Actualizing Communities of Practice (COPs) and Situated Learning for a Sustainable Eco-Village

An eco-village as defined by Robert Gilman is a “human-scale, full-featured settlement where you feel you know the others, and human activities are integrated with natural, biological systems.” Roland Mayerl argued that this maybe ideal, but there are huge challenges. He claims the challenges are at different levels—there is the physical layer that constitutes food production, animals, water and wastewater treatment. Other layers will be the built environment, the economic system and the governance in the village.This paper argues that one of the challenging layers is the human layer that was excluded in the modeling of many eco-village works. While there are many good models of an eco-village, sustainability will primarily be laid on the shoulders of the members of the community or the village for that matter. Sustainability should be espoused by the members of the eco-village. But how can sustainability be attained? What sustainability approach or strategy can be employed?“Communities of practice (COP) are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor.“ (Wenger, 2004) COPs are concepts commonly applied in organizations and virtual communities. Using this approach together with periphery participation and situated learning, this paper presents a human-based model of a sustainable eco-village and some useful examples.The paper also argues that an eco-village necessitates the support of technology in enhancing and preserving the shared practices. Hence, use of social media deployed in the web is one of the recommended ways that also permit collective action among members of the eco-village

Sustainable innovation and inclusive business in Latin America

Purpose – This exploratory research aims to analyze sustainable innovation in the context of inclusive business in Latin America. Design/methodology/approach – The study performs a summative content analysis of 22 inclusive businesses (IBs) of current Business Call to Action (BCtA) members in Latin America. Codes were created to identify the modification or introduction of sustainable products/services/processes. Data were analyzed using NVivo 12. Findings – Results show a prevalence of Colombian examples within Latin American inclusive business, and a more significant proportion in the agricultural sector, consistent with reports found in the literature. The authors found that sustainable innovation takes place when introducing new products/services/processes that respond to the needs of the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) population, or modifying existing processes and services to make them more sustainable. Originality/value – As most sustainable innovation literature is product-oriented and technically dominated, these results contribute to the newer works adopting a more comprehensive conception of innovation, providing empirical evidence at the product, service and process levels. The results provide insights on how inclusive businesses make adaptations to improve the sustainability of their supply chains to bring their products/services within reach of isolated and disadvantaged communities. The findings also suggest that sustainable product innovation in an inclusive business goes beyond a cost reduction objective. Tailored design reveals a hybrid socioeconomic goal with a high degree of local context embeddedness and precise attention to nascent specialized demand. The results could be of practical use for organizations that want to operate an inclusive business in BoP markets

The Triumph of Tagalog and the Dominance of the Discourse on English: Language Politics in the Philippines during the American Colonial Period

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Rhizomatic Learning: “As… When… and If…” A Strategy for the ASEAN Community in the 21st Century

The article begins with developments in the ASEAN region. In particular, it focuses on demands generated by the goal to build an ASEAN Community characterized by great diversity amongst member countries. The demands created by this diversity are exacerbated by the immense changes taking place in the 21st century, such as unprecedented richness of information and communication systems, unprecedented mobility and the technological empowerment of ordinary people to create or find their own personal solutions in a just in time, just enough and just for me fashion. This leads to the conclusion that learning needs will be vastly different, individual and largely unpredicted and unpredictable. This realisation implies the necessity to develop adaptable, flexible, yet intellectually coherent learning frameworks which will provide the necessary guidance for creating appropriate learning environments. The article proceeds to construct such a framework on the basis of a five-point analysis of how human perception, understanding and knowledge-construction operate. It then develops a learning structure based on the generation of personal learning environments (PLEs) connected to a networked information technology infrastructure which is essentially rhizomatic in nature (i.e. where learners determine the ways that they navigate through information and feedback mechanisms to construct personally-relevant and appropriate knowledge). The article ends with a short scenario to illustrate the workings of this structure and concludes with some remarks about current research in the area in both Asia and Europ

Urban transitions and futures: a tale of governance, justice and security

This special edition of urbe is the product of an ongoing initiative of the University of Geneva, UCLA and City Environment Network (ICE°NET). Within this framework two colloquia gathered colleagues from academia government and the private sector to reβlect on the increasingly complex panorama of urban transformations across the planet. In 2007, a βirst group of academics and policymakers gathered in Geneva to address new sets of challenges that mid-size cities are increasingly being subject to. We then tracked signiβicant challenges that emerging dynamics of change in respect to the environment (i.e. climate change) and energy (patterns of production and consumption) are imposing on urban areas. In addition by raising the singularity of midsize cities in terms of adaptive policy formulation and monitoring, we identiβied new barriers and enablers to mitigate the impacts of those challenges. The discussions aimed to set preliminary readings of new urban transformative trajectories

Plan de marketing digital bike elevate

En un ambiente económico que se encuentra completamente saturado de publicidad y donde los consumidores son cada vez menos fieles a las marcas, es necesario sobresalir en otras plataformas que estén más acordes a las tendencias actuales. Por esta razón, es indispensable que las compañías tengan presencia a nivel digital y realicen planes estratégicos especiales para este medio. El objetivo de este trabajo es realizar un plan de mercadeo digital aplicando todos los conocimientos vistos para una empresa, teniendo en cuenta costos, presupuesto y demás variables que pueden afectar el desarrollo del mismo.In an economic environment that is completely saturated with advertising and where consumers are less loyals to brands, it is necessary to stand out in other platforms that are more related with current trends. For this reason, it is essential that companies have a digital presence and make special strategic plans for this medium. The objective of this work is to make a digital marketing plan applying all the knowledge seen for a company, taking into account costs, budget and other variables that can affect the development of it

Difficulties in the application of the speaking strategies in the new curricular transformation in 11th grade students at Pablo Antonio Cuadra Institute, Esquipulas, during the second semester 2010

This research studies the difficulties in the application of the speaking strategies in the new curricular transformation in 11th grade students at Pablo Antonio Cuadra Institute, during the second semester 2010 in Esquipulas city. Its purpose is to analyze the difficulties that exist in the application of the speaking strategies in new curriculum, especially in 11th grade students from this Institute. Speaking is important for learners, because the spoken language is the heart of much human interaction, at home, at work, and in the society; furthermore, English is the universal language; so it is important in all contexts in which learning takes place. The approach of the new curricular transformation is communicative approach and the fundamental purpose is to support the pedagogical labor, making the dedicate planning easy for obtaining successful results in the classroom, taking into account the teacher´s experience, students´characteristics and didactic resources. Actually it is not easy to keep a total control when there are forty or more students in a classroom, because it is difficult to catch the attention to all of them when a specific group distracts to other, and the teacher can not give individual attention, besides they are afraid to speak English, but the motivation is the key to make students able to speak English. Another of the biggest problem in Nicaraguan learners is the lack of practice speaking, because all the time students are speaking their native language, and they never have the chance to speak English and improve it. For that reason it is important to apply speaking strategies that help students to develop their speaking skil