Who’s a virtual volunteer: an online volunteer profile

I think of the potential online volunteer as the eternal excluded from cooperation for development, as a kind of “market” yet to be discovered.

When I say “eternal excluded” I dont’ mean he or she never took part in any project or organization in the field of cooperation for development, he surely did. What I mean is that he surely had to abandon because of other (most important) social commitments.

Lets take three main factors: age, time and space.

Age factor

There’re four main age groups in volunteering:

0 to 16: too young to have a real engagement with anything. Can be a volunteer, but yet too immature to carry the weight of real responsibilities

16 to 25: quite an adult. Can carry on with volunteering responsibilities and, most important: (usually) has plenty of time to “waste” with others, as he is normally an student or apprentice and has not a lot of other responsibilities

25-65: married or with formal engagement; sons or family duties; work, work and more work. Not a lot of time to spend with others, specially time to “give away”. Would volunteer, but how and when? What a pity: he’s got training and he’s got experience. He’s got knowledge but a difficult way to share it with others. The potential online volunteer?

65-over: he’s got plenty of time and a lot of experience. He’s surely the new cluster of (“real”) volunteering and, why not, virtual volunteering. But he’d maybe prefer personal contact. Besides, it’s possible his experience is a little bit out of date if he did not keep a long life learning/training in his expertise field.

It seems to me that groups 2 and 4 make up the normal “real” volunteers while the third group is the natural virtual volunteer.

Time factor

Having familiar responsibilities shortens our disposal of time.
Having professional responsibilities shortens our disposal of time.
Our preferred NGO is open when at work.
When home, no time to volunteer because it’s time to be with his or her children, couple, do some housework, etc.
And when he or she, at last, can spare some time to volunteer, where to? Whom with?

Space factor

Same happens with the question “where to volunteer” in the preceding example.

But there are other reasons besides family and work not to be able to go where you can volunteer: crossing the ocean or the continent is, besides a matter of time, a matter of money. And sometimes it is even a matter of infrastructures: no road, no trip.

Adding up:

  • The online volunteer is a knowledge centred volunteer
  • The online volunteer is a volunteer with independence of time
  • The online volunteer is a volunteer with independence of space

 

[This is part of what I said at the First International Congress about E-Learning and social inclusion. I’ll try and gather all up and put it in the form of an article. In the meanwhile, I’ll publish it as a normal post by little pieces :P ]

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ICTlogy technorated

I don’t like to spend lots of time writing about blogging because I feel the same way than watching some TV show dealing about some TV series: endogamic. The unique occasions I talk about the tool I use (and not its use) is to track down all the setup stuff: to get back where I got lost and to shine some light on someone coming behind.

All this digression is to introduce two people I’ve met by looking at my logs. Someone got here through Technorati and, well, I couldn’t help to “technorate” ICTlogy and found two (new) people linking me. Wow! They made my day!

One of the reasons I made this blog up was to get in touch with other people with similar interests, but this is becoming quite a hard thing to do. Finding people quoting me or considering me a Key EduBlogger makes me think I’m not alone and there’s people I can learn from.

Thanks Josephine and thanks Yan for being there and showing up :)))

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The Click Corner

Back from holidays, and after the divertimento of my last post, I’m done with some reading and, via Octeto, I blog I come to like more and more, I discover something made at home.

The Click Corner “is a freeware application for the development of multimedia educational activities. With Clic you can create different types of activities: puzzles, associations, crosswords, identification activities, exploration, written answer, multiple choice…”

In fact, it is not e-learning, but “only” computer assisted learning. Who cares: it has everything I look for to be published in ICTlogy. It’s non-profit, is co-operative and is ICT driven learning. Whether is it though up for Catalan primary or secondary schools or not, it can be (re)used for whatever other uses, as “the Clic corner intends to be a web space of co-operation and solidarity between educators and schools through the exchange of the applications produced using the program”.

More info about the site at elearningeuropa.info.

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First International Congress about E-Learning and social inclusion

On Thursday 15th April I’m speaking at the First International Congress about E-Learning and social inclusion

My communication will be 30 minutes long within the framework of Thursday afternoon (15.45-17.15) session II: Problem solving methodology for e-learning. Ain’t no complete communications programme yet: promise to publish at once when noticed.

Though I’m still thinking on what I exactly want to say, my mental scheme is as follows:

The online volunteer: knowledge manager and transmitter

 

Theoretical Framework

  • Taxonomny of the online volunteer
  • The potential virtual volunteer as the eternal excluded from cooperation for development: a “market” to discover
  • The virtual volunteer en his knowledge centered role: store, organize, create and transfer knowledge

Practical case: e-Learning for e-Inclusion

A three pieces puzzle:

  • Content and didactic materials
  • e-Learning platform
  • Syllabus, coordination and teaching

Main characteristics of online volunteering centered e-learning projects:

  • The e-volunteer as the knowledge transmitter, without time nor space boundaries
  • South-south cooperation: the e-volunteer placed at the target social framework
  • Economic sustainability: online volunteering costs, replication opportunities, multiplier effects of the model

Can I set up a project like this?

  • The experience of the Campus for Peace
  • Free content: GNU licenses, Creative Commons, MIT OpenCourseWare and Learning Objects repositories
  • Free e-learning platforms: Moodle, Claroline, MIT Caddie.net, other F/OSS supports
  • Virtual volunteers: Onlinevolunteers.org, others.

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About Me