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March 2018

Toward Personal Learning: Summer Book Club Post 6

I’m still at it! Reading Stephen Downes’ book Toward Personal Learning. This series of posts began as a ‘summer book club‘ and at this rate I might just finish before next summer! This segment covers pp. 428-487 because there was a lot in this section that I had comments on. Below you will find the nuggets that went ‘ping!’ in my mind and a few thoughts on each of them. Quotes from the book are in a different colour so you can easily distinguish my thoughts.

The first bit that really stood out to me was a line in the section summarising Howard Rheingold’s talk in Berlin in 2014. Howard spoke about how learning has changed over the years:

“It’s also more collaborative – this used to be called cheating. It’s also cooperative – I talk about co-learning, being responsible for each other’s learning.”

I like that collaboration used to be called ‘cheating’ – and he’s right! I remember being told do you own work! Of course you do need to understand the basics of whatever concept for yourself, but the application, the generation of going beyond- that feeds on ideas and we need each other for stimulus, perspective, and simply for the multiplied brainpower and experience that coming together brings. It’s obvious really. Two candles together makes a bigger fire.

Howard puts it well:

“It’s about the group being more than the sum of its parts.” p435

Then there is one sentence that merits just copying and pasting here:

“Learning content required a more flexible model, which was provided first by David Wiley, with the Open Content License, and then by Lawrence Lessig, with Creative Commons. Both of these licenses allowed for the free reuse and redistribution of the resource, but with conditions.” p.422

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Female Empowerment Society Woman of the Year Speech

Last night I had the privilege of presenting the Woman of the Year award at my university, and I was asked to preface with a short speech. The evening was magically thought out, planned, and presented by Chichester’s Female Empowerment Society and every detail celebrated and respected women in all our forms and our supporters.

 

Here’s what I said

(audio embedded, text below):

It’s a pleasure to be here with you all to celebrate women in all our forms: those in the main stream and those on someone’s margins; on a pedestal or deprived of recognition. We are all equal in our humanity whoever we are, what ever we look like, whatever our own unique abilities, beliefs or life-ways. We are here to celebrate our shared humanity and contributions as women at this, Chichester’s Woman of the Year Awards evening, organised and led by the Female Empowerment Society.

Across the globe women are phenomenal role models, and this has been a year of awakenings.Read More »Female Empowerment Society Woman of the Year Speech

Knowledge is recognising: Toward personal learning

This post covers notes from 80 pages (347-427) in Stephen Downs’ book Toward Personal Learning. I started reading the book and posting about it last summer; it was initially intended as a ‘Summer Book Club‘. I’m still chugging along, and after a few busy months I’ve carved time to do some reading and thinking. I particularly enjoyed reading these pages and what follows are the themes and quotations that stood out to me and a few short thoughts about them. In these pages Downes talks about learning models, understanding of some very core concepts, and really starts to dive into the why and what behind personal learning. (This post is a 6 min read; the book will take you longer – but it’s worth it!)

Let me begin with what should be an axiom painted graffiti style on the side of one of many learning institutions: ‘learning is not remembering’ p.348

Throughout the next 80 pages, Downes takes us on a detailed tour of different aspects of learning, understanding, and perspective.Read More »Knowledge is recognising: Toward personal learning