Who We Are

EDSN is a non-profit association of PlexLearning and Research to Practice Partnerships (RPP).   Our association advances place-based and socioeconomic infrastructure projects that integrate marginal voices with mainstream scholars and practitioners.   EDSN affords participatory parity, socioeconomic equity, and shared governance among small neighborhood groups whose worlds are rapidly being transformed.   Our PlexLearning programs involve socioeconomic development and lifestyle education that affirm intergenerational, interdisciplinary, and continuous learning mindsets.   PlexLearning programs remove barriers, fill gaps, and build bridges between formal education, informal learning, entrepreneurship, and career management.   EDSN enables its member organizations to find their voices for navigating predatory and competing interests towards equitable academic, workforce, economic, and quality of life developments both in rural village and urban neighborhood communities.

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PlexLearning helps to marshal communication affordances in digital societies.   Among other things, Plexlearning enable Plexlearners to navigate complex environments of education, schooling, shared governance, development, and community engagement for workforce, economic and quality of life arrangements.   Plexlearning presumes that digital societies afford unique forms of social constructs (ways of knowing and doing) in the creation, conveyance, governance, management, politics, and use of knowledge.   These distinct forms of digitally aided “literacy and intelligence” are called PlexKnowledge.   Sociocultural and socioeconomic processes along with related infrastructures for supporting PlexKnowledge are collectively called PlexLearning.   For example, play is a uniquely distinct non-procedural taxonomy of learning in PlexLearning.

PlexLearning also presumes that digital society affordances contribute to rapid and often uneven sociocultural and economic changes.   To mitigate ensuing rapid transformations in both rural village and urban neighborhood communities, EDSN integrates PlexLearning into its Research to Practice programs that help people achieve equity, participatory parity, and quality-of-life development.

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We are a common Research to Practice agency for local Shared Interest Community (SIC) groups.   We help selected small SIC groups of individuals participate in the transformation of their worlds.   Intern, SIC groups help people think for themselves through a shared culture of deep dialogues, proximal learning, digital literacy, purposefully lives, trusted partnerships, and active engagement in local governance.   Active engagement involves navigating complex challenges and situations in which people find themselves in the global village.   These challenges include, but not limited to, access to clean water and ability to produce, or have access to, healthy foods.   Situations in which people find themselves involve the management of chronic mistrust in efforts to survive, thrive, and become better neighbors towards peaceful, and sustainable coexistence.

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We are an Education for Development and Support Network (EDSN).   Support for our community engagement and Research to Practice Partnerships (RPP) comes from diverse private, academic, and government sectors.   EDSN strives to make privileges, immunities, and knowledge afforded by digital technology accessible to everyone, including those faced with barriers (real or imagined) created by self-interests, unquestioned values, different ways of knowing, prejudicial beliefs, and siloed boundaries of protected privilege.   We presume, purposeful diversity and participatory parity in sharing privileges technology offers, increases our ability to manage unforeseen risks technology brings to urban neighborhood and rural village communities.

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We are Open Educational Resource (OER) Enablers.   Our OER network fills gaps and control costs in socioeconomic infrastructures that integrate life-long Universal Design for Learning (UDL) with family knowledge archives and neighborhood libraries resources.   OER infrastructures foster the perseveration of, and affordable access to, accumulated knowledge in trusted neighborhood spaces for learning that affirm local experiences and ambitions.   Proximal learning in these trusted spaces helps to improve shared collective intelligence, in diverse formats, for solving local challenges in keeping with stewardship of a sustainably planet.   Our OER cost sharing programs promote success across academic (K-12, Higher Education, Adult Education), career management, economic, entrepreneurship, workforce development, and quality of life domains.   These OER programs employ Research to Practice which integrates valuable experiences and social agency of “Retired” and highly qualified “adjunct” professionals in needed but often neglected research areas, career management, agile apprenticeships, technical services, and workforce development.

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We are Social Hubs for In-Place Intergeneration and Interdisciplinary Engagement.   EDSN neighborhood PlexLearning centers coalesce around neighborhood family knowledge archives, UDL, and neighborhood libraries that make learners feel more welcoming and affirmed about life-long continuous learning.   We enable high quality education and proximal learning to take place in communities where people live, work, play.   Program curriculums integrate participants’ experiences, self-evaluations, motivation to learn, and neighborhood journalism, with entrepreneurial ambitions.   These affirming and engaging activities in our intergeneration and interdisciplinary hubs help local SICs manage predatory agency, competing interests, financial entrapment, and chronic hopelessness whether real or imagined.

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We are Entrepreneurial Philanthropists.   We invest in socioeconomic infrastructure projects for urban neighborhood and rural village communities that help people thrive in-place.   By design, expected return on investments for these projects are calculated over long-term and value is often measured in ways other than with money.   Some of our entrepreneurial philanthropy projects include, but not limited to, stewardship development of local indigenous collective knowledge for building storytelling capacity, food security, green spaces, local supply chain management, micro-manufacturing, information technology services, marketing, micro-financing, biodiversity, clean water, research, development, safe paly grounds for children, and nurturing hopeful ambitions.

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We Are Greater, And More Effective, Than the Sum of Individual Members Organizations.   EDSN association of local autonomous SIC groups make Research to Practice programs more impactful than if they were working separately.   Membership benefits values include more that money.   Among other things, membership benefits include research to practice engagements and support networks that provide hope in the future, deep dialogues that foster trusting neighbors, affirm personal value, bring meaning to life, access to open knowledge, and continuous proximal learning for navigating ebbs and flows from changing life circumstances, new markets, and competing interests.   Register to become an EDSN member or contact us for more details.