How we present our content
Link to XMind map above – Use this link to fetch your own copy of this map if you’d like to expand it or otherwise re-use it – you will need the free version of XMind downloaded to your computer (not tablet or phone) to do this – highly recommended.
Illustrated text is our favorite
We use text (with some illustrations) as our primary communication tool. Illustrated text, as compared to audio and video, has many advantages.
For you, the reader, text is easy to scan. Scanning means running your eyes over the content and picking out the parts you want to spend more time with as well as rejecting the parts you don’t find interesting (maybe you already know enough about that part of the topic or, you don’t want to delve into the detail at this time). You have a lot of power to be selective.
You do not have to read everything – advanced scholars know this and hence can scan/read prodigious amounts of material in a short time. You can develop this skipping skill too.
Scanning and selecting like this is much, much harder to do with audio and video. Text puts you back in charge.
For us, the authors, illustrated text is the easiest form to edit and update. That allows us the keep the content fresh, to easily add in new thinking from relevant developments and, importantly, to throw out old materials that no longer work well or that are out of date.
Wider accessibility
Gaia U attracts student associates worldwide, many from rural areas and from countries where 3G internet access on phones (with costly monthly plans) is the norm. By avoiding videos and other ‘heavy’ files that soak up bandwidth and allowances we go some way to healing this digital divide thus making our un/learning community of actionists[1] much more accessible
[1] Until recently it was valuable to differentiate between ‘activist’ whose primary mode of action was protest against what they didn’t want and ‘actionists’ who chose to construct viable alternatives to enable what they did want to show up.