netspeak for "search" using the Google search engine (apparently the transitive verb "to Google" entered the lexicon three years ago) – old friends. Many use it for much more, for work, for research, reference and fact checking, for medical advice, banking and investments, for chats and dates, or for plain old surfing.

However, many of us have not had a single class, let alone a course in computer studies, "netiquette," how to use the web or how to maximize one's use of the internet.

IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF LIFE

What was jargon some years ago has become common parlance and snuck its way into the OED and Merriam-Webster. Those of us who live far from elderly parents have found even they know what "online" means and got themselves their own email address.

It's amazing to think we have all managed this on our own, through trial and error, often losing a good deal of time. However the result may also be that we may have gone through some internet aversion, being recovering email addicts, turned off by spam, weary of viruses, exasperated by inefficient, time-wasting searches, depressed by scrappy misinformation, and repulsed by badly-spelled, cheap'n'nasty websites.

It's easy to take for granted the benefits of the internet and feel overwhelmed by junk. The thought of having to wade through more garbage, and expose oneself to more eyestrain and headaches and the unsociability of hours of computer usage, tends to discourage us from going beyond a certain level of proficiency.

However, as the computer wizards, or nerds, pioneer new time-saving ingenious web devices, those of us who do not keep up and suffer from mild but chronic net aversion, end up propagating our own isolation and inefficiency when we could be improving the quality of our life.

WHOLE NEW WORLD

Mastering The Web (MTW) is a course that plucks the most recalcitrant internet user from the plodding comfort of his or her old ways and opens up not only a whole new world of internet use but also a philosophy of learning. It is an online seminar, so you can do it with your colleagues or work team in your office, or take it at home on your computer or laptop.

It is not an isolated experience, as you send feedback to your tutor who emails you in return and follows up with comments, suggestions and help. Nor is it unstructured. You have to book when you plan to take the course, which lasts for a 5-day week with "at least" an hour a day but as most students have found, anything up to five hours a day is required to make the very best out of the material.

Created, with ongoing feedback and modifications, by Ron Mader, the founder of the award winning website Planeta.com, the course appeals to all ages and for most people is a life-changing experience, especially while they are taking the course.

NON-HIERARCHAL LEARNING

For the rest, it is up to them but basically they complete MTW with the tools to conduct pristine research, set up their own website, engage in responsible, courteous and mutually beneficial relationships with other web users. The course also brings enhanced critical awareness, both of users' own habits and prejudices, and of materials and virtual people and organizations they come into contact.

There is basic reading, as well as suggested reading and assignments. You also learn how to navigate the planeta.com site, which is updated on a weekly basis and provides free access to more than 10,000 pages of articles and resource guides for students, travelers and policy-makers. A good deal of self-organization and discipline is required and this in itself becomes one of the things -- good, tidy habits -- you learn. Participants are advised in advance that they will be asked to assess the session through a questionnaire.

Mader's hard work and dedication to certain non-hierarchized forms of learning and personal responsibility, as well as team building, shows how criticism and appreciation can go hand in hand, and eases the student into improved lateral thinking (as it used to be called) with the long term benefit that you get more not only out of the web, but out of life. The feel-good factor is high, with students feeling enabled from the beginning, much encouragement and a careful cultivation of positive thinking. It stops shorts of assertions and smiling at yourself in the mirror, but a number of Mader's teaching tactics recall the literary strategies used in the self-help book.

WHOLE NEW WORLD

Mastering The Web (MTW) is a course that plucks the most recalcitrant internet user from the plodding comfort of his or her old ways and opens up not only a whole new world of internet use but also a philosophy of learning. It is an online seminar, so you can do it with your colleagues or work team in your office, or take it at home on your computer or laptop.

The first lesson, for example, part of a session called Improving Communication probes perception with an initial quote that reawakens one to the importance of the eye of the beholder:

"Little round planet in a big universe. Sometimes it looks blessed, sometimes it looks cursed. Depends on what you look at obviously. But even more it depends on the way that you see" - Earth Notebook

LOOKING AHEAD

Day 2 looks again at learning and perception, and has a concrete focus on the website that you would like to have, teaching you to be practical, list your short- and long-term needs, as well as be creative and look at sites and blogs (I'll sheepishly admit this was a new term to me -- it means web sites that contain "an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer"). It also contains tips for wannabe authors, lists of publishers, and another ingenious web tool, called "Copyscape" to detect plagiarism of your content elsewhere on the web.

It is possible that Day 2 reading, with a focus on Open Space Technology by Harrison Owen, may be a little "new age" or flimflam for some readers' taste, talking about Peacemaking and the life aim of creating the conditions for Peace. However, the focus is on methodologies and attitudes, thinking and working long term, and is another ingredient in Mader's ingenious package for helping students get out of an intellectual and attitudinal rut.

Day 3 focuses on search engines, and the "Dark Web" reminding us to be critical of material that masquerades as information and discussing how to authenticate what you're looking at. The reading here also helps students to see tools as cogs in much larger wheels of development of human quest for knowledge and has some enjoyable discussions about semantics.

CREATIVE TEACHING

MTW is not all perfect, but since it's completely interactive you can tell -- are asked to debate the content, presentation, etc -- your tutor what you disagree with and it's very gratifying as he will change things if he agrees with you, or he will take time to explain (and is never patronizing) why a certain decision was made.

It is one of the few, perhaps the only, course I have ever taken that treats the student with respect as a thinking adult who has as much to give and share and teach as the teacher. In this way it is actually a very good course for teachers to take as a direct experience of a positive and creative teaching methodology.

Mader is currently preparing a 5-city tour of Ecuador to deliver a modified version of the workshop (in Spanish) for tourism professionals throughout the country. Look to the Planeta Forum for details.

"One of the things I've learned is that so many professionals take "communication" for granted ... And the major task of the seminar is to motivate participants," Mader said. "Individual operators need to learn what tools are available to improve communication ... And to find ways to achieve this that are less costly or even free."

AUTHOR

Barbara Kastelein has PhD in literature from the University of Warwick in England, and has published her writings about Mexico for ten years in Mexican, British and U.S. publications.

PLANETA

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