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    Heart

    Most topics of group discusssion can be visualized as a series of layers. The helicopter goes up a layer or two to get the "big picture" or a wider vision. Looking at the forest reveals viewpoints of a higher order than looking at just the trees. From the vantage point of the helicopter, you only see the  forest.

    The Helicopter view is also known as going meta. Meta-learning is learning about learning. Meta-cognition is thinking about thinking.

     

    Description

    CONTEXT

    "Context" is the Helicoper view from a higher altitude.

     

    INSTRUCTIONS  & VARITIONS

    The facilitator may direct the conversation to the helicopter level by asking for similarities between objects. Things that are characteristic of an entire group of topics are generally meta.

    Alternatively, the facilitator could use graphics to explain the higher-order process. A process map or social network diagram gives the Helicopter view.

    Map the situation to show the connections. The network of nodes and connectors is at the meta level.

    In some cases, the facilitator may be able to get the group to the meta level by simply asking about the structure of the ecosystem surrounding the topic in question.

     

    Examples

    Finding a bottle neck in a system

    Understanding the patterns of communication in a network

    Investigating processes instead of isolated events

     

    Related patterns (what this pattern points to)

    How related

    Add +pattern relationship descriptions

    Other patterns that mention or point to Helicopter


     

     

    Resources

    Douglas Hofstadter uses meta as a stand-alone word, both as an adjective and as a directional preposition ("going meta", a term he coins for the old rhetorical trick of taking a debate or analysis to another level of abstraction, as in "This debate isn't going anywhere."). This book is also probably responsible for the direct association of "meta" with self-reference, as opposed to just abstraction. The sentence "This sentence contains thirty-six letters," and the sentence it is embedded in, are examples of sentences that reference themselves in this way. See Wikipedia article on meta.

     

    Other

    Helicopter is widley known as "going meta" in many circles. See the resources section.

     

    Quotes

     

    Letter from Isaac Newton to Robert Hooke in 1676: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."

     

    Patterns are meta. Maps are meta.

     

    If you cannot discern a pattern, perhaps you're dealing with a chaotic system. (Chaos has no meta.)

    Who said this? If by chaos you mean randomness, i can see that, but if you mean non-linear deterministic systems, they always have a pattern, we just may not have discerned it yet.

     

    "One person's variable is another person's consonant." Jay Cross

    You mean a variable like in a programming languages? Presumably something like "b" or "c", as opposed to "i" or "e" :-) ?

     

    Stage

     

    Stories

    In each of these cards is a story about group dynamics that relates to "Patterns+*tform" (add your own stories on Anonymous+Stories):

    Virtual

     

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