Port warehouses are spaces full of creative possibilities. Despite having a scale that usually surprises us by its brutality, these giant rectangular constructions with thousands of square feet have the potential of becoming locations for powerful and transformative participatory activities. Especially when they do not function as storage buildings, warehouses can become flexible locations for…
– Number please? – Line 2244! Said a man, with an impatient tone. – One moment please. Said the telephone operator. In front of a switchboard, holding a connecting wire in her left hand, she checked the lamp over the #2244 line and saw a flashing light. – Line is busy. I will call you…
Inclusion is a key process for sustaining, developing, and building democratic societies. Crossing multiple social dimensions, inclusion helps to ensure equal opportunities for participation and access to markets, services, and spaces. At its core, inclusion is about “improving the terms for individuals and groups to take part in society” (World Bank, 2013). Inclusion matters because…
Inside a modern gallery building with ample rooms, white walls, and skylights, one encounters fighters from three long standing armed conflicts: Israel-Palestine, el Salvador, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Combatants appear in pairs at clean and well lighted rooms. Each room correspond to one of the conflicts, and the two fighters that appear…
A learning environment for the 21st century should mix methods, and practices from the worlds of formal and informal education. It should be participatory, democratic, open, dialogic, multicultural, interactive, networked, dynamic, collaborative, descentralized, student-centered, immersive, and contextual. This learning environment requires an innovative pedagogy that fosters applying constructivism, multimodality, project-, process-, and inquiry-based learning, critical…
Across several books and articles, Lankshear and Knobel have conceptualized the new literacies as social practices that have “new technical stuff” and “new ethos stuff.” The “new technical stuff” is related to the new kind of expressive media tools that are available to people such as personal computers, desktop publishing software, and mobile devices. Since…
In the contemporary context of cultural, historical, economical, and societal transformations, the design and practice of learning environments is changing both in formal and informal education institutions. Despite the multiples barriers that a school system rooted in 19th and 20th centuries industrial paradigms offers, innovative educators are designing and implementing responsive learning environments to support…