Values Exchange Latest News

Sunday, 7 March 2010

Vibrancy

In recent months we have shifted our development focus from health toward schools. This has meant many changes, and a considerable investment of time and effort into the school arena, where the Values Exchange has had little exposure or experience.

Over the past few weeks we have met and talked with several schools in Australia and New Zealand, and almost all of them have expressed serious interest in using the Values Exchange within their school. We are working closely with these schools, in order to build knowledge and understanding of the unique benefits of the Values Exchange for teaching, learning and research.

One of the most pleasing effects of this re-orientation is much increased use of the Values Exchange and a real vibrancy humming now, with use on different sites happening daily.

This week, for example, has seen the VX used by 60 or so 9 year old children (Earlwood School); nearly 100 15 year olds (All Schools - Ballarat Grammar); 200 13 year olds as part of a 4 week assessed project (Knox Grammar School); 60 14 year olds debating 2 cases - dangerous dogs and sterilisation of 'bad parents' (All Schools - Kaptiti College, Wellington).

In addition to regular use of various sites, this week the VX has been used (with great results) by post-graduate journalists (AUT University) and by senior members of the ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control - via NUI Galway).

In all, we have received around 600 considered responses on various Values Exchanges this week.

The era of Collective Wisdom is slowly dawning.

Monday, 22 February 2010

Schools Progress

We are networking with a significant number of schools in Australia and New Zealand, hoping to secure a core of around 10 'foundation schools' by the end of 2010. We are working with a broad spectrum - from 'top end' private schools to inner city public schools - in both countries.

We will post news on the upshot of these negotiations as it breaks.

Friday, 22 January 2010

New University, new School....

We are delighted to announce that this week the School of Nursing at Monash University has agreed to fund a Values Exchange. We are also building a site for our fifth school customer: Earlwood Public School.

Wednesday, 23 December 2009

Onwards to Web 3.0

Once again it has been a fascinating, stamina-sapping, unpredictable year. We have a major new-look which has been extremely well-received and we are exciting several schools in Australia, which is very pleasing and bodes well for the future.

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The Values Exchange has been in development since 2004 - so we will be 6 years old in 2010. Coincidentally, Facebook was founded just a few weeks earlier. Of course, the expansion of the two systems has hardly been in parallel, but we would like to think that what we are doing will ultimately prove more socially important.

Facebook is Web 2.0 whereas we are Web 3.0.

Web 1.0 means passively viewing sites that provide information – only site owners can add and manage content. Web 2.0 allows users to interact with other users or to change website content themselves.

The problem with Web 2.0 is that the information is organised only in the simplest ways. For example, most chat forums organise postings by time and topic thread and nothing more. As soon as traffic on Web 2.0 sites exceeds a few hundred postings it can be very hard to navigate to find and understand the information you want. When traffic moves into thousands of postings it can become a cacophony – white noise that quickly turns people off.

Web 3.0 allows:

1) Users to manage sites and data to create and publish uniquely meaningful information

2) Human beings to engage in intelligent debate in a way they cannot outside the web.

The priority for Web 3.0 is processing and organising information intelligently, to help people create a better world. The ultimate goal of Web 3.0 applications is collective wisdom.

An early priority for 2010 is to create a fully Web 3.0 site called Values Exchange Dilemmas. This site will allow members to post dilemmas and problems in formats of their choosing (Web 2.0). It will also allow them to select how other members can reply to them, using frameworks of deep meaning (Web 3.0). Like solely Web 2.0 applications, Values Exchange Dilemmas will be instant. But because it will seek meaning above all else – members will immediately be able to search everyone’s postings in depth, deeply accessing their feelings, reasoning and values trends by means of interactive reporting tools.

We have taken on a massive mission - nothing less than to make intelligent social communication the norm on the internet. In many ways our mission is against the current networking trend (led arguably by Twitter). But we have seen the Values Exchange generate so much energy in young people in schools that - even if we don't wholly succeed in our mission - we are proud to be part of the metamorphosis of the internet into a truly unique vehicle for 21st Century democracy.

Watch this space in 2010!

Finally, a massive thank you to the main VX Development Team: Mike, Jordan, Jack and Mario - with thanks too to Tom, Nathan, Nicola, Artem and Jeuness.