How Education Changes The World

Education is society’s absolute greatest resource – it is the foundation for every possible future we could ever hope for. Education for job training, for the future of the economy. Education for knowledge, for the future of academia. Education for teaching, for the future of thought. All of these things combine themselves in our schools and outside of them to educate us.

Schools aren’t just about academics, though. It’s not all just reading and writing and arithmetic. Learning to develop social skills, work together, and adapt to new ideas is what gives people the spark of innovation and ideas to create the future. Schools teach us to learn how to learn, and therefore learn how to create and change the future. Schools are like little incubators, preparing for the future and unlocking the great power of the mind in each and every one of us.

But there are some things you can’t learn in school. There are some lessons learned from teachers without degrees, outside of classrooms. And each of us becomes teachers in our own ways, passing on our stories, knowledge, and values to other whether we mean to or not. You not only learn something every day, but you teach something every day, too. This is what OurPangea can accomplish on a large scale. By bringing people together to teach one another and share in a universal education to improve the future and present, OurPangea seeks to provide ways for education to flourish and for communities of learning to thrive in an unprecedented new era of technology.

We have gathered the accumulation of knowledge across thousands of years all leading to today, and every day we must step into the future with this knowledge and with the mindset of learning and growing to make this future better than our history ever could have dreamed to be. This is why education is important and necessary for the continued survival of society – in schools or outside of them, of academics or philosophy, the education brings us the knowledge we need to hope for and create the future we desire.

Using OurPangea Within Our Small Communities

Among the easiest ways to construct a community is by sharing a living space. This can be abstracted all the way out to cities, states, and nations. But it’s not uncommon also for smaller communities to be the most saturated with thriving culture and identity. With OurPangea’s innovative system of networking hyper-local communities, these shared living spaces can connect and interactively these individual cultures together.

I grew up in a small neighborhood called Lamar Park, just off the edge of Corpus Christi Bay, in South Texas. My neighborhood consisted of friends, pets, families, events, adventures and everything one could ask for in a small community. We had community Christmas caroling, 4^th of July barbeques, garage sales, carpools, and much more. We created our community based on our shared living space. Every community in the world has the same story. Each of them has created their unique cultures and traditions based on the communication and connection of the people within them.

But a neighborhood is only one way of sharing a living space. More structured living spaces with offices and front desks would have the perfect opportunity to utilize the community organization OurPangea brings. An apartment office could coordinate its communities for the events and social gatherings they hold and the notices they send. Residence advisors could use OurPangea to connect and foster an environment of collaboration for students. An apartment complex or a university residence hall could quickly use OurPangea to create a sense of belonging and networking to the residents within by sharing their common ground with one another. In all cases, OurPangea acts as a springboard for community discussion, gathering, and connection.

The foundation of any community starts with a shared characteristic among its members. OurPangea’s organizational system will organize its communities by these traits, helping individuals come together and share in these communities. Neighborhoods, apartment complexes, and residence halls are the keystones in OurPangea’s vision. By creating communities of shared locations, shared interests, and shared topics, we will create “neighborhoods” that transcend our traditional notions of what a community should be, while at the same time bringing together and sharing all the communities that are.

An Introduction to OurPangea Part 2 of 4

What OurPangea Is Doing

Connection is great.  No one wants to be isolated. Through connection social networks have comforted us all against the idea that we’re alone in the world. However, being connected online doesn’t necessarily translate into a sense of connectedness. This connection doesn’t mean “having access to everyone in my network,” “interacting in a meaningful way,” or even “sharing with everyone.” Unfortunately, connection as utilized on social networks is all about numbers.  It’s a quantifiable measure of how many people you are “connected” to. There’s no way to define being connected via social networks besides the word connection.

OurPangea is introducing a new, community-centric approach to networking to make our connections more quality based by answering the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ behind our online connections. That is, how are we connected to these people and why is that important to us? OurPangea is making our connections more relevant to all of us by framing them around the interests we have and the locations of our groups and communities.

In the past weeks we have pointed out a number of disagreements with social networking, mainly:

• Social networking is passive, which means it is not built to facilitate creating relationships outside of our existing circles (reactive networking model).
• Relationships and connections are oversimplified and one-dimensional, which is not a true representation of how we interact with the people in our lives.
• Popular social networking sites are beginning to value company growth and profitability over user-experience leading to a decrease in on-site engagement and an overall worse experience.

Because of this, we are collectively realizing that connection itself can only take us so far, and there’s no greater demonstration of this than the fact Facebook is larger and can connect more people than anything in history but that hasn’t made it better. In fact, people seem more willing than ever to leave the social networking site. So if connection doesn’t make our online experience better, what will?  And how do we get there? If today’s social networks connect us, the next step is gaining a sense of connectedness and community from our networks.

So we’re building a Community Network.  This type of network is proactive to make creating new relationships and engaging old ones easy.  It uses semantic connections for a better way to discover people and groups and remind us why those relationships are important to us.  And it will unite the world.

How? If social networking has connected us, then Community Networking will help us understand how we are connected to each other and why that connection is important.  It does this by organizing users by their location and their interests.  People will not only see how their existing relationships are valuable, but also be able to envision what relationships could be valuable that are outside of their networks.  So our networks will start to grow along with the benefits we bring, which will spread from person to person and community to community.

The Community Network is more accurate of the complexities of our real life relationships and groups and it’s designed to be a more fulfilling online representation of those interactions. In short, a Community Network is built to create a sense of community and belonging by enabling us to more easily discover, collaborate with, and engage the people and groups around us.

Some Exciting News!

First off, we have been entered into the first ever Startup Idol tournament!  Startup Idol is a new bracket-style competition to help brands gain awareness and traction for their CrowdFunding projects. The first round consists of 64 startups and lasts from April 3rd to April 6th. To support all all you need to do is visit our profile on Startup Idol and vote for us.

Secondly, we have updated the Our Community section on ourpangea.com to include Hail Tos to our fans.  Stay tuned next week for more information about Hail Tos.  While you’re visiting OurPangea, remember to sign-up for updates!