# Peeragogy Monthly Wrap: 2020-04 to 2020-08
April to August Wrap
## Introduction
Greetings from CHICAGOLAND - 30 September 2020

Happy World Heart Day. And a belated happy Juneteenth, [National Reconciliation Week](https://www.reconciliation.org.au/national-reconciliation-week/), Asian American Pacific Islanders Heritage Month, and September equinox!
It is with a bounce in my keyboard click that I greet you with this fresh wrap-up of our activities from April to August! We have made supercalifragilisticexpialidocious progress on our paper, course, software, and more!! =]

### PAR
For the longform version of Peeragogy activities over the past **six months**, peep this PAR, or Project Action Review[1]. Special thanks to Vitor Bruno (Brazil) for his assistance with this one.

#### 1. Review the intention: what do we expect to learn or make together?
*We produced meaningful learning products. Examples: Futures Journal article, Tufts Course, Wrap software. (links here?)*

#### 2. Establish what is happening: what and how are we learning?
*We’ve been reading, reviewing the texts, doing side projects, meeting in smaller groups, developing educational techniques. We learned that face-to-face interaction (video conferencing online) goes a long way toward building understanding, open mindset, empathy.*

#### 3. What are some different perspectives on what’s happening?
*It has not been a linear path of progress over the last six months, but we feel there has been constructive progress. We are extending our reach through media like podcasting that makes peeragogy more accessible to people in all walks of life and that allows us to explore our concepts over time. Conflicts have emerged that have largely been resolved through acceptance of good intentions. Peeragogy can tolerate disagreement, conflict, or values differences.*

#### 4. What did we learn or change?
*We learned the value of managing expectations, being clear about policies and values, leaning on friends we never met face to face, all the while continuing to be productive during the COVID-19 crisis. We learned that simply sending someone over to our website or discussion group to explain Peeragogy does not result in immediate understanding about the project. A more welcoming interface is needed. We learned that our initial, emotional reactions to others’ expressed values or changes in process seldom reflect reality of others’ intentions.*

#### 5. What should we change going forward?
*Think in a sustainable way to make the group self-sufficient by creating sellable products (book, article, courses) so that the group can have more than one website and raise our visibility. Create an accessible “dashboard” or graphical interface that will engage non-technical people who can benefit from the patterns and best practices of Peeragogy. Take participants’ well considered proposals at face value and imagine them being successful before rejecting or opposing them.*

### Thanks to those who responded to our call for contributions for this wrap!
[https://groups.google.com/g/peeragogy/c/NStX-vt1l1M/m/Wr-N8VzlAwAJ](https://groups.google.com/g/peeragogy/c/NStX-vt1l1M/m/Wr-N8VzlAwAJ)

## Course
Following our engaging first semester of the Course in early 2020, we completed semester two in April and May. Joe Corneli (UK) and Charlotte Pierce (Boston US) co-organized and participants included Vitor Bruno (Brazil) and Hermano Cintra (Brazil). One of the highlights was a powerful presentation Hermano did on digital collaboration in open-source communities. You can find details about the sessions and some videos on the syllabus.

## The power of check-ins and clear communication
Joe Corneli (LONDON), 26 August 2020

I read about the power of check-ins and clear communication in “Don't Hold My Head Down” by Lucy-Anne Holmes (Unbound, 2019).

> “‘It is nice to meet you,’ he started, but then he screwed his face up [...] ‘But you’re so fast. You’re like a volcano. I don’t know how I feel about you. Sometimes I want to run away.’” (p. 61)

> “The Germans frequently ask each other a question that I’d never heard before. Ever. Well, except maybe at the doctor’s. And it was this: ‘How are you feeling in your body?’” (p. 63)

Lucy ultimately learns to overcome her apprehensions, and is honest with her crush (the Dark-Haired German) about how she feels about him. Things go quite well for them after that! I might not have made much of all this, if I hadn’t just read something related in another book, “Designing Your Life” by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans (Knopf Doubleday, 2016).

> “We define discernment as decision making that employs more than one way of knowing. We mostly use cognitive knowing—all that good, objective, organized, informational kind of knowing—the sort of knowing that gets you A’s in school. But we also have other ways of knowing, including the affective forms of intuitive, spiritual, and emotional knowing. Add to these both social knowing (with others) and kinesthetic knowing (in our bodies).”

I was then pleasantly surprised to join one of the Wrap production meetings and find Stephan and Charlie talking about the possibility of setting up a simple form to facilitate check-ins in the Peeragogy project. I imagine this might be a little bit like mood messages in Skype 😃. If we got this feature up and running, we could take a quick look at the Peeragogy Dashboard and see how everyone is doing. Of course, it wouldn’t be necessary to share any information there if you didn’t want to. People just wouldn’t know how you’re doing right away.

Still, if enough people opted in, I think this kind of thing could be really powerful. Imagine if everyone attending a meeting shared a short written check-in with each other before the meeting, saying how things are going, and what's on their mind. This would be quick to prepare, quick to read, and it could help everyone make the most of their time in the meeting. High-priority concerns might get some direct attention, and there would be less chance of anyone being tone-deaf to someone else's concerns. For now, this is just a proposal, but it could quickly start to become a reality. Like the PAR I think this could significantly improve our way of working together. But, before we go much further with this, I hope everyone will consider sharing any preliminary reflections or concerns about the proposal!

## Paper
We finished multiple drafts of our paper we’re planning to submit to the Futures Journal. We’re looking at how pattern languages that have been helpful for architecture and software development can help people anticipate the future better. We have a draft of the paper available for public comment here, please take a look and let us know what you think!

## Software
Led by Stephan Kreutzer (Germany), the technical side of the project has released some exciting new software to help humans improve their peer learning and peer production! One tool for this specific wrap generates the beautiful PDF and ePUB versions of this wrap you may be currently reading! Another tool offers a place for us to enter our Project Action Reviews in a simple manner so that they can be easily stored, organized, and used for future learning adventures!

## Podcast
**The Peeragogy Podcast** has been launched, with the first two episodes live-streamed to YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn on 9/26 (Intro to Peeragogy) and 10/1 (Wikipedia vs. Misinformation). Recordings remain on those platforms, and the universe can subscribe to the audio version via all major podcast apps like [Apple](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peeragogy-podcast/id1533691694), Google, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Spotify, and others. Our intent is to explore the research and tools we have developed since the inception of the project in 2012, and to make our design patterns, tech tools, and best practices accessible to a wider audience.
### ABSTRACT FOR THE PODCAST:
*Welcome to The Peeragogy Podcast, part of the no-longer-missing guide to peer learning and peer production, along with The Peeragogy Handbook! This podcast provides an interactive space where our audience and panelists from all walks of life can explore and present the philosophies, concepts, tools, and practical applications of non-hierarchical learning and production initiatives among peers. Produced collaboratively by the editorial board of The Peeragogy Project/Peeragogy Handbook, under a CC0 license. Live-streamed via video to YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn; distributed to all major audio podcast apps.*
### Proposed Podcast Topics:
- The Peeragogy Podcast
- Wiki1: Wikipedia vs. Misinformation
- Peering into Early Learning
- The Whole Earth Peeragogy Handbook (V5)
- Inside the Collaboratory
- The Pandemic Condition - Paola Ricuarte
- Peeragogy Accelerator: Political Campaigns
- Peeragogy Accelerator: Community Media
- Peeragogy Accelerator: Coffeehouse Concerts
- Peeragogy Accelerator: I Smell a Rat!
- Peeragogy Accelerator: Rowing Clubs
- PHv3 Contributors: Where Are They Now?
- Patterns of Peeragogy in Practice
- Rheingoldian Roles in Peer Learning
- Transdisciplinary Design
- Meet the MetaCAugs!
- Not by Degree: Peer-to-Peer University
- The Critical Role of the Project Action Review
- Gaming the Future
- Tools for Effective Peer Learning & Peer Production
- How Can Peeragogy Help My Enterprise?
- Motivation in Non-Hierarchical Enterprises
- Using Patterns to Solve Social Problems
- Wiki3: 25 Years of Wiki Collaboration

### Cross-Pollination
[Topic discussion](https://groups.google.com/g/peeragogy/c/NStX-vt1l1M/m/Svl5oJcDBAAJ) in Peeragogy Google Group (public; requires membership to respond)

**Musings in MetaCAugs Telegram channel ([https://t.me/metacaugs](https://t.me/metacaugsm), paraphrased)**:

We can wrap-protocol weaving, leading to a more consistent and open exchange of cross-pollinating updates from and connecting between our various groups. We increasingly realize the importance of exchanging wraps, reviews, and previews of dialogues and weaving protocols and contents and roles within and between cicolab - metacaugs - peeragogy.

Cicolab’s Lauren Nignon writes,

> “I would love to tighten things up among all these different groups so we can start working together more seamlessly, so that we are carrying the baton from one group to another and every group becomes stronger. There is definitely a movement brewing.”

### Random Ideas of Note
- [Oracle for Transfeminist Technologies](https://www.codingrights.org/crtlz-ai-zine-fair-barcelona/)
- [Equitable Disaster Response](http://gregbloom.org/2020/03/31/something-is-not-necessarily-better-than-nothing-introducing-the-principles-of-equitable-disaster-response/)
- [Open Educational Resources](https://en.unesco.org/news/launch-unesco-dynamic-coalition-open-education-resources-oer)

### Google Docs
- CVTH
- Futures Journal paper
- Twitter https://twitter.com/eveewing/status/1290681758149746689?s=19
- Modular politics
- Open source ventilators

## Mixtape
1. [Rick Astley – “Kunsthaus”: Farbe ist meine Welt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bpsRWbpxig)
2. [KOMPROMAT – Einfach da sein](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhgCW1PJOO8)

## Plans

- Peeragogical business opportunities - Accelerators for “real world” niches
- Building out the Podcast

## Footnotes
1. Formerly "Peeragogy Action Review" and "Paragogy Action Review"
2. `~~~` distribution plan `~~~`
3. Just send out a link to the PDF, not to GitHub version