Help build a Playground in the Cloud

Could you imagine a Playground in The Cloud?

With this question we started our last “Recarga tu SOLE” (Recharge your SOLE), which is the name for our regular online meetings with the SOLE Colombia Community.

SOLE ambassadors and participants of all ages and from different regions in Colombia, connected to share their experiences and learnings during the last months. During this last meeting, we used this space to listen to their ideas for the “Playground in The Cloud”.

It was a beautiful experience to imagine how it would be to “ride a bike”, “go for a walk”, “get inspired”, “play and connect with other people”, “talk to others”, “watch other people - big and small - play, sing, tell stories”, “observe the nature, the city”, “create something new”, “relax” or “have a picnic” in the Cloud. When you go to the playground or the park, you want to do different kind of activities; how would it look like if we could have an online space to do similar activities?

Listening to the people who have their SOLEs in their local communities is eye opening for us and we definitely want to continue involving them in the design of the different experiences and projects we are working on.  

The idea of changing our initial project of an “online course” to an “online experience” called the Playground in The Cloud, didn’t arise automatically.

Since we started to open different ways for the SOLE ambassadors from different contexts and different regions in Colombia to connect with each other, we have learned and discovered much more than we expected.

During the conversation process with the SOLE Community and other people, we realized how powerful it could be, not only to have a platform to learn how to become a SOLE ambassador, but to connect and share with each other. We have seen that people who are part of the SOLE Colombia Community love to connect with other ambassadors and participants to share their success stories, but also their challenges and big and small questions.

This is why we have been working during the lasts months on this “online experience”, where people can meet and learn from each other. This experience isn’t only thought for new members who want to start doing SOLE, but for all the community, including those experienced SOLE ambassadors and the young teacher or librarian who wants to start navigating the world of the Self-Organized Learning Environments in her or his local community.

All this has been an important input for the design process of the Playground in The Cloud. Here you can see what we have done during the last months to give life to this “online experience”:

1. Design the first prototype for the Playground in the Cloud, defining the 5 sections: LEARN, SHARE, TALK, CONNECT, PLAY.
2. Share this first prototype with different persons - within the SOLE Community and external people - and receive important feedback.
3. Research and find the most suitable platform for this “online experience”. We were looking for a platform where we could open different sections and still have the freedom for the participants to move, connect, share and learn at their own pace. For our first version of the Playground in The Cloud, we chose the platform Padlet, with a layout very close to what we designed in our first prototype.  
4. Create our first version of the Playground in The Cloud on Padlet. We are still working on the platform, but have already received important feedback to continue with the development of the site.

Like we already mentioned above, we realized during our design and conversation process, that the “online experience” shouldn’t be only for 130+ local educators, but for a much wider online community. Many SOLE ambassadors who are already part of our Community, have much to share with - and learn from -  new people (librarians, teachers, community leaders, ex-combatants and many other), who want to start doing SOLE in their local communities.

Even if our initial idea has changed during the last months, we still want to reach the regions that have been isolated from the rest of the country and the world due to the armed conflict, and we are convinced that the Playground in The Cloud is a great way to do it.

Thanks to your generous donations we are able to continue with the construction of this “online experience”, and many local educators all over Colombia would be able to learn, share and connect through the Playground in The Cloud.

This are the next steps we want to continue with:

1. Finish the first version of the Playground in The Cloud
2. Make a usability test with different types of SOLE ambassadors, SOLE participants and grannies from the Granny Cloud.
3. Work together with our design team to get a better version of the Playground in The Cloud.
4. Do the first videos to share on the Playground in The Cloud.
5. Work on a marketing strategy to launch the Playground in The Cloud to reach the different people we want to reach.

Thank you for your support and stay tuned!