WSF 2006 Caracas: The Urban Popular University

By Alessio Surian and Gabriele Francescotto

The main IAI campaigns are Zero Evictions and the creation on a national level of funds for the right to land and housing, involving civil society in the management of resources that may come out of external debt cancellation agreements. In order to strengthen these campaigns, it is essential to exchange Good Practice experiences employed by grass-roots and national associations, and institutions in the area of social construction of habitat. The UPU arose out of a feasibility study undertaken with the support of the Basque government that shows the need and the aspiration of the different entities that make up the IAI to:

•Raise consciousness about habitat, urban issues, and housing issues by linking research, publication and training activities using a transformative and inclusive approach
•Empower volunteers and staff of inhabitant associations in areas of learning perceived as relevant to their work and fight
•Ensure that volunteers and staff of inhabitant organizations have access to intercultural learning experiences that lead to a critical, transformative culture with regards to habitat issues

The UPU facilitates research activities, training, experience exchange and publications in the following areas:

•Key organization and training issues: paying particular attention to planning, evaluation and policy development; other areas of interest include communication, time and resource management and participation
•The local/global dimension concerning housing issues and the ability to exchange experiences amongst counterpart organizations and develop collaborative relationships
•Social construction of habitat and the right to the city: key tensions, actors and concepts including security of tenure, housing durability, sufficient living space, access to water, bathrooms, etc.
•The role of social housing movements and their communities and political action on a local level, as well as regional, in the framework of the World Social Forum and the Local Authorities Forum proceedings

Within this framework, the use of information and communication technology (ICT) and the ability to use strategic ICT applications within organizations, as well as networks and intranets, assume a key role. It is here that the main areas of activity of the UPU (training, research, documentation and systematization) make themselves known, dealing in depth with aspects related to ICT in each one.

Training

In the last decade, the networking activities promoted by social movements, as well as collaborative processes such as the Thematic, Regional and World Social Forums (since January 2001), have directed attention to the need to overcome the rigid division between theory and practice (Santos 2003) and to allow social activists to include research, training and action dimensions of their work within a consistent strategy of action and reflection. There is a growing consciousness that social movements are producing new social agents and practices and that there is a widening gap between theory and practice. The Urban Popular University looks to intercultural opportunities to shrink that gap and train social movement leaders in a transformative and reflexive manner.
One of the first regional workshops (Buenos Aires, May 2006) is geared toward leaders of low income neighborhoods and micro-business associations and heads of local economic activity in Argentina and Peru. It is being organized in partnership with the Neighbors Federation (Fedevi), social researchers from the University of Buenos Aires and labor unions. Its purpose is to develop trainers and debate political strategy, discussing and coordinating themes key to local activities. The course will be evaluated by the participants and two UPU trainers in the aim of revising the model in order to launch similar courses in other regions across the world.
Although the course is centered on ten days of activities in Buenos Aires, it takes advantage of long-distance training tools and, above all, a Moodle platform that is already part of the UPU portal. The tools that are used allow training content to be gathered from the trainers in order to finalize it in presentations available not only to participants but also to colleagues back home and in their organizations. Through the use of XML and protocols such as SCORM, RSS and REST, the UPU allows for interoperability of all materials present in the platform. Moodle is a free software and a long-distance learning platform that adopts a constructive approach close to UPU characteristics.

Information and documentation

As the reader can already tell, all of the technological instruments of the IAI and the UPU are tools that can be adopted, redistributed and/or modified under the GNU General Public License (GPL), according to Free Software Foundation publications. GNU is the organization that promotes and helps improve the popular operating system known as Linux, a direct spinoff of the GNU operating system. In order to facilitate communication between its members, the IAI and the UPU use an IRC chat offered by Indymedia. This solution has been chosen because it is the fastest of the chats available for e-learning programs and based on two criteria: it utilizes free software and it does not require installation on the user’s computer.
In order to facilitate internal communication (over two hundred e-mails), a mailing list managed with Mailman, a free software developed from Python technology, is used.
A fundamental subject for skills development of UPU members is the condivision of training, research and systematization tools. Social movements are deepening their self-perception as entities capable of transforming their research and narrative actions. In the words of Edmund O’Sullivan, “we are in need of an educational resistance that moves in the direction of cultural criticism”. This attitude takes into consideration evidence showing that the power of organizations depends not only on their stance in relation to sources of knowledge and their capacity to comprehend and process this knowledge, but also in the fact that there is no privileged source of information: knowledge also flows (Castells 1994) and associated learning can contribute toward access to knowledge and modify the way in which it flows at the same time. This is particularly relevant to urban policy, a topic that lacks suitable information and is suffering on a global scale from an information crisis that seriously affects the capacity of many cities to develop themselves and analyze effective policies, according to the Global Urban Observatory of UN Habitat.
Within this framework, the UPU has developed an online database (Toolbox) based on its experience with the SALTO program. The Toolbox includes information about training models and activities, documentation on experiences and local and international courses, as well as conference reports and publications on key matters. The Toolbox has been developed as a module of a well-known Content Management System (CMS) called eZ-publish. In fact, the entire UPU portal is based on eZ-publish and, in the spirit of freeware, the different infomatics solutions that come out the eZ-publish community have been compiled. The Toolbox itself is a module from which releases can be granted to all those interested. This has been achieved through a system of highly flexible graphic templates. The topics and categories, as well as the languages used to add and consult information, can also easily be adapted to contexts other than the UPU. This adaptation work can be done from the back-end without necessarily modifying the program codes. All information contained in the Toolbox can be exported in XML format, allowing the user to take advantage and freely adapt his own site to this information within the framework of Creative Commons licenses. From a content point of view, the Toolbox allows different organizations and entities that join or collaborate with the UPU to make themselves known by means of forms and presentations that allow the organizations’ expectations data and training profiles to be visualized.
In the goal of obtaining better knowledge of members’ and collaborators’ expectations about the UPU project, a questionnaire was distributed and posted on the webpage in English, Spanish, and French. The first eleven answers allow for preliminary analysis to be performed on issues perceived as fundamental.
While online training is seen as a valid means of sharing knowledge amongst members and friends of IAI, it seems to be important to verify the actual possibilities for access to Internet and information and communication technologies (ICT).
All of those that responded use computers in their organizations to manage their areas of responsibility. Out of those, 9 use computers at home, 7 at work and 6 at the local inhabitants association. All of them have access to Internet, 9 of them signing on at work and 9 at home (of course, more than one answer was accepted).
One of those who answered limited his computer skills to word processing while the rest are capable of:
•using a word processor
•using a spreadsheet
•searching for information on the Internet
•sending and receiving e-mail
•establishing group communication
•downloading programs
Training in the following areas is considered useful by:
•all except one, in strategic applications of information technologies in their organizations
•9 in network, selection and development systems
•7 in construction of Information Intranets
While there is an abundance of information online about ICT use, it is still difficult to find adequate quality information applicable to the way in which local organizations and civil society groups, especially in marginalized areas, learn and utilize ICT. The UPU webpage provides a series of links to facilitate access to relevant information and ItrainOnline tools.

Public Knowledge Project (PKP)

Keeping in line with IAI’s identity and the UPU approach, there is a link on the UPU portal to the work and tools developed by the Public Knowledge Project (Proyecto de Conocimento Público, PKP) coordinated by John Willinksy at the University of British Columbia (Canada). The proyect looks to integrate emerging standards for access to and preservation of digital document libraries, such as Open Archives and InterPARES , as well as for subjects like topic maps and dissertations .
As part of this effort, the PKP is also evaluating ways to integrate research studies with other forms of knowledge including integrating relative documents, as in the case of social sciences, with practices, programs, and policies. On top of that, it is looking for ways to integrate this research with digital archives, whether they consist of documents or multimedia files.
An area of the PKP of particular interest to the UPU is the evaluation of the collaborative potential of knowledge sharing between communities of interest, in areas such as education, in the aim of also reducing the gap between theory and practice and between research and policy. Prototypes have been used to learn more about how interface design, data architecture, and software tools affect professional and public involvement in educational research. In the case of social sciences and in areas such as education studies, these models are being tested jointly with professional development courses, research publications and policy revision. The Public Knowledge Project can also research the understanding that the participants have of the search as a knowledge source and how its value is affected by these new online environments. Two prototypes have been posted on the UPU website and seem to be particularly promising for UPU, Open Journal Systems (OJS), and Open Conference Systems (OCS) collaborative activities.
Open Journal Systems (OJS) is a newspaper and publication management system that has been developed by the PKP through its efforts, financed with federal funds, to expand and improve access to research. OJS assists in each stage of the publication process, from submission to online publication. Through its management system, finely graduated search indexation and the context that it provides for searching, OJS aims to improve student research quality as much as that of the general public. OJS is an open source software with access free of charge for publications all over the world with the purpose of making open publication a viable option for more newspapers, given that open access can increase a newspaper’s number of readers and contribute to well-being on a global scale.
Open Conference Systems (OCS) is a free web-publishing tool that creates a complete Internet presence of educational conferences (a way to improve the quality of online research by students and the general public), providing the means to:
•create a conference website
•compose and call for papers
•electronically accept papers and abstracts
•allow someone who presented a paper to edit his/her work
•publish post-conference proceedings and papers in a format suitable for searchingpublication, if desired, of the original data
•participant registration
•online post-conference discussions
Bibliographic References
Castells M., "Flows, Networks, identities" in Castells M, Flecha R., Freire P., Giroux H.A., Macedo D., Willis P. McLaren P., "Nuevas perspectivas criticas en educación", Ediciones Paidos Iberica, 1994
Mezirow, Jack. "Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice." In "Transformative Learning In Action: Insights From Practice. New Directions For Adult And Continuing Education", NO. 74, edited by P. Cranton, pp. 5-12. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, Summer 1997
O'Sullivan E., "Transformative Learning. Educational Vision for the 21st Century", Zed Books, London, 1999
Santos de Sousa, Boaventura, "Toward an Epistemology of Blindness. Why the New Forms of 'Cerimonial Adequacy' neither Regulate nor Emancipate", European Journal of Social Theory, 4(3), pp. 251-279, Sage, London, 2001
Shugurensky D., "Transformative learning and transformative politics", in O'Sullivan E., Morrell A., O'Connor M.A., "Expanding the Boundaries of Transformative Learning", pp. 59-76, Palgrave, New York, 2002
Taylor, Edward W. "The Theory And Practice Of Transformative Learning: A Critical Review", in Information Series NO. 374. Columbus: ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education, Center on Education and Training for Employment, College of Education, the Ohio State University, 1998
UN-Habitat, "Slums of the World: The face of urban poverty in the new millennium?", Working Paper , Nairobi, 2003
HREA
HREA non-formal education resources
SALTO learning toolbox
See also:
OpenContent