If a picture paints a thousand words, how many words would a few pictures and a few more words illustrate?
The photograph that dominates the multi-toned and multi-pronged image is one that has not ever been made public – would you believe? – even though friends and colleagues celebrated what the proclaimed as the first sitting Caribbean editor/journalist/woman to have completed a PhD?
The photograph speaks to me of the trials, traumas and the triumphs in trying to bridge the apartheid that characterises the developmental dilemmas we now face across all sectors and at all levels that has created distance between and among the three agents of social evolution and change – culture, media and education.
lt seems a fitting image of a life-event to celebrate this other life event that I had been meaning to announce for the past month, but, well, as you know, life, and a few deaths, get in the way. The events? My anointment as a Google Woman TechMakers’ Ambassador and a Google Applied Digital Skills Ambassador.
Anointed as Google Women TechMakers’ Ambassador
The email surfaced in my always-packed inbox. It reads:
Congratulations! You’ve been selected as a Women Techmakers Ambassador! We hope you’re feeling excited about taking on this new role. As an Ambassador you will be an active community leader organizing events, speaking at conferences, creating content or mentoring others – and you’ll be getting a lot of support from our team here at Google. We can’t wait to see all that you’ll do!
Google Women TechMakers’ Ambassadors to Dr kris Rampersad
Complementary Skills as Google Digital Skills Ambassador
That notice came on the heels of another, earlier:
Good news – you are officially an Applied Digital Skills Ambassador!
Google Applied Digital Skills Team to Dr Kris Rampersad
It adds to my entry into the National Geographic Educator’s Network which I have also not yet formally announced in this age of new media when one is expected to announce one’s every action and emotion.
Thing is, I had taken actions to retool even prior to the Pandemic as the civil society movement was being stretched to its limit. No amount of pounding on the walled halls of decision making or the glass ceiling seemed to be only sore knuckles and frayed nerves. But more about that later.
National Geographic Certified Educator lanyard and pin
National Geographic braved the Pandemic lockdowns to send me by snail mail the lanyard and pin you see draped on the PhD image with the commendation:
Congratulations on joining our community of National Geographic Certified Educators! At National Geographic we believe in the power of science, exploration, education and storytelling to inspire young people to care for our changing world and make it a better place….Let’s change the world together!
Kim Hulse, Vice President Education Programmes, National Geographic Educators
In our rapidly changing world, we all need to constantly upgrade our skills and retool to meet changing demands. Some of these new tools allow me to connect what seemed to many to be disconnected and flaying strands of interests. Now I am equipped to develop and expand and share these new tools and techniques with others.
In No Man’s Land
As a woman/editor/journalist with a PhD, existing in no man’s land – nor woman’s either – to misquote Shakespeare – it meant that I had to launch out and forge my own pathway of resistance to not to be sucked into the chasm that existed and continues to widen between and among these three – media, education and culture. They were the three fields I have straddled, a Herculean task if ever there was one, when all the forces of institutions, systems and mindsets are set to maintain the rifts.
These three have existed in virtual and literal apartheid, as I spotlight in One Night to Bloom – introduced to the Commonwealth Scholars Forum in the midst of the Pandemic through the new creative genre, the pioneering MultiMedia MicroEpic Biopic. This adaptation of the classical long form epic for short form new media was in response to the clear dumbing-down of education that was occurring during the pandemic scramble for education to rise to the challenge of ‘social distancing’. It was meant to show that even short-form new media can accommodate the many complexities of human thought and experiences beyond the buffoonery that continues to dominate attempts to digitise education and other sectors.
Uneasy scramble for solutions across sectors
The demands of the Pandemic only underscored and augmented these gaps. It hastened uneasy and ill-fitted alliances among media, academia and culture and in the process exposed how ill-prepared virtually all of of our systems and institutions are to face the developmental challenges ahead.
The wide rifts now evident did not just surface with the Pandemic. They have been festering and growing through historical processes meant to maintain status quos of dependency and underdevelopment that became institutionalised and systemised. As many of those systems and institutions become increasingly more specialised and niched, the tasks of bridge the developmental gaps seem more insurmountable.
The rift is now being felt across not just education, but every sector – in governance, education, finance and other functional elements in our societies as in policy-making, planning, practice and presentation each discipline has evolved and is treated in isolation of the other.
For societies in the developing world, already thrown into a quagmire of inept socio-cultural and economic institutions and systems that barely collaborate, this sounds like a death-knell.
Paucity of qualified professionals
The Pandemic exposed the paucity of experienced and qualified professionals tooled to bridge the gaps to effect convergence between and among these primary modes of knowledge creation, collation, collaboration, communication and connection – indicative of the failure and failings of conventional formal education across the board.
The Pandemic underscored the need for interconnecting education/academia, culture and gender sensitive forms through new media for social re-engineering and transformation.
A picturesque thousand words
While I merged my knowledge and understandings of academia into new media to prepare and empower various sectors for the new media environment through informal and non-formal education, the photograph remained lost and forgotten among scraps and scribbles, piles of research, articles and audio visual paraphernalia, until it surfaced a few days ago.
It reminds me of the most pressing dilemma that remains before us, one that has haunted me throughout my career, and for which the image of my graduation brings starkly and sharply into focus. That dilemma is the apartheid that has evolved to separate the core agents of knowledge transmission and socialization – systems/agents of education, media and culture.
Resurrecting it from its 300 gsm paper form, I gave it new digital life to announce this rebirth into the post pandemic planet.
As the light of dawn shines through into the Post Pandemic Planet, I am delighted to join a remarkable global community of Women Tech Maker Ambassadors. This laurel followed closely on the heel of recognition as a Google Digital Skills Ambassador, Worldpulse Digital Ambassador and National Geographic Educator along with experiences as UNESCO Heritage Expert Facilitator of more than a decade.
Among the techies, laughing at the sneering SEO
Before I launch into what this means to to be drawn into a fold of techies for a creator and dreammaker who prefer the wide open spaces of adventure and exploration to crunching over algorithms, who laughs in the face of the terror that shrouds faces at the thought of the dreaded and drear SEO and who prefers to and continues to reach for the stars than tabulate figures of audience and market reach, I pause to savour the moment.
They provide access to useful new tools and support in my efforts to advance the convergence of the three spheres – media, education, culture – which I have straddled throughout my career, much to the scepticism of many to bridge the digital divide that has now become a tectonic threat to development into the post pandemic planet.
That has been the challenge that became evident with specialisations and niches that make them virtually unrecognisable to each other – especially in the way they are being taught and how our institutions and systems and set up. It increases multifold the challenges of development, compounded that the ravishes of the pandemic that must also be repaired.
New Innovative Digital Artistry
The image featured in this post represents some of the new digital artistry that allow for the creation and ongoing evolution of the new creative genre, the MultiMedia MicroEpic. That in itself represents the potential and possibilities of the new technologies to bridge the many divides and effect convergence into resuscitation into the Post Pandemic Planet.
The challenge for not just educators, and media and culture sectors, but every sector is to now find the skills and tools and techniques to navigate these arenas.
Promising tools and techniques to connect tradition with technologies
For me, the new technologies offer tools by which I can connect with core traditions to simulate solutions and synergise these fields to meet real-world challenges from conception through collaboration and communication to make connections to bridge developed-developing, North-South, SIDS and similar developmental chasms and drive equality, equity and equilibrium.
This harmonises the intended goals of sustainable development and develop the tools to help reshape the learning environment, to bridge gaps/silos/fragmentations and establish synergies, including with the global tech giants to find ways of making the digital environment friendly to all of us.
From PreSchool to PolicyMaking
We can meet the challenge to develop interlinkages and equip and empower ‘players’ from preschool to policy-making to take charge and drive multipronged, multidirectional and multidimensional change
By this we can build new mechanisms for cooperation, collaboration and connection across local to global levels to retain, retrain, retool and re-establish the village in the global village.
These approaches can inspire intergenerational, interinstitutional, intersectoral, interregional inclusion through traditional/face-to-face and new technological/digital approaches, perspectives and practices.
Some Highlights and Milestones
Launching off from the main picture depicting on receipt of PhD and its alignment to formal educational achievements with BA First Class Honours from University of the West Indies, and the highest Patrika Award from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Indian Institute of Mass Communications, it also underscores milestones from other engagements.
These include the achievements over journalism into new media in the formal to non formal media arenas and as a cultural and community worker in informal and non formal education settings along with the formal education arenas as a UNESCO-trained expert heritage educator/facilitator and National Geographic Educator.
Continuous Professional Development
It incorporates some of the continuous professional upgrades through Commonwealth Professional Fellowship; Nuffield Foundation Fellowship to Cambridge University; and Foreign Press Centre of Japan.
A significant achievement was early recognition as a pioneer in Development Policy Blogging for New Media by the the BBC/UNESCO and partners Communications Initiative.
Empowering Think Tanks and Civil Society
This came amidst participation in global think tanks to devise new paths for mainstreaming Gender Equality & Bio-Cultural Sensitivity in multilateral global to local systems working and volunteering across UN, Commonwealth, EU, InterAmerican, Caribbean & Latin American, CARICOM systems to bridge understandings and partnerships between sectors and advance education and engagements.
Some elements of this would have involved developing a blueprint for engendering ICT policies, presented to the first World Summit on Information Society and working with the expansive civil society networks of the UN, Commonwealth, Africa Caribbean and Pacific and InterAmerican spheres to augment their voices and visibility through conventional media and new media.
What elements of the image strikes you and which feature or experience would you like to learn more about?
Next the alliance with National Geographic, UNESCO and other global to local networks for eco-cultural and gender sensitive synergies
Dr Kris Rampersad is an independent global thought-leader who laughs at the sneering SEO. Other labels and tags include international multimedia, multicultural, multistakeholder Educator, Journalist, Strategist, Publisher, Producer, Facilitator, Consultant.
Reach out to develop you own forward looking digitization and other sustainable strategies and actions and innovative community outreach and engagement initiatives across sectors into the Post Pandemic Planet.