We Bought a New Home!

Hi there Gumboot Enthusiasts.

The Weekly Gumboot has gotten ambitious and moved across the interscape to www.dailygumboot.ca. Check out our new location and continue to be part of the community!

Kind regards,

John Horn
Editor-in-Chief, The Daily Gumboot

Publish Post

Learning from Pirate Communities - Treasure in the Classroom

As per usual, I'll do my best to tie this whole thing to pirates. So, readers, are you skeptical as to my ability to bring together pirates, a Web 2.0 classroom, discovery-based learning, buried treasure, and constructive criticism from one of my students?

Well, I challenge you to read on, my friends.

The Situation...

A few weeks ago I was asked to participate in the Sauder School of Business's e-learning "play day." Okay, it's not like they just called me up because of my stylish, gumbooty notoriety; I work in the school's Business Career Centre and manage the career component of the Early Career Masters program. Some wonderful and, I gotta say, pretty darn brilliant colleagues, Denise, Rob and Vivian, needed a classroom facilitator to, I kid you not, "walk the plank" and test out some of Sauder's new classroom technology. So, I stepped up and presented a career development workshop called Managing your Online Presence. It was sent to Denise a week or so before, and she infused it with technology and ideas that, well, basically made the workshop better. We were ready to roll.

I showed up to the coolest and most amazing classroom in which I've ever taught. Video screens and giant monitors covered the walls. Flat screen tvs were like bookends on the tables/desks. And the lectern was equipped with enough widgets, microphones, cameras, screens, and flashing lights to make Captain Kirk and James Bond horribly jealous. Two groups of students were participating. One group was located right in front of me at the Robson Square Campus, the other was "beaming-in" from UBC Point Grey. I was mic'd up. Palms were sweaty. The video feed went live. And I was thrown - albeit with amazing tech-support - into e-learning at the University of British Columbia.

Now, I'm tech-savvy, sure, but I gotta say that I was a bit out of my comfort zone during this experience. Live, streaming video beamed me into the Point Grey classroom as I went through my lesson. Using their laptops, students could race online to solve problems I gave them and conduct five-minute-research on questions I asked. There were iClickers (cool tools for ongoing, interactive engagement that is basically a virtual multiple choice test). There were headsets and microphones. Denise and Rob prepped me for using the Wimba Classroom (approachable, intuitive and in possession of several wonderfully distracting bells and whistles), and, when I inevitably hit a wall, they were there to help. Basically, Wimba allowed for a digitally collaborative classroom, where students could share ideas with instant messages, draft lists and presentations with a wiki/whiteboard and tackle assignments in small groups with the breakout rooms. Sure, it all got messy (headsets worked, then failed, then worked, but the student was in another room by that time; then everyone realized that they could draw funny pictures of me on the whiteboard!), but it was the first time any of us had seen this experience go live and, hey, we all saw the potential.

Teachers of the world. Students of today learn differently than you did; even than I did. It's getting more competitive to fill up postsecondary classrooms (let alone do it in a meaningful way with an engaged and responsive audience). So, if you are interested in (and hopefully excited about) seeing students use laptops in class for things other than updating Facebook, shopping online and/or various other endeavours to twitblog the interscape, keep reading and get ready to embrace some creative, student-led solutions to a nineteenth-century problem! Needless to say, with players like Vivian, Rob and Denise - not to mention internationally renowned faculty - Sauder is on the way to solving this problem.

Learning from Pirate Communities

So the story goes, pirate communities rejected "the system" in (or under) which they were expected to live. They also buried treasure. Let's explore these ideas.

In 1573, Sir Francis Drake - an English privateer or "corsair" who made life pretty miserable for Spanish merchants from Europe to, allegedly, Vancouver Island - collaborated with several French pirates and about a dozen escaped slaves - or cimarrones - and hijacked a Spanish mule train loaded with gold, silver and precious gems. According to Samuel Bawlf, Drake, his crew, Le Testu (leader of the French sailors), and the cimarrones smartly ambushed the Spanish traders at the Campos River, about "two leagues" from the town of Nombre de Dios. Working together, they kept quiet and, under their massive loads of booty, staggered to their ships, which were hidden in the mouth of the Rio Francisco. How much, um, booty were they staggering under? Well, "in gold alone the raiders had seized some 100,000 pesos (the peso was worth eight shillings three pence of English money)...and including gems and what silver they managed to recover, the total value of the haul was likely in excess of £40,000." And here's the kicker: Drake and his boys stole over 15 tons of silver. Obviously all of this loot couldn't fit on board their ships. So, they buried and hid the treasure in the forest around the Campos River. The point is that although stories like Treasure Island have romanticized the uncommon occurance of pirates actually burying treasure, it did happen, with Drake and Captain Kidd being the most notorious of booty-buriers.

A recent article in The Independent by Johann Hari suggests that modern day pirates, like their historic brothers and sisters, have rejected today's unequal, corrupt and punishing global "system." Hari cites the last words of William Scott, a pirate hanged in Charleston, South Carolina during the Golden Age of Piracy: "What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirateing to live." Fast-forward to 1991 in Somalia, where the country collapsed and, according to Hari, the worst-of-the-worst in the Western world saw this power-vacuum as a perfect opportunity to steal Somalia's food supply (over fishing) and use the region as a dumping ground for nuclear waste ("yes: nuclear waste," says Hari - cadium and mercury were also, allegedly, thrown in the mix). Hari interviewed Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, who claims that "there has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention." Recent findings also show than in excess of $300 US in shellfish is being stolen from the Somali coast by illegal trawlers. Yes, many - or most - of the pirates are gangsters. No, this doesn't make hostage-taking okay. But also keep in mind that life, the universe and everything is a subjective experience. And also recognize that a new system has emerged in Somalia, as, according to the independent Somali news site WardheerNews, 70 percent of of Somalis "strongly supported piracy as a form of national defense." Heck, another term for "Somali Pirates," according to the "Somali Pirates," is "the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia." The old system failed Somalia, and people in the region need something different to sustain themselves.

Long story short. I argue that students - like pirates swashbuckling through societies in and around Somalia, Nigeria, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Singapore, and Haiti that no longer recognize their governments as part of a fair and equitable global "system" of organization - are rejecting the classroom system. They also like finding/discovering treasure.

"Make us Your Treasure Hunting Corsairs"

The above quote is from one of my students, Anton Rudenko, who also participated in the e-learning "play day." As educators, I think we've been forcing learners into a nineteenth-century paradigm for long enough. Now. I'm smart enough to know a good idea when I see one (they come from everywhere, you know). Anton has a good one:

"You can even consider presenting the whole career program to students next year as a game," he said. "It could involve a treasure hunt adventure for your students. They are corsairs and the treasure is their job. You can call it "career quest", and develop a point system with different activities worth a certain amount of points (gold coins?)." Hopefully he's kidding on the last part, but the young man keeps on describing this outside-the-box approach to career development. "Information interviews would be worth a lot of points. Each information interview would be a 'captured ship carrying a piece of the map that leads to the treasure.' So if you capture enough of them, you will eventually put the map together, and get the treasure." Multi-facetted, multi-levelled kinds of discovery, honestly, blew my mind. And then he brought it all home: "I think it's a pretty cool analogy. You can go crazy with this. But then of course you are running the risk of students getting addicted to the game and skipping lectures :-)" Well said and, hey, what would a note from Generation Y be without an emoticon?!

Great idea. It's got edutainment, experiential learning and is a student-driven collaboration with the instructor. Sure, there are kinks (ie. this pirate thing may or may not be desperately unprofessional and will need to be re-visited by a certain Editor-in-Chief one day soon), but it's something on which we can collaborate.

Here is why a student-centred, democratic classroom involving "treasure hunting" strategies is so important:

Equality: recent findings from an up-and-coming "newspaper," the Globe and Mail suggest that un-equal communities fail to flourish and meet their potential. The classroom is no different. Great ideas come from everywhere. Even from students. Belay that. Especially from students. There is so much information out there that we cannot expect a "balanced" and "fair" and, to be honest, "accurate" assessment to come for just one person and/or source. So, encourage them to plug-in, engage and explore the myriad of online resources that exist within the maze of pipes and tubes that is the internet. Pirates chose to be pirates, in large part, because a career in the merchant marine and/or Royal Navy was too authoritarian for them to flourish as people and professionals. Providing a student-centred, collaborative environment for our learners engages them on an, ahem, equal playing field.

Technology: this is a generation that has been bathed in bits. During the classroom technology "play day," there were moments when, in a split second, a picture or resource found online was copied by a student, pasted on the digital whiteboard, studied by the entire class (simultaneously at two campuses), and discussed by the group (simultaneously at two campuses). Amazing. These mediums allow learners to access and present information at lightspeed, which adds value - and dimensions - to everyone's experience in the classroom. Further, if educators don't embrace technology - as well as encourage students to embrace it - then it will be the medium they use to tune out from what we say. Sending them on "missions" or "quests" with their computers, phones and iPods is much more effective then telling learners to turn off their media and pay attention.

Discovery-based Learning: I talk too much. Partly because I love being the centre of attention. Partly because, when it comes to career development, I'm emerging as an expert. Wow. Talk about a dangerous combination for a classroom, eh? No wonder students don't always pay attention for the full two hours of my workshops! Recent findings suggest that students today can't pay attention for very long (they've/we've taken breaks while reading this article to text a friend about the article, make a YouTube video, blog about the NBA playoffs, and purchase food/clothing/term-papers online). For true, pure engagement, we need to make them captains of their own ship and give them personalized autonomy that will allow them to customize their learning experience. Allowing them to discover their education for themselves is the key, my friends. Students should be pirates (Editor's note: wait, no, that's stupid. We here at The Gumboot do not in any way condone students or graduates to become pirates or embrace piracy). But think about Anton's multi-levelled, collaborative, discovery based concept of "the treasure hunt" as you take steps towards planning your next lesson. We provide the map. They discover the treasure.

Trust me. Pirates or not, when you push your comfort zone you'll have fun with it. And you'll learn a lot, too.

- JCH

Learning from Pirate Communities - Gender and Women's Rights

Long before universal suffrage, Roe vs. Wade, bra-burning, the Eveleth iron mine, Hilary Clinton, or the exporting of women's rights to places like Afghanistan, a woman named Ching Shih watched her husband die in a hail of musket fire.

It was 1807 and Zheng Yi, a pretty darn good pirate in his own right, just got put down by the Royal Navy. A power vacuum emerged. Hundreds of Chinese pirates were looking for a leader. An opportunity presented itself. And on to the scene emerged the greatest pirate in the history of pirates. She called herself Madame Cheng.

Madame Cheng was ruthless, wily and charismatic. She immediately seized the opportunity (totally embraced planned happenstance, by the way) and consolidated power within the Chinese Pirate Confederation by leveraging her positive relationship with the members of her husbands professional and social networks. Madame Cheng also took a huge risk. As she cajoled and negotiated and charmed her way to prominence in China's pirate community, Madame Cheng took on a young lover; the adopted son of a fisherman named Cheng Pao. And here's the kicker: she made the kid head of the Red Sea fleet, which was the biggest and most important in the Confederation.

The move was shrewed and effective. Madame Cheng had an eye for talent, as Cheng Pao had grown up in a "floating community" of Chinese junks, adhoc houseboats and strung-together waterlogged debris. He had an uncanny understanding of the sea and Cheng Pao used such abilities to carry out his wife's master plan, which, really, was nothing short of dominating the Chinese shipping routes from the Strait of Malacca to Australia.

By 1810, Madame Cheng's pirate fleet was larger than those of most countries navies. She commanded between 600-800 coastal vessels, hundreds of small, river junks, and tens of thousands of pirates. Recognizing her growing power, the British, Portuguese and Chinese eventually banded together to stop Madame Cheng. But they didn't. Following thousands of deaths - pirate and seamen alike - Madame Cheng decided to belay the bloodshed. From a position of power, she negotiated a peace treaty with the colonial powers and Chinese authorities and, following the agreement, sought an early retirement with her husband, Cheng Pao. Through organization, relationship-building and recognizing top talent, Madame Cheng created a pirate fleet the likes of which no one has ever seen (or well ever again see). And for three years she ran the shipping lanes of the China Sea and Strait of Malacca for decades.

Now. Madame Cheng wasn't the only successful lady pirate. Anne Bonny and Mary Read are probably the most famous female pirates. Actually, they arguably made the inspiration for Johnny Depp, Calico Jack Rackam, famous by association. The three sailed together from 1718-1720 in the Caribbean, after Rackam, a charismatic fellow (not unlike another Captain Jack we know and love), was elected by his crew following the former captain was declared a coward and executed. Rackam, who was engulfed in a fairly tawdry relationship with Read, brought to two women aboard during a stop in Cuba, and the women joined the crew in pillaging small sloops and coastal fishing villages all around the Caribbean.

Life was good (there was even an alleged love triangle between Bonny, Read and Rackam), until 1720 when Captain Jonathan Barnet captured Rackam's ship. Get this. All the men, including Rackam, hid below deck as the Royal Navy ship approached. Bonny and Read, who Barnet claimed could "swear and fight as good as any man," charged the approaching sailors, killing and wounding dozens before they were finally captured. And while Rackam was quickly hanged, his body put in a cage near Deadman's Cay, Bonny and Read, who - I kid you not - were both pregnant at the time, were allowed to have their children before returning to trial. Read died before re-trial, but Bonny escaped with her child, never to be heard from again.

Amazing stories, sure. And what does this mean for our current communities here on Earth? Well, I have some findings to report:

Leading women today agree with John's idea. Okay, maybe, but probably not really. Still, having met Fiona Walsh (FM Walsh & Associates) and knowing her to be pretty darn brilliant and that she has a great sense of humour, check this out. Let's see how Madame Cheng's piratical example lives up to the three main components of Ms. Walsh's Women in Leadership Program:

1. Develop a professional "BIG PLAN" and have a "Plan B". Check! Madame Cheng's initial plan was to, well, dominate the China Sea and Strait of Malacca for another few decades. Plan B was to retire. Well played, ma'am.
2. Understand your professional value (your reputation, specialized skill set, existing network) and build on these three components. Check! Madame Cheng (not to mention Bonny and Read) had fierce reputations. Cheng's skill set involved top-level leadership, industry knowledge, talent recognition, and the motivational aspect of organizational behaviour. And she leveraged her husband's network to become leader of the Chinese Pirate Confederacy. Brilliant!
3. Build a powerful business network that will support your advancement through the world of business. Check! Beginning with the appointment of Cheng Pao, Madame Cheng surrounded herself with a variety of new business partners (river-going junks was a new idea, not to mention a very lucrative one) as well as a range of existing power brokers from the colonial and Chinese/Japanese/Singaporean/Filipino/Vietnamese business communities.

Hilary Clinton running for President shouldn't be a big freakin' deal! Well, yes, it should, because a woman leading the United States (arguably the world) is an amazing and inspirational concept; however, Madame Cheng, nearly two hundred years ago, showed us that women can not only succeed in a man's world, but can absolutely and totally change the game. She took on Britain and Portugal and various Chinese city-states. That's like Hilary taking on the economy, Climate Change and adultery! Point is, we shouldn't be surprised. Women are, quite clearly, better than men at most things. Even piracy. Probably politics. More often than not, it's just a matter of timing.

Women are unmeasurably powerful. Thing is, our economic measuring/value-system has been written by men for hundreds of years and, admittedly, is a tad biased. Get this. A recent study by the United Nations Human Development Index revealed that unpaid work, such as volunteering, caring for the young, old and sick, household management, do-it-yourself housing, food-growing, and community service, accounts for $16 trillion per year. The vast majority of this work is done by women. Further, a recent University of British Columbia Sauder School of Business study estimates the annual value of a stay-at-home-mom at $138,095 and points out that these community leaders work an average of 51.8 hours of over time per week. Now all we need are some metrics that measure this kind of contribution instead of just GDP...

Should we be surprised that the greatest pirate in the history of the world was a woman? Not really. Ladies, you might just need to embrace your inner-pirate. If you take one thing away from the story of Madame Cheng, let it be the part about recognizing an opportunity for success and seizing it. And when you do, be sure to collaborate with other women and share your success. Honestly, there are a lot of us out here who are excited for you to run the world. Sorry we've screwed it up so badly...

Good luck, and have fun with it!

- JCH

Learning from Pirate Communities – Health and Wellness

In the last instalment of this series we learned about the democratic nature of pirate communities. Over 100 years before the French Revolution, democracy existed aboard pirate ships, as represented by the written and signed Articles of Piracy, which demonstrated the crew’s power, as opposed to just the Captain’s. Part of those democratic principles included health care and workplace compensation, both of which, once again, existed on pirate ships long before they did anywhere else in the world.

According to Nigel Cawthorne’s A History of Pirates, when it came to healthy living, “many Royal Navy seamen considered life on board a pirate ship heaven compared with conditions they experienced on board the ships of His Majesty.” There was a greater life expectancy than in the navy and, while a pirate could very well depart this life at the end of a rope, he was allowed to leave the ship when he pleased and, if he chose to go ashore, could, as Cawthorne says, “at least look forward to a few years of freedom and high living.”

Life aboard a pirate ship was not only better lifestyle-wise than that with the Royal Navy or Merchant Marine, but pirates were actually given health benefits in the form of workplace compensation. Specifically, they went into battle knowing that, should they lose a limb or have their eye poked/shot out, they would be financially compensated for such loses. Here is a chart that reflects the actual payment as discussed by David Cordingly in Under the Black Flag:

BODY PART LOST	FINANCIAL COMPENSATION
Right Arm	600 pieces of eight
Left Arm	500 pieces of eight
Right Leg	500 pieces of eight
Left Leg	400 pieces of eight
Eye or Finger	100 pieces of eight

Here were the earliest forms of non-governmental (ie. the military), workplace compensation. Further, the ship’s – or pirate company’s – surgeon was the highest paid member of the crew (fun pirate fact: only carpenters, shipwrights and surgeons earned a salary). Aaron Smith, a surgeon working on a merchant vessel, was captured by Cuban pirates in 1822. He was seen as so valuable that, in spite of speaking no Spanish or being trained in their seafaring tactics, the pirates employed him as a doctor and sail-maker – pirates, unlike the Government of Canada, clearly recognized the transferable skills and qualifications of this foreign trained professional. So, aside from seeing the value in medical professionals (instead of, say, lawyers or investment bankers), what else can we learn from pirate communities with it comes to health and wellness? Here are some key points:

Healthy living begins with a Healthy Community: how did these compensated pirates use their money? Well, if they went to shore they invariably spent it in the taverns and brothels of Tortuga or other pirate haunts on isle of Hispaniola or elsewhere in the sunny Caribbean, hopefully, they built a relationship with local communities (should we start a thread on local food?!). Like many of us today, pirates suffered from the ill-effects of instant gratification. They would spend their compensation without thinking of a long-term strategy; however, if a certain amount of time, effort and resources were exchanged by pirate companies and coastal communities, well, then a system of security and care would be formed. Even today the coastal communities in Somalia rarely cooperate with the authorities and provide shelter, supplies and medical attention to pirates-in-need. As it was 300 years ago, when pirates take care of their communities, their communities take care of them. Organized, democratic, healthily-insured, and possessing a sense of community: wow, Barack Obama could take a page out of their playbook!

Health and Wellness in the Workplace: each year the Canadian economy loses upwards of $30 billion because of workplace stress. Our country’s workers are asked to do too much too quickly in an effort to complete projects within razor-thin profit margins. And if you’re an organization that recognizes the relationship between happy, healthy workers and profitability, well, then your organization is going places. Not unlike a pirate ship! If not, hey, you can learn from the pirates. Today, over one million people in Canada’s workforce suffer from some kind of mental illness brought on by stress. In the seventeenth century, life aboard a pirate ship was easier and more efficient than aboard a ship in the Merchant Marine. There were more pirates (typically as many as 80) than merchant sailors (sometimes as few as 12), so buccaneers would actually be more productive and get to work less. How was this possible? Well, the booty, plunder and earnings of the pirates was divided democratically amongst the crew, whereas merchant sailors saw the profits from their hauls go to wealthy businessmen in London, Boston and New York. This is why, argues Cordingly, so many merchant sailors joined pirate crews after their vessels were attacked and raided. Reasonable time to complete less work, more loot and health insurance?! Why wouldn’t they sign up?!

Health Insurance is different from Wellness: pirates, like some of you reading this blog, are a little dirty. Now. There are levels of dirtiness, obviously. For pirates, they got filthy in a venereal sense. In fact, due to syphilis rates that rival modern day Whistler night clubs or Axe body spray commercials, pirates would usually head directly to the medicine chest, not the armoury or treasure-hold, when they ransacked a ship. It was itch-curing mercury compounds, not gold, rum or gunpowder that was the sought-after treasure for so many of these scallywags. Just as with the these wench-pillaging buccaneers, today many of us look to the healthcare system to cure illnesses brought on by excessive smoking, drinking, sitting, eating, stressing, and unprotected sexing. While pirates, like many of us, have access to health care, we must remember that such a system is only part of what it takes to be healthy. Really, it takes a well-rounded, holistic approach that involves diet, exercise, work-life-balance, and happiness. So, the next time you’re thinking about swilling some rum, grabbin’ yer cutlass and hittin’ the port with yer mates, ask yourself if these actions will lead to you being a drain on an over-taxed system that is set up to help people who actually need it. Not over-indulging pirates.

At this point, I’ll add a disclaimer and remind you, the readers, of the context in which these tales took place. Look. Life on board a pirate ship in the eighteenth-century was, yes, better than life in the Royal Navy. Keep in mind, though, that your food still had maggots in it and that you usually slept in a damp room bellow decks and fell asleep beneath a wet, mouldy blanket. So, yes, it was better, but let us keep in mind the standards by which these pirate-ship-havens were measured. Also, just as governments tax their citizens, pirates taxed (and still tax) communities. The Canadian government, when taxing, doesn’t tend to set things on fire, though…

Yes. Subtle differences abide. Long story short, work less and be well…like a pirate!

Thar be it, mateys and matettes! Have yourselves a grand day on the high seas.

- Sir John the Pirate Piratologist