Who We Are

EDSN is an Association of PlexLearning and Research to Practice Partnerships (RPP).   Education for Development and Support Network (EDSN) advances place-based quality of life infrastructure development services in neighborhood communities whose worlds are rapidly changing.   Our association enables neighborhood voices to participate in the transformation of their communities in ways that are important to them.   Participation involves meaningful socioeconomic discourses with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) centered around education, research, economics, sustainable management, and shared governance of the commons.   EDSN PlexLearning programs are aligned with local university curriculums to reduce cost, remove barriers, fill gaps, and build bridges between formal education, informal learning, entrepreneurship, workforce development, career, and vocation management for hopeful and meaningful lives.

PlexLearning Research to Practice affordances help small groups of individuals find their voices, and sociocultural fit, to navigate successfully among competing and predatory interests towards equitable quality of life developments (academic, workforce, socioeconomic infrastructure, civic privileges, and responsibilities) both in rural village and urban neighborhood communities.

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We are Your Neighborhood PlexLearning Centers.   PlexLearning helps to marshal important communication affordances in digital societies.   Among other things, Plexlearning enables 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 Place-Based Research to Practice agencies.   We help selected Shared Interest Community (SIC) groups of individuals participate in the transformation of their worlds.   Intern, these SIC groups help individual members think for themselves through a shared culture of deep dialogues, proximal learning, digital literacy, purposefully faith-based lives, trusting 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 are not limited to, access to clean water, healthy foods, quality healthcare, safe and sustainable environments.   Challenging situations in which people find themselves involve the management of chronic mistrust in their 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 practice 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 Enablers of Access to Open Educational Resource (OER).   Our OER network of university professors, researchers, authors, teachers help fills gaps and control costs in socioeconomic infrastructures resources that integrate life-long Universal Design for Learning (UDL) with family knowledge archives and neighborhood libraries.   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 our goal as 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 Intergeneration Engagement Centers for Quality-of-Life Developments.   EDSN neighborhood PlexLearning programs coalesce around 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, and 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 agencies, competing interests, financial entrapment, and chronic hopelessness whether real or imagined.

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We are Your Neighborhood 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 the 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 Stewards of Your Neighborhood Accumulated Intellectual Commons.   We are greater, and more effective, than the sum of our 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 than 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.