InspireNshare The Butterfly FX

“Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?“

The Butterfly Effect

In 1961 Edward Lorenz made a tiny change to the initial conditions in a weather simulation - entering 0.506 instead of 0.506127 - this small change created a completely different weather scenario. After presenting a study on this effect one meteorologist commented that one flap of a seagull's wings would be enough to alter the course of the weather forever. Following suggestions from colleagues, in later speeches and papers Lorenz used the more poetic butterfly rather than seagull to illustrate the sensitivity of cause and effect sensitivity in meteorology. According to Lorenz,  when he failed to provide a title for a talk to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1972 on this subject , Philip Merilees concocted the title “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?”. 

Lorenz’s small change in a weather simulation not only created a completely different weather scenario but changed the way science understands many systems, put Lorenz into the scientific “hall of fame” and created one of the most evocative notions ever to leap from the lab into popular culture: “The Butterfly Effect” - the idea that tiny actions and changes can have large, widespread effects through chain reactions in an interconnected world. A butterfly's wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately alter the path of a tornado or delay, accelerate or even prevent the occurrence of a tornado in another location.

The Butterfly Symbol

Although delicate, gentle and graceful many cultures symbolise butterflies as power animals to represent transformation, creativity, endless potential, hope, freedom, vibrant joy and an ability to experience the wonder of life. 

In the long process to reach its final phase the butterfly acts as an inspirational metaphor for change, new beginnings and hope. The butterfly represents impermanence and the consistently forward momentum of life - of growth and evolution - “There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly” ~  Buckminster Fuller.

The ancient Greek word for butterfly is ψυχή (psȳchē) which primarily means "soul" or "mind" (from which we get the word psychology - the study of the mind). In Greek mythology psyche is translated to mean "breath of life” and In many cultures the butterfly is associated with life, our emotional and inner selves  - with inspiration, intuition, playfulness, freedom, fun appreciation, joy and happiness. “Play is the highest form of research” ~ Albert Einstein.

The butterfly’s delicacy is used in many cultures to represent simplicity, sensitivity and lightness of being - to be less wasteful in our lives and keep our demands small, that we can build and do a little at a time so that it becomes great over time - “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” ~ Lao Tzu.

Butterflies are always on the move and in nature they act as pollinators. While bees carry more pollen and are effective small area pollinators butterflies travel longer distances and their continual flitting from flower to flower more than makes up for the quantity of pollen they carry - it’s a perfect example of how a little spread widely can have widespread significance.

The InspireNshare Butterfly

InspireNshare aims to develop the value of people in an increasingly automated and technologised future. We seek to help people realise their potential and to contribute, participate and be empowered through inspiration, networking and sharing. For InspireNshare everyone and anyone can make a difference and with its association with transformation, creativity, potential, hope, lightness of being and freedom nothing symbolises our philosophy and purpose better than the butterfly and the butterfly effect - this is why we have chosen the butterfly as our logo.

* Change

The world is changing faster than ever - it is important to learn and be able to both accommodate and assimilate change - to change the world and to be to change yourself. Change often involves uncertainty and the unknown - we promote the use of exploration experimentation and experience - there is no better way to learn than to do - to give it a go - to take an experimental scientific approach to learning and life. 

* Mind

Change, uncertainty and the unknown often involve fear and doubt and these reduce the ability to learn and change - causing people to stick to what is known, even though it may have lost relevance or be inappropriate. We promote the use of holistic people centric methods - there is no better way to relax the mind to learn than with creativity, fun and inspiration.

* Lightness

To change … you must be able to change - legacy dependence, costs and difficulties with new things often prevent people being able to change. We promote the use of light methods and technology - things that can be be quickly and easily picked up, used and combined with other things.

* Butterfly effect

In a technology interconnected world anyone and everyone can make a difference. We recognise this deeply and promote the use of openness and sharing for learning to thrive so in a technology interconnected world.

The InspireNshare Butterfly FX

InspireNshare promote and run activities that to help people connect, share, contribute, participate and be empowered in an increasingly technology interconnected world. We approach things with the playfulness of exploration, experimentation and experience using light methods and technology to inspire and share.

We run, promote and contribute to projects in education and the community that promote peer to peer, open and exploratory methods (Projects in Education) and share our ideas on education and technology at national conferences and events (Keynote, Speaking and Events)

Thinglabs

Explore, experience and experiment - hands and heads on new technologies, methods and ideas with cheap, free, easy, open "Citizen tech".

eAmbassadors

True flip and peer learning - student eAmbassador projects facilitate learning through teaching - our student eAmbassadors act as consultants and teachers to staff and fellow students.

Free Education Project

#HEFE .... Hack Education For Everyone

The Free Education aims to free our thinking about what education is and how we do it and to provide opportunities for people to inspire and share their free education stories, ideas, resources, tools and tips. We share teachers & practitioners talking about education and the free education tools they use.

Teach Meet Tech Events
Free education & Technology fusion events.
Bringing together tech startups, students, teachers, IT people & the public to talk about Education & technology.

Visit http://inspirenshare.com for inspiring & creative inputs into your education & technology strategies, developments & events

#Blimage - “Back to the future” The Network Is Out Of The Bottle Again

In the last few months I’ve had conversations with colleagues and reading about “the web we lost - how the potential of developments in the noughties for loosely coupled decentralised, distributed, personal, easily mashable and re-mixable open systems seems to be fading away.

“The web as an open platform for creative expression and unfettered communication is slowly being eroded and replaced by gilded cages. As the services we champion make it more difficult to move content into and out of, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to create connections between people and ideas in open online spaces” ~ @michael_rowe Without anyones permission: The open web and online learning

I remember how Connectivism and Connective Knowledge connected and aggregated participants own resources and  learning networks using RSS feeds and hashtags -  a cornucopia of “ any other service on the internet – Flickr, Second Life, Yahoo Groups, Facebook, YouTube, anything! use your existing accounts if you want or create a new one especially for this course. The choice is completely yours.”

I have concerns about the gravitational pull of tightly integrated managed learning systems and had been talking with colleagues about going “back to the future” with decentralised, distributed personal resources loosely connected with hashtags - the idea of a dMOOC had come to mind .. where the D stands for Deconstructed, Distributed, Decentralised and most of all DIY!

I co-founded inspireNshare and the Free Education Project to promote DIY, creative and personal approaches to education. At the heart of the inspireNshare philosophy is the quote from Einstein ““Creativity is contagious, pass it on” and the power of networks to connect people and ideas.

#Blimage is creative, simple, personal, decentralised and distributed and loosely coupled with a hashtag - a perfect topic for my first blog post for inspireNshare and hopefully #Blimage is the first sign of a new wave in education.

About #Blimage

#Blimage started on July 17th as a game between Amy Burval and Steve Wheeler

https://twitter.com/amyburvall/status/622375532320194561/photo/1

Steve Responded with the Blog Post “Off The Rails” and the hashtag #Blimage - from this point it spread and grew through the network.

Amy explains #Blimage in her Youtube Video #blimage while Steve aggregates the current status and information on #Blimage in his blog post The #blimage list where he writes “The challenge is this: Send an image to friends in your personal learning network and ask them to write a learning related blog post about it. They then challenge their friends with an image of their choice. All the posts are labelled with the hashtag #blimage (blog-image) so they can be easily discovered and aggregated”

In the spirit of #Blimage I pass on the image below to you to write your own learning related blog post about it!

(Image by Virginia King)

Martin King - Sunday 26th June 2015