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CPsquare as a learning space for cultivating global literacies

Although we certainly can't claim as a comunity to be fully living up to the ideas expressed in this document, we share it here with the idea that the only way to improve the practice of cultivating global literacies is to practice them. In that spirit, we share our thinking here.

CPsquare as a learning space for cultivating global literacies;

Initial Guidelines and Considerations

Summarizes a CPsquare discussion in July 2003 with: Beverly Trayner, Brian Foster, Bronwyn Stuckey, Nancy White, Ueli Schuermeier. Denham Grey, Erik Van Bekkum, Jim Palmer, John Smith, Martin Roulleaux Dugage, and Nick Noakes made contributions to the discussion.

For the three areas of culture, logistics and language, this report summarizes the discussions and issues raised. Then it offers a series of recommendations. It also includes "an example of good practice".

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The document is intended to be the basis for practice and ongoing reflection and improvement. Comments and suggestions are invited from CPsquare practice groups and from individuals or groups who use and adapt them for their own purpose(s).

The spirit of these guidelines is that of social action for globally interconnected working and community life that is evolving in the context of newly discovered borders. Designing for and facilitating conversations that cross borders requires global literacies. Global literacies address substantive diversity of cultural, geographical and language differences as well as diverse modalities such as web based, asynchronous, synchronous, visual and paper.

We view CPsquare as a learning space for cultivating these global literacies.

These guidelines come in three parts, representing the discussions in the three folders: cultural, logistical and linguistic. A summary of the discussion that took place in each folder precedes recommendations that arose from each discussion. A summary checklist is included at the end of the document.

Scope and size of the CPsquare community

CPsquare continues to grow into a robust, though complex, community of practice on a global scale. These current statistics seemed interesting to me:

GMT offset	Total	Representative Location
-10	1
-9	4	Honolulu
-8	65	San Francisco
-7	14	Denver
-6	12	Chicago
-5	91	New York
-4	2	Halifax
-3	2	Buenos Aires
0	14	London
1	31	Central Europe
2	4
5	2
6	1
7	1
8	5	Hong Kong
9	1
10	9	Australia
11	1
12	1
Total	261

As of October 11, 2003