Coconut Thinking

How might we learn (and teach) to navigate uncertainty when the system rewards final answers?Dave Cormier is an internationally renowned educational thinker specializing in the intersection of technology and pedagogy. He coined the term MOOC in 2008 and pioneered open and rhizomatic learning. His work on creativity and uncertainty in education is taught globally. In 2024, he published Learning in a Time of Abundance: The Community Is the Curriculum with Johns Hopkins University Press. Recently, Dave facilitated an international online conference for educators and will be a visiting academic at Deakin University for the CRADLE symposium on Generative AI and Work-Integrated Learning. As the Interim Director of Curriculum Development and Delivery, Open Learning at Thompson Rivers University, he advances digital learning strategies in the GenAI era, supporting student experiences with practical and strategic solutions. We discuss:🥥 How a single adult engaging with a few students—when replicated locally and globally—might be the response we need to face the metacrisis.🥥 How learners of all ages don’t need to have every tool at their disposal when confronting uncertainty, but rather need to know how to respond, what to do, and where to learn to navigate it effectively.🥥 How the most important literacy of the 21st century is humility—the ability to say, “I don’t know, but let’s learn together.”Check us out at www.coconut-thinking.com

How might sound reshape our understanding of and nurture new relationships with the living world?In this episode, I speak with Louise Romain. Louise works as an anthropologist, an imagination activist (with Moral Imaginations) and a podcast producer. She campaigns for multispecies justice and Indigenous rights through grassroots organising, relationship building and media production. With her show ‘Circle of Voices’, she produces short stories, spoken word and immersive sound journeys, crafted as invitations to dream deeper into possible and desirable futures while engaging with themes of socio-political and environmental justice. She is fascinated by the potential of acoustic ecology to weave listeners into the sacred web of life and to support ecosystem regeneration. Louise is part of the Communications Team of the Women’s Caucus of the Convention on Biological Diversity, a 2024 Fellow of The Bio-Leadership Project and an active member of Earth Decides. We discuss:🥥 Multispecies justice as supporting all species to thrive alongside humans, appreciating that survival depends on water, the land, the air—a healthful planet;🥥 How sound asks us to slow down and open ourselves to different relationships with the living world of which we are part, noticing what we aren't used to noticing when we rely primarily on our sight;🥥 Inclusion of the more-than-human and how inclusion might require exclusion, and leaving a part of us behind in order to be included.Check us out www.coconut-thinking.comFind out more about Louise's work on her website https://tuneintotheworld.com/ and follow her on social media @‌lou_romain_ and @‌circleofvoices.Find her podcast here.

What happens when we tune into sound to make sense of our world? How might noticing sounds and silences tell us more about place?In this episode, Charlotte and I speak with Melissa Pons. Melissa is a field recordist and award-winning sound designer based in Portugal. Throughout her years of practice, she has independently released field recording albums, music compositions upon commission and her work has been streamed and featured in several media, like the BBC, NPR, The Guardian and Bandcamp Daily. Her personal work orbits around the more-than-human world and our complex relationship with it, and wild animals are a big source of inspiration for thinking, listening, writing, making music and the landscapes she seeks. Currently she’s working as a curator and podcast producer at the streaming platform earth.fm and works seasonally with sound design for audio dramas at Hemlock Creek Productions. We discuss:🥥 How sound forces us to slow down, to take time to notice, in ways that photos cannot, creating a different kind of embodied experience;🥥 How sounds tell stories of what is there and what is no longer there, which provides data that we aren't used to noticing;🥥 The relationship between people and place to sound, and the stories these tell.This is the first episode in our two-part series on sound. We hope that educators will consider sound over written text as means of learning, feeling, and expression. Check us out www.coconut-thinking.com.

How might Biomimicry help us understand the context of a problem in order for us to respond locally, not with one-size-fits-all solutions?In this episode, I speak with Bronwen Main and Frank Burridge. Bronwen is a landscape architect and co-founder of Main Studio, where she focuses on sustainable, nature-inspired designs that transform urban spaces. Her work emphasizes ecological restoration, community well-being, and biodiversity, creating environments that encourage people’s communion with nature. Bronwen also contributes as a lecturer and mentor, sharing her expertise with emerging architects. Through her innovative projects and community engagement, she promotes environmentally responsible design practices that blend aesthetics with ecological integrity and sustainable urban living.Frank is an architect and co-founder of Main Studio, a creative practice that blends architecture, art, and landscape design with ecological and community-focused principles. As a Teaching Associate at Monash University and a registered architect with the Architects Registration Board of Victoria, Frank is known for his innovative, sustainable projects. His work includes high-profile projects like Zac Efron’s planned “Futurecave” in New South Wales, embodying his commitment to creating functional, environmentally harmonious spaces. Bronwen and Frank are the architects (along with Ibuku) who are designing Green School' Biomimicry for Regenerative Design Lab, a first of its kind space in a K-12 school, where learners of all ages come together to explore and apply biomimicry principles for regenerative design We discuss:🥥 How biomimicry provides hope because we learn [from/as/with] Nature, which has already tested out infinite problems for over 3.8 billion years (at least!);🥥 The design process behind Green School's Biomimicry for Regenerative Design Lab, in which students and educators participated, as did the Natural world and the contact of Bali, education, and the current state of the world;🥥 How Biomimicry allows us to understand our place in Place, which is fundamental to opening up new possibilities for learning in schools and beyond.Check us out: www.coconut-thinking.comLearn more about Green School Bali: www.greenschool.org/bali

How might biomimicry be an ethical approach to a thriving planet rather than just another way to make cool products for money?In this episode, I speak with Henry Dicks. Henry is an environmental philosopher and philosopher of technology. He holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford and lectures in environmental philosophy and ethics at University Jean Moulin Lyon 3 and Shanghai University and in the philosophy of biomimicry at the Institut Supérieur de Design de Saint-Malo. We discuss:🥥 Nature as measure, not in the qualitative sense, but rather as an ethical compass that guides us to respond in ways to life🥥 Biomimicry as a move away from anthropocentrism through the reconsiderations of our relationships as Nature.🥥 Biomimicry as a model for AI and the possibilities expanding toward more-than-human intelligences in AI.This is the second of a 3-part series on Biomimicry, looking at the relational, ethical, and process of Biomimicry. Check us out: www.coconut-thinking.com

How might we create participatory, community-based technologies inspired from Nature with the interests of life in mind?In this episode, I speak with Daniel Kinzer. Daniel is the founder of Pacific Blue Studios, a network of youth-powered exploration, design and innovation studios leveraging biomimicry, traditional ecological knowledge and conservation technologies and focused on co-creating thriving, regenerative communities across Hawai'i and around our blue planet. He is an educator, designer, adventurer and ocean lover, and has spent over a decade living and learning across more than 70 countries and all 7 continents, including an expedition to Antarctica as a Grosvenor Teacher Fellow with National Geographic. We discuss: 🥥 Being comfortable in the absence of language and tuning into how our human and other-than-human kin communicate;🥥 Biomimicry and indigenous knowledge ask us to quiet our cleverness, having humility, and neither is for anybody to own, run away from, or have exclusive to anyone;🥥 Eco-anxiety as “I don’t know who I am anymore,” as ego-anxiety.This is the first of a 3-part series on Biomimicry, looking at the relational, ethical, and process of Biomimicry. Check us out: www.coconut-thinking.com

How might knowledge be co-created as a process of relationships between humans, other-than-humans, and the land?In this episode, I speak with Tyson Yunkaporta. Tyson is an Aboriginal scholar, founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University in Melbourne, and author of Sand Talk and most recently Right Story, Wrong Story. His work focuses on applying Indigenous methods of inquiry to resolve complex issues and explore global crises. Tyson currently works at the Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University as Senior Lecturer Indigenous Knowledges. We discuss:🥥 Transknowledging as interactions between human/human and human/other-than-human that are co-created by place and time;🥥 The "gold rush on Indigenous knowledge" and how we might work with and through the tensions this creates to learn from each other;🥥 Enlightenment 2.0: its shortcuts, (false) promises, and how the great re-branding.Check us out: www.coconut-thinking.com

How might ethics world the futures our generation will leave behind? How might education respond within the climate context?In this episode, I speak with Peter Sutoris. Peter is an environmental anthropologist and assistant professor in climate and development at the University of Leeds’ Sustainability Research Institute. He is the author of the books “Visions of Development” and “Educating for the Anthropocene,” and coauthor of the forthcoming “Development Reimagined.” He is a researcher, writer and educator, and has spent over a decade working on issues of education, health and social development. We discuss: 🥥 How we might confront the underlying patterns of extraction rather than hope for technology to make tweaks in the existing system;🥥 What happens to ethics if we care about what life was before I was born and what will happen after we die?🥥 What needs to change in our thinking, in our stories, and what might the system accept and what might it resist.Check us out www.coconut-thinking. com

How might cultivating local relationships with humans and the more-than-human contribute to overall planetary health?In this episode, I speak with Pim Martens. Pim has a PhD in applied mathematics and biological sciences. He is a professor of Planetary Health and dean of Maastricht University College Venlo. Pim has been a professor of Sustainable Development for 18 years and is currently the project leader and principal investigator of several projects related to planetary health, sustainability science and education, and human-animal-nature relationships. Pim Martens is a scientist and founder of AnimalWise, a “think and do tank” integrating scientific knowledge and animal advocacy to bring about sustainable change in our relationship with animals. Furthermore, he was the founding Director of the Maastricht University Graduate School of Sustainability Science (MUST) and initiated the M.Sc. program in Sustainability Science and Policy. We discuss:🥥 The importance of developing empathy for non-human animals for a kinder world, including between humans;🥥 How sustainability and regeneration begin with how we treat all living things;🥥 How planetary health might reframe how we understand the networks of our interconnections. Check us out: www.coconut-thinking.com

How do we nurture radical human relationships through authentic stories of learning?In this episode, I speak with Virgel Hammonds. Virgel is a nationally recognized leader in education innovation. He became CEO of the Aurora Institute in 2024, bringing over two decades of experience in learner-centered education. Formerly Chief Learning Officer at KnowledgeWorks, Virgel has partnered with national policymakers and local communities to redesign learning systems. He has also served as superintendent in Maine and high school principal in California, where he implemented personalized, mastery-based learning models. Virgel is an active board member for several educational organizations, continuing his mission to transform education for all learners.The Aurora Institute is a pioneering organization focused on advancing competency-based education frameworks. It champions personalized, learner-centered approaches, ensuring students progress based on mastery rather than seat time. The institute collaborates with educators, policymakers, and communities to redesign learning systems, promoting equity and deeper learning for all students.We discuss: 🥥 Shifting from school systems to communities of learning, recognizing learning as a 24/7, anywhere journey;🥥 Listening to voices from the entire community to bring in local values, while creating connections with wider networks. 🥥 Showing up with authenticity in order to deepen our relationships, with courage and vulnerability.Check us out www.coconut-thinking.comYou can find the Aurora Institute on https://aurora-institute.org/