The Dadamacademy is the education and research side of Dadamac - a place to  think about what we are doing and what we have learned, and to make learning opportunities available to others. It is typically Dadamac - big vision plus small practical steps bringing it to reality.  It is an emerging online system for research and learning.

Dadamacademy - based on practice

Various emergent networks and online structures of Dadamac are gradually creating the Dadamacademy. Its development is informed by our practical work in Africa and on the Internet, and by our various integrated initiatives related to education and to development. The Dadamacademy is very practical - its areas of expertise are built up through the need to know, and its knowledge is based on asking questions, trying things out, and reflecting on what happens  - both as it happens and afterwards.

Knowledge and learning

The Dadamacademy exists to create and share knowledge and to support independent learning through the Internet. There is no financial cost in being a Dadamacademy student (other than the cost of going online) nor is there any financial reward for teaching (but there are huge intangible rewards).  In the Dadmacademy people are likely to be found repeatedly swapping roles - sometimes learning and sometimes teaching.

Without the Internet - nothing

Dadamacademy is part of Dadamac, and Dadamac could not have come into being without the Internet. For Dadamac the Internet is not an addition to an existing organisational structure. It is our "sine qua non" - the essential condition; the thing that is absolutely necessary. That reality informs the development of the Dadamacademy

We know, with a deep practical knowlege, that the global information infratructure makes this  century radically different to any century that has gone before. That in not just some theoretical idea to us, It is something deep in our consciousness, it is part of our organisational life experience, essential to our being here at all.

In Dadamacademy we observe this as we experience it, and we reflect on what we discover. This leads to interests in many aspects of 21st century life and the interplays between individuals, groups, information, knowledge and the Internet.

To get invovled

Contact - pamela.mclean@dadamac.net

Foundational work

Evidence of foundational work of the Dadamacademy is scattered around the Internet. It includes facts and overviews, contributions to debates, opinion pieces, and theory. Look out for references to books, papers, articles, blog posts, tweets, emails etc bearing the names of John Dada, and Pamela (Pam) McLean (previously Fiddy), see too posts (mixed in with other things) in Dadamac's Posterous,  the blog Learn by Doing and http://www.dadamac.net/projects/research-and-development

Examples of Dadamacademy thinking include:

• Dadamacademy - Don't share an idea - show a prototype http://www.dadamac.net/blog/20110411/dont-share-idea-show-prototype
• Dadamacademy - dream or reality - an action research project  http://www.dadamac.net/blog/20110423/dadamacadamy-dream-or-reality-action-research-project
• ICTD2010- Let's Bridge Those Divides by Pamela McLean        http://dadamac.posterous.com/ictd2010-lets-bridge-those-divides-by-pamela
• Dadamac Days - 6 years of UK-Nigeria collaboration online. http://dadamac.posterous.com/dadamac-days-6-years-of-uk-nigeria-collaborat
• Dadamac goes Glocal, OK, and Collaboration is key  http://dadamac.posterous.com/dadamac-goes-glocal-ok-and-collaboration-is-k  
• Dadamac and Coalition of the Willing - how we fit   http://dadamac.posterous.com/dadamac-and-coalition-of-the-willing-how-we-f
• KRC Improving the Learner Experience and Education We Deserve        http://dadamac.posterous.com/krc-improving-the-learner-experience-and-educ
• Coalition of the Willing - Earth date zero +20        http://www.coalitionblog.org/2010/11/the-future-we-got-%E2%80%93-earth-date-zero-plus-twenty/
• Dadamac - the Internet-enabled alternative to top-down development         http://dadamac.posterous.com/dadamac-the-internet-enabled-alternative-to-t
• Marketing to the bottom of the pyramid and Dadamac   http://dadamac.posterous.com/marketing-to-the-bottom-of-the-pyramid-and-da
• The Future we Deserve - The Education we Deserve http://www.appropedia.org/TheFWD_pamela_mclean_The_Education_We_Deserve
• Some Thoughts on Reseach as an Element in Telecentre/Community Informatics Practice - comments and discussions with Mike Gurnstein following his blog post. http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/03/20/some-thoughts-on-research-as-an-element-in-telecentrecommunity-informatics-practice/

• Tom, Ricardo and life saving learning through the Internet (also published in "Designing Social Interfaces - Principles, Patterns, and Practices for Improing the User Experience" by Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone 2009) http://learnbydoinguk.blogspot.com/2009/01/tom-ricardo-and-life-saving-learning.html
• Pam - we want street lights  http://www.dadamac.net/blog/20091015/pam-we-want-street-lights

Looking forward

Gradually we will bring everything related to Dadamacedy over to dadamac.net , as we have already done in some detail with our practical work on the ground in Nigeria (list of initiatves).