Town Meeting Remote Participation

This is a photo of the computer screen of a 2009 Middlesex Town Meeting remote participant. Yes, it's true! This person was able to participate from home, by watching a video of the meeting, seeing a live chat feed, and calling in to add his voice.

Our fabulous panelist from the 2008 Snelling Center e-State Symposium, Greg Whitchurch, recently sent me some information about this year's Middlesex Town Meeting. Middlesex is working hard to help residents participate in Town Meeting even if they can't make it to the physical location.

This work could be used as a model for other towns looking to use technology to make Town Meeting more inclusive.

"At this year’s meeting, Middlesex voters experienced a first: During traditional floor discussion, the microphone was passed to a telephone, whereby a voter who was participating from home due to medical issues was able to voice his opinion.

Middlesex’s Remote Town Meeting Participation Task Force is working to facilitate town meeting participation by those who physically cannot attend (such as those with limited mobility, or who are abroad in the military), while maintaining an efficient and vibrant town meeting for those who are in the meeting room. How does Middlesex feel about the idea? The response from those attending town meeting offers a hint: the room burst into spontaneous applause.

Remote town meeting participation in Middlesex would not have been achieved without hours of volunteer effort by Greg Whitchurch, along with Lauri Scharf, Chris Reilly, and valuable support from John Riley. Thanks to VITL in Montpelier for the loan of the conference phone. With a web link, a two-way visual connection was also available."

The above image is one I pulled from Greg's photos of the meeting. Here is a link to a web album with this one and more.

Thank you, Greg, for your good work on the Middlesex Town Meeting!

Technology as an afterthought

An excerpt from an article on Tech&Learning called Passionate Voices by Ryan Bretag.

Educator Ryan Bretag interviewed a group of students about how teaching and learning should look in the 21st century. I like these two paragraphs:

"The concept of technology was really an after thought, it seemed, for many of them. This wasn't because it lacked importance but a belief, when asked, that technology was basically a given. In other words, technology was a key part for making all of the above happen but it was something they wanted to be transparent within the classroom, a multi-dimensional learning space they wanted to be 24/7/7.

Through connective technologies and participatory media, students as pre-professionals, a current and diverse curriculum, and learning could occur to create a well-educated person capable of success in the 21st Century. However, it was made clear with plenty of agreement that technology alone will do very little and that it should never be the only thing, done for its own sake."

NYT Article: Customer Service Volunteers

Enthusiastic power users are helping others for free. Check out the NYT article.

It's good to remember the 1-9-90 rule when it comes to online participation.

"About 1 percent of those in the community...are super-users who supply most of the best answers and commentary. An additional 9 percent are “responders” who mainly reply and rate Web posts, she said, and the other 90 percent are “readers” who primarily peruse and search the Web site for useful information."

Response to Student Video

The message that I take away from this video is that students want to be engaged, they want to be enthusiastic. They want to be passionate and productive. Technology offers the tools that attract kids intuitively. Kids don’t think consciously, “That stupid map doesn’t move, doesn’t show me how high the mountains really are…” They are simply not interested in static presentation materials. Kids react more than they think. Their response to interactive material is physical and intellectual when they reach for the mouse saying, “ WOW! If I fly over the Himalayas I will feel like God looking over the Earth!” Curiosity takes over and they begin probing the capability of the application and the various types of things they can learn by using the technology. Can I scale the mountain and look down? Which peak is the highest? Can I mark out the trail I’d like to take or can I see the route that Sir Edmund Hillary took?

From Sue Mc Cormack's post: I wonder if it is also fostering a stronger sense of community?

In some ways, I think technology (and I really wish we had a new word for it!) fosters a stronger sense of community by offering a forum for new ideas to kids with unique experiences and perspectives. Particularly in rural places. lower populations seem to narrow the walls of acceptance. Yet, when kids and adults have access to communities beyond town and state borders, they often discover that they are not as alone as they thought, and that their perspectives are not so foreign. Think about the movie ( for the older folk reading the blog) Footloose. The kids in town were strongly influenced by their traditional values and venues for expression and interaction, but they ached for change. When the troubled Kevin Bacon arrived on the scene, his passion for dancing and willingness to teach and share it provided an outlet for some of the kids’ frustration with the local traditions. Technology opens doors for expanding minds.

My thought on technology fostering community: Yes. Technology fosters community. Technology fosters new definitions of community and technology fosters kids’ willingness and ability to interact with their communities. Our task is to assure that more kids in Vermont have access to many of the tools South Burlington has!