During our recent conference Professor Ronald Barnett positioned himself as a critical friend and  issued a challenge for the advocates of lifewide learning. He raised an issue which was about the potential of lifewide learners to be selfishly concerned with themselves rather than the issues and challenges of others in a locally disconnected but globally connected world.

In his speech Ron said

It may sound as if this [lifewidelearning] is a project concerned with individuals as individuals. It is concerned about their welfare, their needs, their possibilities, their own learning. Is this an agenda for late capitalism, in which everyone looks out for themselves - and reconstructs themselves (for a fluid world) and goes on developing themselves for themselves? Cf ‘Bowling Alone’.  A solipsistic educational journey devoid of any sense of universal claims and possibilities. There is a real world – it’s not just a matter of our life-projects. It is a globalised world  and a world riven with conflicts, power differentials, and ideologies. Willy-nilly, we are embedded in networks – antagonistic as they are. A challenge then [for lifewide learning] is that of bringing a (greater) concern for the world into our learning tasks.Neither self-centred nor selfish but self-less, not merely immersed in the world but engaging critically with the world - with a care for its flourishing.

My response to this is that a life with purposes that are only directed to self-development and the benfit of the individual is not a life worth living. I illustrate this through a story about the band I play in. We have been together for many years now - you might and we frequently do say we are growing old together and our jokes are about age, decrepitude and decline... but there is something magical in coming together to play music and try to get better at what we do. Except, when our practices serve no purpose other than for our own benefit we lose momentum. People make excuses and don't turn up. The secret we have discovered is to have a goal - in the form of a performance or a recording. Having a goal focuses attention and we can all work together to achieve it. Even better is to have a goal that is beyond our own immediate interests where we feel we are doing some good. A few months ago we decided to put on a charity gig to raise money for a worthy cause at our own expense in the local village hall. Then we heard about a local family trying to raise money for their child who needed treatment for a brain tumour in America. We adopted this cause and have all entered the spirit of raising money by selling tickets, recording songs for a CD which we will sell and then various activities on the night of the fund raising gig. We are also going to talk about it and the broader issue of raining money for a children's cancer charity on local radio.  Over the last few months the band has been brought together and we have learnt and developed through the process. We have also started collaborating with other musicians which might open up some new opportunities for us. Undoubtedly, we have been inspired by having a purpose that is greater than our own needs and interests.

This week has been another busy week.. immediately following our conference I discovered that a possible invitation to teach a module in the professional development programme at the University of Limerick had become a concrete possibility with an email from the programme director..

I am following up on an email my colleague sent you regarding your willingness to teach a module on our Specialist Diploma in Teaching, Learning and Scholarship.  The course is a level 9 course consisting of ten modules each with three credits and it is designed to equip  participants with high level competence in Teaching , Learning, Scholarship and Innovation in Higher Education settings (I have attached a copy of the Diploma handbook for your information). The module we would like you to teach covers Scholarly innovation and creativity. I have attached the module outline used previously and the type of assessment students have been given in the past, to give you an idea of what is involved. Of course given the module is about innovation and creativity in scholarship, you have freedom to teach this module in the manner you feel is better for you
 
The email went on to inform me that the module was to be run in six days seven April 3/4 if I was willing to do it so I had to decide on whether I could take it on. Effectively I had 6 days to prepare but I also had a lot of other commitments in that time. Two things grabbed my attention - the fact that I could teach it how I wanted to and the focus on personal everyday creativity.. So I said yes and spent every spare hour I could over the next six days 'preparing'.

The experience was a good one  in all sorts of ways and I am writing a reflective essay to consolidate my thoughts and feelings. Here I focus on its value to me as a reminder of what it is like to teach. I had a group of 18 professional learners ranging in age from early 20's to 50 at various stages of their careers. All were leading busy lives and had to fit in the 10hours over two days during which the course ran. As a teacher I designed a process which included content - mainly my writings on the topics we covered, activities - the tasks I designed before, during and after the event and a few more spontaneous situations. But you cannot predict how learners will respond. It was my good fortune that they engaged in the way I had hoped and the whole experience for me became reaffirming. It made me feel like I used to feel as a teacher when the situations I had crafted produced the desired results in terms of learner interest, engagement, discussion and the application of the learning. I still have to mark the two assignments I set which will give me more feedback on whether the ideas and knowledge I worked with has been assimilated and applied and I want to gather the learners' feedback on the course - but the experience has shown me something that I miss so I am going to try to market the short course to other  institutions.

Thank you Limerick Creatives!

It's Saturday morning and I was doing my housework when I started a conversation with my son. I'd had an idea for one of the sessions in our forthcoming conference and I wanted to sound him out -  it was around the question why? Why would anyone invest time and effort in engaging in their own lifewide learning, and put intellectual effort into trying to understand it by planning it, paying attention to it, recording it and analysing it?  I sat down in my rubber gloves and we considered the idea through his own experience at university and then moved to more general perspectives. His reasons for doing the things he did while at university were driven by his intrinsic motivations particular his interests to make the most of the opportunities he had to develop himself. He didn't do things outside his course to gain any sort of recognition but because the opportunity was there for recognition he took it.

It made me think of my reasons for why I consciously engage in my own lifewide learning are motivated by interest but also a belief that by acting as an advocate I am doing something worthwhile and of potential value to others. By coincidence that afternoon I got involved in an email conversation with John Cowan and I asked him the why? question. His  reply "the reason I engage in LWL is neatly summed up by Emerson:  "Do not go where the path may lead.  Go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail."  My motive is not and has not been to leave a trail.  It is to find, explore and enjoy things which are new to me at least. for without that, life would have been totally stale." This seems a nice way to frame the why but it seems to emphasise only the intrinsic value to self rather than the value to others of what you are doing.

I was  intrigued to explore 'why we do what we do' a bit more so I spent a bit of time googling and found a nice summary by Anthony Robbins. He claims that there six fundamental human needs that everyone shares namely:
1. Certainty: assurance you can avoid pain and gain pleasure
2. Uncertainty/Variety: the need for the unknown, change, new stimuli
3. Significance: feeling unique, important, special or needed - drawing meaning from life
4. Connection/Love: a strong feeling of closeness or union with someone or something
5. Growth: an expansion of capacity, capability or understanding
6. Contribution: a sense of service and focus on helping, giving to and supporting others

Looking at the important things I do in my life I can see that these reasons provide many of the answers to the why question although the blend and balance of reasons is different in different aspects and at different times. These answers to why are the reasons that drive our learning ecologies and ultimately they lead to our deep sense of fulfilment when we believe that we are achieving in some way our purposes.

Returning to the question 'why would anyone invest time and effort in engaging in their own lifewide learning, and put intellectual effort into trying to understand it by planning it, paying attention to it, recording it and analysing it?  My son felt that the answer to this would be different for everyone but that the answer would be the driver for their involvement. Perhaps the most valuable aspect of engaging in a learning conscious way with your own lifewide learning is to explore the why question in each significant aspect of your life

As if to reinforce this message I received a linked-in notification yesterday to the well known TED talk by Simon Sinek  on the theme of 'people don't buy what you do they buy why you do it'. Why is as important in business as it is in the rest of life.

Tony Robbins blog
http://training.tonyrobbins.com/the-6-human-needs-why-we-do-what-we-do/

To commit to something is to harness your own willpower to pursue and engage with a purpose, a cause, a problem, challenge or opportunity. By committing to something you are reducing your freedom to engage with other things. Fundamentally committing to something is a choice - we may feel obligated or coerced but we are still making a decision to engage with something conscientiously and to the best of our ability. We usually commit to something because we care about it and it's personally meaningful and or has deep intrinsic interest or value. Commitment to something is deeply relational whether it is with people, ideas, objects or enterprises. When we commit to something we usually know that it will involve us over a significant period of time.For some things we want to know exactly what are commitment will be before we agree to getting involved but for other things, particularly involving relationships that are most significant to us, we are willing to enter into a commitment without knowing the detail of the obligation. 

Developing something is a major focus for commitment. It requires us to commit time, energy and effort (physical, intellectual and emotional) and it usually involves reducing our involvement in other things. Life is never simple and all the things that are important to us require our commitment so we end up with lots of commitments that jostle and compete for our attention - our families and relationships within them, our jobs, our own interests and aspirations. So everyday life is made up of lots of commitments that connect and span our lifewide experiences. Our commitments are closely associated with what we perceive are our purposes which are ultimately the things that drive us and give our life substance and meaning. By taking on new commitments we are extending our learning ecologies.

These thoughts were prompted by my recent involvement in an on-line 'course' called 'bring your own device for learning' (BYOD4L) designed and organised by Chrissi Nerantzi and Sue Beckingham. When I reflect on the experience as a development process  commitment seemed to very important - perhaps because by joining the course I was adding to my existing commitments and that required effort above and beyond what I was already doing.

The course required commitment to sign up, familiarise myself with the design and expectations, engage with the resources and the learning opportunity (in my own way), and try to record my own learning process and what I think I gained from it. The commitment to try and apply what I learnt and to keep trying even when something didn't seem to work and overcome the inevitable barriers of using these new forms of social media for someone who is not particularly adept. 

During the course I was conscious of juggling this new commitment with my other obligations - like the two days I look after my daughter's twins and various work obligations and I was conscious of the opportunity cost in engaging with technology initially to be competent and confident in using it and then to apply it. I had several instances during and immediately after the week when what I tried didn't work and I felt frustrated and demotivated because I hadn't made the progress I had hoped for and these feelings of negativity had to be overcome.

I was thankful that one person tweeted that they had had trouble with an app. I often have trouble trying to make things work and this aspect of learning often gets glossed over in the enthusiasm for the technology. The things I valued most - that encouraged me to persist and therefore facilitated my development were: 
1 The resources. Sue's collections of tools and the introductory videos are a great resource that I have embedded in my own website for future use. 
2 Examples and illustrations of the use of the technologies.. these were great in showing what could be done. In particular some of the curatorial tools like scoop.it and paper.li. which I have tried to apply. 

It was also great seeing the enthusiasm, commitment, teamwork, care and attention and personal support the facilitators gave to the process and the people in it. A real lesson in the energy, passion, care, dedication and expertise necessary to make these sorts of learning experiences work. And hopefully I could use the experience and insights to design my own on-line learning experience. I was particularly appreciative of the fact that I was able to navigate through the resources and prompts in my own way. There was a structure but no one forced me to follow the linear pathway. I could chart my own 'course'.

Offline I had some good conversations with my son who managed to spend a bit of time looking at the resources and tuned into the twitter conversation most evenings. So it achieved that objective. 

I did try to reflect on my own thinking and practice in the contexts of my own circumstances and I set up a dedicated BYOD4L blog for this. 

The proof of learning is in the doing. It's one thing to know how to do or use something but another to apply that learning. Since the course I have continued to use paper.li and develop 'lifewide zine' a twitter-sourced companion to Lifewide Magazine. I also felt more confident in using twitter and I spent more time on it. I felt that I understood it much more. I taught myself how to embed twitter feeds and tweet buttons into our websites and then populated resources like e-book chapters and magazine issues with tweet buttons in the hope that when people come across them they will retweet.

I also 'played with' paper.li  With Chrissi's help I set up a Lifewide Zine as a twitter-based companion to Lifewide Magazine. There is still lots to learn but I got over the initial hurdle. I also continued to develop my use of explee animation software creating and embedding several animations in our websites.

These three tools - twitter, explee and paper.li have opened up a whole new area of communication for me that if I had not committed time, energy and effort would have remained hidden. The value of commitment to personal development is in being able to do something I couldn't do before and in this way improving my ability to continue working with my higher purpose - to promote lifewide education.

I suppose it's inevitable as we come to the end of year that we look back on it. This year has been particularly eventful with my daughter's wedding, serious illness in the family, visits to family in Australia and visits from family in Iran and many other smaller events and achievements that connect us as a family in interesting and unpredictable ways.

This reflective mood encouraged me to think of the idea of development in the context of being part of a family. It seems to me that development is an important process for keeping the family together and for continually engaging members of the family in the process of nurturing or enabling the development of its members sometimes by design but often as a consequence of the way life unfolds.

Development as a family comes from sharing experiences good or bad and participating in and talking about small and significant events and people so that members of the family develop a shared sense of history and belonging. This was brought home to me recently as I interviewed my mother and father who are in their late 80's in order to record the story of their early life growing up in Manchester in the 1920's and 30's. One reason for doing this was to provide our family with a clearer sense of our history the detail of which will be forgotten when they are no longer with us. In fact the stories that parents tell about us and our childhood are one way in which we can appreciate our own development.

Development as a family manifests itself in what we do to, with and for each other, the sacrifices that are made and the willingness to take on rather than avoid family commitments regardless of cost. In a well functioning and caring family everyone is involved in developing themselves - to be better parents/grandparents, spouses, workers, students etc.. and often for others - children, grandchildren, siblings or the children of siblings.

A year in the life of a large family inevitably contains many events some of which cannot be predicted in advance. This year the serious illness of one family member completely disrupted our plans yet brought us together to support each other. We are all different and more empathic having had this challenging experience but we would have never wished for such an experience.

Development is easiest to see in the youngest members of the family for example my youngest grandson was born exactly a year ago and in the space of a year he has grown from a tiny helpless baby into a little boy able to walk and let you know what he wants and doesn't want to do. But another grandson shows me that not all babies are able to develop at such a pace if they are born with conditions that affect their physical and cognitive development.  Their measures of progress are smaller and much harder to see and harder for them to accomplish. Nevertheless when witnessed they bring much joy and hope for a better future.

Formal learning has an important role to play in the development of a child. A year ago my six year old grandson was a hesitant and reluctant reader. Thanks to the efforts of his mum and school he is now a fluent reader willing to search for and read the books that interest and inspire him opening up a world that is not accessible to those who cannot read. While they are at school or university our children's developmental processes are mostly hidden from us - we gain insights when we see them doing their homework or more intensely when they revise. My youngest daughter is revising intensively for her mock GCSE's at the moment - it's a serious arduous task and she is far more engaged than I ever was at  her age.

As parents we encourage our children to develop their interests beyond the classroom - we want them to have friends and be confident socially, to enjoy and engage in sport, to join clubs and societies, have hobbies and be aware of the world around them. We are happy when they want to get involved but are disappointed when they do not use the opportunities they have and sometimes we pressurise them into doing things that we believe are for their own good. We push and pull, reason and cajole, and sometimes just insist in what we believe is for the greater good of encouraging development that will help and enable our children to be happy, fulfilled and successful in the future. Sometimes these actions result in tensions as our children let us know that this is not what they want to do.

Perhaps our creative involvement as parents in these forms of development is in the success we have in enabling our children to discover things that interest them that they value rather than imposing on them what interests us and what we value. I learnt this the hard way: the fact that I was a geologist seemed to be a burden when I tried to interest my three children in the geology at our feet when we were on holiday. I carried on behaving like this with my three step children. I failed to interest any of them in something I was passionate about but when one of them became fascinated in archaeology he reluctantly admitted that he could see the parallels and could see why I was interested in it!

So our involvement in our own children's development must balance the aspirations we have for them and the need for our children to discover for themselves their own purposes and ambitions and create their own intrinsic motivations for pursuing what they value. There comes a point in this familial developmental process where we start thinking that our children must do things for themselves. For several years we tried to encourage our son to learn to drive. Thanks to friends who were willing to give him lifts and the absence of a need while at university to drive he put it off until he suddenly realised he needed it in order to get a particular job. So he paid for his own lessons and after three goes he passed his driving test. We all rejoiced at the new freedom's this act of development afforded but it only came about when his need created the desire for him to persist until he had achieved this goal.

Most personal development goes on unseen, unrecorded and unrecognised. It just goes on and on as our children grow into the people we hope and they want to become. As parents we rejoice when we think our children are moving in a direction that we think holds promise but despair when they make decisions that we don't think will lead to anything of value.

All too often we forget that much of our own learning was through the experience of trying - regardless of whether something worked out or not. Perhaps this is the hardest lesson in the family development process letting our children make their own mistakes - and being ready to help them when they do. And it can be painful process. There are times when our children develop us in directions that we do not want to go. At times we may have to compromise our beliefs in order to maintain the relationships that make up a family. Above all we have to trust that they will find their own way and make the decisions that are right for them in their circumstances.

So the continuous process of creating and recreating family is a never ending developmental process in which all members are involved for themselves and for others.

I introduced my talk with a slide that portrayed my own ecological process for making my contribution to the event. I had concluded that my learning process had been purposeful and directional - towards creating the resources and personal knowledge to be able to contribute to the seminar and workshop and that it had also involved lots of other people - the people who had codified their understandings in the articles I had read and whose ideas I had assimilated and reused, the people I had talked to especially members of my family, the people who had written blogs which I had drawn on, accounts of learning written by past students at Surrey and my daughter's evolving account of learning as she helps us pilot the lifewide development award. My learning had been both a  constructive process and an organic social process. 

The workshop involved inviting participants to think of a learning project they had been involved in and to try in about fifteen minutes to record the key elements of their learning process. Each then told their story of learning and as a group we tried to think about the ecological aspects of the story. The process was quite revealing and on the train journey home (in true ecological spirit) I decided to email the people who had participated to invite them to continue working on the ideas that had emerged and to write them up as a co-authored paper to illustrate how such a workshop methodology can work in revealing the ecological process involved in lifewide learning. So far only two people have responded so I'm uncertain as to what will emerge from the process. But I feel sure that something useful will come from it. 

On Thursday I was thinking ahead to the next issue of Lifewide Magazine and thinking of potential contributors when I googled Jay Lemke - who has written extensively on ecosocial theory and  who I had really enjoyed reading. I came across a beautifully written and inspiring chapter he wrote in 2002.. on becoming a village.. I cite a passage below to illustrate..

An old saying has it that it takes a village to raise a child. As children, we know how much we need to learn about everything and everyone in our communities to live there successfully. As we learn, we gradually become our villages: we internalize the diversity of viewpoints that collectively make sense of all that goes on in the community. At the same time, we develop values and identities: in small tasks and large projects, we discover the ways we like to work, the people we want to be, the accomplishments that make us proud. In all these activities we constantly need to make sense of the ideas and values of others, to integrate differing viewpoints and desires, different ways of talking and doing. As we participate in community life, we inevitably become in part the people that others need us to be, and many of us also find at least some of our efforts unsupported or even strenuously opposed by others... The challenges of living in a village define fundamental issues for both education and development.1

His website had a contact email address and in the spirit of nothing ventured nothing gained  I decided to invite him to write a feature article for the next issue of the Magazine.. Within a few hours I had a very encouraging response which indicated that although in the midst of travelling from Europe to San Diego he had taken the trouble to follow the link I had given him to my website and had made a relational connection.. What a wonderful illustration of our ecologies in action.

Fortified by insights gained at the CRA workshop, the other important decision I made this week was to reframe the conference we are planning for next year to focus attention on the way that universities are supporting lifewidelearning ie I turned it from a criticism of inaction to the opportunity to celebrate achievement and progress. In spite of uncertainties I went ahead and booked the venue thus committing Lifewide Education to the conference in March next year. Making these decisions brought a sense of relief, as so often decision making does, and I was much happier at the end of the week than I had been at the start.

1 Lemke J L (2002) Becoming the Village: Education across lives, in G. Wells and G. Claxton (eds) Learning for Life in the 21st Century: Sociocultural Perspectives on the Future of Education Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford, UK available on-line at http://www.jaylemke.com/storage/becoming-the-village.pdf

One of the journeys every parent goes through with their children, particularly as they travel through their teenage years, concerns the 'what am I going to do? question. We have numerous conversations directly or indirectly that touch on this question and we see our children entertain and often repeatedly reject ideas. We also tell stories about how and when we discovered who we wanted to be. Because I have both older and younger children I can see that it sometimes takes a long time to discover your purposes, and I can also appreciate much more now the joy of discovering the parental purpose as I see my own children becoming loving and caring parents.

At this point in time the question is an urgent one for my son Navid who is just completing an archaeology degree. It is clear that there is a tussle going on between his passion for archaeology and the  realisation that it is difficult to pursue a career in this field. I remember a recent conversation I had with him when he said that finding the thing you really want to do in life was the million dollar question when you’ve discovered what that thing is you can spend the rest of your life working towards

In contrast a few days ago I had a wonderful email from a nephew which told me very clearly that he had discovered his purposes and how he was going to achieve his goals. You can't help but notice in his message the deep conviction that comes across from knowing what he wanted to do with his life.

Dear friends and family,

As some of you know this August I will be leaving England to go to Micronesia, the reason for this is that I will be attending Iris Ministries’ missionary school for 9 weeks. The aim of the school is to train up a group of missionaries who have a heart to go to the unreached places of this globe and/or to the darkest bits. Therefore, upon completing the 9 weeks, this is what I aim to do.

In order to do this I still need to raise a further £865 to pay the remaining tuition fees for Micronesia.

My heart is very much to go to the places that the world has forgotten about. Having spent time with such people in Southern/Eastern Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia I find great delight in sharing the love of Jesus with these people and watching him transform their lives. Furthermore, I desire to empower the communities that I will be living in, particularly women, seeking to further their advances in education and employment, whilst integrating myself fully into the environment I find myself in.

This summer I will be working to earn money, but due to the constraints of when I get paid it won’t arrive until after the deadline for the payment of tuition. Therefore, if you feel compelled to invest in the work that I will be doing whilst in Micronesia, and as a result what I will be doing in the subsequent months and years, then that would bless me immeasurably. Alternatively, if you would prefer to be a long-term partner, donating a specific amount each month then that would be equally incredible.

I’m incredibly excited to be embarking on this journey. From a young age I have had a heart to serve God cross-culturally, and now that the dream is coming into fruition I have to pinch myself at just how good it all is. For me, this is very much a vocation, and something that I feel called to for the long run.

Therefore if you would like to partner with me and invest in what lays ahead you can do so either through paypal:

https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/send-money-online

Simply type in your email address, and then mine (bobbykeatingtomlinson@googlemail.com) and the amount you would like to give. 

Or if you prefer to do via bank transfer just email me (bobbykeatingtomlinson@googlemail.com) for my bank details.

If you have any further questions that you would like to ask me, or sign up for updates while I’m away then do not hesitate to drop me an email, I will be more than happy to answer them.

I would like to thank everyone who has blessed me and covered me with prayer already. It truly does mean the world to me that you are willing to bless what I am doing and I feel very loved as a result. 

For more information on Micronesia, here is the link to the Iris Ministries’ Website: https://www.irisglobal.org/missions/harvest/micronesia

Massive love and blessings to all,

Bobby

Once in a while we have experiences that are so different from our normal day to day routines because we have inhabited a very different sort of cultural space. This was one of those experiences when I visited the Education Faculty of Beijing Normal University - the leading institution of education in China. Thanks to the generosity of Professor Hong and the university my wife and daughter were able to come with me. 

I gave two talks to postgraduate students at the Faculty's International Workshop on Large Scale Assessment and Institutional Evaluation. It gave me the chance to talk to students about lifewide learning and education and to gain their perspectives on what it meant to them in their lives and to its relevance for China. Through my conversations with students and faculty I formed a view that there is a lot of pressure on young people in China to perform well throughout their schooling, college and university and the style of teaching, learning and assessment demands a lot of discipline and compliance. Students have huge respect for their teachers but they are also taught to be dependent rather than independent learners. They seem to have little time for activities outside of the formal curriculum although undergraduate degrees have embraced the US liberal arts education model and include general education as well as their major subject.

I interviewed several students and although they recognised the relevance and importance of lifewide learning in their own lives they doubted whether lifewide education would be possible in Chinese universities. Firstly they thought that parents wanted their children to concentrate on getting good grades and notheing else mattered. Secondly they felt that faculty would resist and not want to put the effort in to change. They felt that pressure would have to come from employers saying that they wanted employees with the sorts of capabilities that require development through lifewide experiences.

Turning to my own lifewide learning this week was very special. We were shown the meaning of hospitality. Our host Professor Hong Chegwen was so friendly, kind and generous with his words and his time. We dined with him almost every night. He is a most entertaining and funny host and we were introduced to the most amazing dishes. I can't remember experiencing so many different dishes in such a short space of time and the Chinese dining culture of continuously toasting each other and the wisdom gained through life. It is a very nice custom and toasting life and the people in our lives seems to fit very well with lifewide learning. 

Throughout the week our wellbeing was cared for by two students - Li Xianoyan and Zheng Lingyu. We will never forget their friendliness and kindness and their generous gifts of their time and help in enabling us to see some of the many attractions of Beijing including the Forbidden City, Great Wall, Tian an Men Square and some of the  Ho Hoi hutongs and markets. They guided and advised us with great care and attention always smiling and never tiring of answering our questions so that we could grow better meanings from our experiences. They acted as cultural interpreters and I could see how such people are essential to lifewide learning when you move into such unfamiliar cultural contexts. We are indebted to them for their help and we hope to be able to repay them in the future when they come to England.

Sometimes you know when you have a made a relationship from which new things will grow and I sense that my relationship with BNU, thanks to Professor Hong and the students I met, will continue to grow.

This week will be interesting because I'm contributing to a survey LWE survey aimed at revealing how, what and why we learn through our everyday experiences. It should reveal the ecology of  my lifwide learning. Three times a day I will spend  about 10mins recording these things and at the end of the week pool them with other contributors to see what emerges. I will also reflect on what my log tells me. Anyone is welcome to join the survey even if its only for a few days.  DOWNLOAD SURVEY TEMPLATE

 





Here is my completed log for the week

A Week in My Life - making sense of my activities and the learning/meaning I derive from them 

My week was atypical in the sense that it is not every week that I get the chance to participate in a conference and interact with people who shared the same sorts of interests and values as I have. But the rest of the week was typical of my current life. So what have I learnt from the process of recording and thinking about my experiences? 

ACTIVITIES
Out of a possible 168 hours (7x24h) I was active for about 112h (averaging about 16h per day). These were broken down into the following categories of activity 

WORK About 50 hours includes work for my company Chalk Mountain and Lifewide Education. This week it including  attending a conference. This week I spent considerably more time on LWE work. Also includes 6h for this recording and reflecting exercise. Quite a lot of my time was spent either preparing for the conference or trying to fix a problem with a website.            

FAMILY About 24h this includes family at home (my wife and daughter), family elsewhere (children at university and children/grandchildren living locally), and family overseas (mother and father in Australia and sisters in Australia).

DOWNTIME about 18h includes reading, listening to music, watching TV/ youtube for pleasure and education like Time Team and playing my drums

TRAVELLING about 14h mainly time in the car being a taxi service or travelling to friends and family. This week included travelling to and from Leeds to participate in a conference

CHORES about 6h includes - cleaning, shopping, preparing meals, ironing, doing odd jobs in house/garden

HABBITS
I am clearly a creature of habit and my life is quite routinised. I get up and go to bed at more or less the same time. I have breakfast, lunch and dinner at more or less the same time,   and the pattern of what I do each day when I am at home is more or less the same. I start working at around 8am and work until 12ish.. I eat lunch and watch time team, I work pm until late afternoon or evening. I have dinner at more or less the same time with my family and we use this opportunity of being together to learn about each other's lives, discuss family and make plans. Evenings after dinner are generally devoted to relaxing and I seem to do the same sort of things most evenings..  This routine might be seen in a negative way but they do not feel boring or constraining because I generally value what I am doing and derive meaning and enjoyment from the things I am doing most of the time. Indeed, negative emotions generally emerge when things get in the way of the things I am trying to do - like having to complete my tax returns.

SOCIAL INTERACTIONS
My main social interaction day to day is with my family wife and children, and thanks to my sister's call - my family in Australia. Some of these interactions are face to face and some via email/skype/telephone. Conversations and activities encourage the sharing  of daily events or news in each others lives the disclosure of feelings and practical and emotional support.

Another sort of social interaction is related to work and this is mainly focused on trying to make progress. Communication is mainly through email and I am grateful for the help and support given to me by other people involved in LWE.

Life is punctuated by less regular events like participating in conferences and this provides opportunity for face to face social interaction. 

PLANNED & UNPLANNED ACTIVITY
While there is a consistency regarding the pattern of my  activity the detail is only roughly planned from day to day. At the start of the week I know roughly what I want to try and achieve. But the details of each day only unfold within the day. There are also unanticipated events that emerge and create problems and new opportunities. This week I had two emergent situations. The first involved having to resolve a problem with the LWE website created by the person who hosts it making changes to the front page that I didn't like. The second event involved me responding to an email from Rob Ward offering me the chance to design and facilitate a workshop at the CRA conference on Friday. This is how it happened..

********************************
From: Rob Ward 
Sent: 19 November 2012 10:10
To: Norman Jasckson
Subject: Forthcoming Residential
Importance: High

Hi Norman
I'm needing to do some last minute tweaking of the Residential programme as the final short session on 'Creativity and PDP' (plenary workshop,
14.20-15.00 on Friday) can't now go ahead as planned.  Would you bewilling/able to offer a short contribution on this theme here?

Apologies for the short notice! BW Rob
********************************

Once I had thought about it I did see it as a real opportunity to try something new and develop myself in the process. 

**********************************************
From: Norman Jasckson
Sent: Mon 11/19/2012 2:14 PM
To: Rob Ward
Subject: RE: Forthcoming Residential
Okay how about trying to model creative use of technology? This process would need the room to be connected to internet and two CRA
staff to support - 1 connected to twitter, 1 connected to weebly.com a website building tool

THEME 'Using technology to stimulate students' creativity in recording ideas, experiences, learning and achievement'
Participants to assume that there are no constraints on the way technology might be used in their own PDP environments ie a blank sheet of paper.

DESIGN - process
1) Self-organise into groups of about 4 people. Groups must include someone with a smart phone.
2) 10mins - pool ideas in the group drawn from personal or imagined experiences
3) 10mins - choose 1 idea and create a poster on a sheet of flip chart paper to explain the idea also prepare a 1 min pitch
4) 5mins - find a quiet corner and person with smart phone a) takes a photo of poster  b) records 1 min explanatory pitch on phone
5) 5 mins group composes 140 character tweet to capture the essence of theiridea for twitter and tweet, photo of poster and 1 min video clip emailed to
CRA address
6) 10 mins CRA colleagues a) post tweets & images on twitter & B) upload video clips to weebly website..

outcome
The tweets would be displayed on the projector screen and if we had two screens we could also display the video clips.. People can go away and look
at the results.
*********************************************************

Between this email and the workshop I did the preparatory work necessary to make it work, I got support from JW who provided illustrative poster and recording and I liaised with DB from CRA to make sure we could do it. The workshop worked very well and I know I can add this sort of technologically enabled workshop to my repertoire of facilitation techniques. I had no idea that this would happen at the start of the week.

LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT
Unusually for me this week some of my learning was formal in the sense that I put myself into situations (presentations and workshops) with the intention of learning something. But, more typically, most of my learning was informal usually goal/achievement driven... a) completing my book project or b) trying to advance LWE. I did try several things I hadn't done before including a workshop design that seemed to engage participants and get some great results. Much of my learning was simply about gaining some new knowledge and much of it was through conversation mainly with people I already knew but who I had lost touch with. Most of my follow-up actions will be linked to this relational knowledge.  I would say that quite a lot of activity I engaged in did not lead to any significant or recognisable learning.  In terms of personal development - what I can do now that I couldn't do before the week started I would identify the workshop I facilitated and the techniques I developed to engage people and record their creations. That experiential knowledge, the capability I developed and used and the confidence I gained can be used again.

Most of my learning was driven by my needs. I needed to modify a logo so I learnt how to use photoshop top do it. I uploaded a slide show to weebly for the first time. I learned how to design and facilitate a workshop I took on. Some of my learning was simply a biproduct of enjoying myself.. like searching for music on Youtube, spotting a new band I liked on Later with Jools Holland. There is also learning of a more strategic in nature which is linked to my work namely reading articles and books that enable me to add to my understanding. This week I read a transcript and watched a video clip of John Seeley Brown's talk on the entrepreneurial learner which I think LWE can use. I had picked this up from a link in a blog by Jane Hart that I was examining with a view to commissioning a chapter for LWE e-book. Much of my learning comes from this sort of intelligent and sometimes haphazard searching.

I also continued to develop my understandings of the ways of thinking promoted by Clayton Christiensen by reading his book and trying to apply his ideas to what I was doing which I know will  have significance for LWE. 

Some of my learning has come from using tools like stat counter to monitor how my websites are being used. This is a new form of learning over the time the knowledge will be valuable to know what interventions draw people to our resources.

In a more typical week I would do a lot more writing. For me writing is a very important way of developing and organising my thinking, creating meaning and recording my understandings.  This log and the reflective piece served as my main writing task this week. 

MEANINGIn my family context meaning is created through the day to interactions and conversations we have and the things we do to help and encourage each other and give each other emotional and practical support.

In the work context meaning is created through my book and in developing and promoting LWE. I feel I made quite a lot of progress with the later this week both in the redesign of the website and in my involvement with the conference. Meaning is also created through interaction with my family and feeling that I am in some way helping them. Reflecting on my experience of participating at the CRA conference I felt that I had, at least momentarily, regained a lost identity and renewed a set of friendships/relationships with people and higher education that had been eroded because it was no longer part of my everyday experience. This meant a lot to me and it has taught me the value of trying to find or create these opportunities for my own wellbeing. I devoted a lot of time this week to intentionally learn about my own learning and meaning making. I probably spent 4 or 5 hours this week recording and analysing my activities and what I have learnt from them. The value in the process is that it has enabled me to examine more systematically what I'm doing and how I draw meaning and learning from my activities.

VALUES  & IDENTITIES
One of the purposes of this exercise was to examine the ways in which activities and behaviours, and what motivates them, reflect values and identities. Through the week I was mainly working with two sorts of identity.

The first identity I embodied was my working identity - my work is essentially academic (eg being a writer/scholar - the book commission I worked on), educational (applying my knowledge of how people learn to the concept of lifewide learning)  and educational developer (trying to influence other educators). The central values here are those of being professional in these fields and trying, through hard work, thinking and creativity to progress each of my work enterprises. An important part of my identity as a teacher is my ability to communicate ideas and engage people in using them. Because of the conference I was able to do both of these in presenting my ideas on lifewide development and facilitating a couple of workshops which enabled people to try out some tools I had developed, or enabled small groups to share ideas and create some original educational designs. It is very important for me to maintain this part of my identity but which is quite hard to do now that I am no longer working in an institution. As a result of reflecting on this I strengthened the way I market this aspect of my professional work on my website.

The second identity I embodied relates to me as a member of a large family and a complex set of relationships that make up my family ... as a father/step father, husband, grandfather, brother and son.... the central value here is the love for my family and my desire to care for and help family members and the value of staying in touch with each other.  This week, thanks to technology I was able to have interactions and good conversations with my wife and daughter at home.. with my daughter and son at university - telephone/skype, with my wife when I was a away and she was away by telephone and skype, with my mum and dad in Australia (telephone), my two sisters in Australia (skype) and my daughter and my three grandsons. This record shows the value of the technologies we have for enabling us to communicate across the world.

I also experienced two other sorts of identity during the week..

The first was a sense of regaining, at least for a short time, an identity I held a few years ago as a respected thought leader in higher education. By being with a group or people I had worked with, including people from two agencies I had worked for, and being reminded of the roles I played in enabling change to happen in the HE system, I felt part of that society or community again. Here the values were around championing an educational cause (PDP, and providing concrete practical support to enabling it to be implemented. The fact that my commitment has carried on beyond employment gives me credibility in this respect.

Another identity I nurtured was my identity as a drummer in a band. We normally practice every week so this identity gets validated when we come together. When I'm listening to music in the car I sometimes play our own music or I imagine playing the drums to whatever is being played. This week we didn't have a practice but I had an hours work out on Sunday. Here my values relate to my love of music and of making music particularly with others and trying to improve myself as a drummer.

COMPARISON OF HOW I USED MY RESOURCES WITH MY PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN
This is the first time I have ever taken a week of my life and tried to record how I have used it. In his book on Measuring Your Life Clayton Christensen (p62) talks about strategy -   Real strategy .. in our daily lives is created through hundreds of everyday decisions about how we spend our resources (our time). As you're living your life from day to day, how do you make sure you are holding in the right direction? Watch where your resources flow. If they are not supporting the strategy you have decided upon, then you're not implementing that strategy at all.  The personal development plan I made in September identified my most important goals as:

1 To lead and contribute to the further development and promotion of the Lifewide Education enterprise
2 To grow the Chalk Mountain business and deliver a good service to clients
3 To support my (large) family - do whatever is necessary to help them
4 To build a recording studio and develop the technical skills to record my band
5 To create a woodland garden
6 To be open and responsive to new possibilities and adapt to or take advantage of the unplanned and unexpected

I think my life this week has supported achievement of the first three goals and I had a good example of responding to goal six in accepting at short notice, the challenge to facilitate a workshop at the CRA conference.  Goals 4&5 are much lower in my list of priorities than the first three goals. So it would appear that, this week at least, is quite closely aligned to my personal strategy.

CONTEXTS & PROBLEM SOLVING
I often use John Stephenson's contexts and challenges tool to help me reflect on the things I am doing.  I would say that this week. Most of my activities have been in the familiar context and familiar problems domain but the conference and the activities I undertook did put me outside my comfort zone (unfamiliar context) and tackle an unfamiliar challenge ( the workshop on creative use of technology).


VALUE OF THE EXERCISE
I estimate that the whole exercise of recording and analysing my log took me about 7 hours which I have allocated to LWE work. So was it worth it? I think it's helped me appreciate the value of this sort of tool and reflective process to helping people appreciate their learning and development in their everyday lives. I now think that the process and outcomes could be usefully integrated into the Lifewide Development Award.

The exercise has:
1) enabled me to see my life as an integrated whole (during this period of time) and see how different parts of my life interact
2) revealed the patterns of daily activity in my life highlighting routines and more unusual activity and the motives for engaging in such activity
3) forced me to think about the learning that is associated with different sorts of activity and the potential ways in which I have developed/changed through only a week of living - indeed this reflective exercise has made a significant contribution to my learning this week added to my understanding of how to promote reflection on our own LWE
4) encouraged me to see the meaning I attribute to different activity in my life
5) enabled me to check how I am allocating my resources to the things I value and confirmed  that I am spending my time in ways that are consistent with the goals I set out in my personal development plan
6) enabled me to recognise that the identities I embody and enact  which are closely related to the things I value 
7) enabled me to apply some of the wisdom I have recently discovered in Clayton Christensen's book  to reflect on my own activity and behaviour. This has helped me see how some of the ideas in this book might be incorporated into the guidance and support we give to lifewide learners.

My activities this week have been mainly focused on three areas of my life - my family, my work (ChalkMountain book project) and LifewideEducation (launching our Award). 

1 Chalk Mountain - Last week I talked about how difficult it is sometimes to make a start. The chapter I have been writing has been a struggle over a long period of time. I put it off and put it off. I did bits here and there and generally hated doing it which is very unusual for me when the task involves writing. But eventually, when I couldn't put it off any longer, and having missed my own deadline twice, I did knuckle down and did it and the result was okay. At least it got us to the stage where we can see where to go next with it. This was in complete contrast to the experience I had writing another chapter the week before which was a joy and just flowed from my mind... I am not sure I learnt much from this struggle but I did get valuable feedback on both chapters which means I can now shape them to make a better fit with what the institution wants.. So the learning is reinforcing what I already know about the need for feedback in order to produce work that is useful.

 2 Lifewide Education - My biggest achievement this week was to launch the Lifewide Development Award on the 28/09. I spent time preparing a slide show for the introductory talk and gave the talk to students on the MA Human Resources Management course at Southampton Solent University. I have worked for a long time to reach this moment and done much work to create the guidance and the website infrastructure. It gave me a real sense of satisfaction in talking about what we are doing and explaining the strong positive ideas that underpin the practice.

 'Making' the slide show was enjoyable and I felt creative. It  resulted in some useful materials to help me explain the background, purposes,  structure, process and tools underlying the scheme. I realise that this slideshow is an important tool and I can see how I might produce a podcast for the  website from the materials. I think this was an example of 'learning by making  a tool'. It's always hard to judge what participants are thinking but my sense is that they found it interesting and I am hoping they will want to participate.

 In putting the materials together I came across the old African proverb - it takes a village to raise a child and recognised the wisdom in this and its value to LWE as a concept. It is a great metaphor for thecommunity-based enterprise that will have to underlie the Award if it is to be successful.  I'm delighted that the on-line Community Forum I established two weeks ago is working really well and I hope that we can draw in the learners to share their experiences.
 
3 My third area of activity relates to my family.. At the weekend my wife and I took our daughter to university. Not surprisingly she was  apprehensive and anxious moving away from home for the first time.  We had prepared her as best we could and she had prepared herself by spending three weeks in France - her first independent holiday. After an emotional farewell we left her to get on with it. A week later she tells us how hard it's been - surprisingly she is 'having to juggle loads of things' and
'it's been so frustrating spending three days trying to get logged on to the university system' and 'everywhere is so big and it's easy to get lost' and 'the buses don't come and I spent an hour waiting for one in the rain'. This is why
going to university is good for you - it's a nice (protected) wake up call to the real world after years of timetabled familiarity..

My oldest daughter is very much in the real world with one child of 5 and two month old twins and a husband in America.. So I spent some time trying to help.. I was even left for 2 hours by myself with them - that was quite an experience and only filled me even more with admiration.  But at least I can feed them both at the same time now and I am growing in confidence and experience of how to look after them.. Incidentally, she is also two thirds through on OU degree trying to
fit in the assignments around babies and no sleep.. Its quite humbling...

 So an interesting week in which I think I have achieved in three areas of my development plan..

Learning in passing -I clicked a Linked-In Learning without Frontiers  link to a blog by Gaurav Gupta http://agoodschool.blogspot.co.uk and discovered a lovely little blog site called the Good School site..In it I
found the it takes a village to raise a child proverb and I contacted the writer (an Indian) with an invitation to write a short piece for Lifewide Magazine which he is doing.. I feel its a good example of useful knowledge and relationships emerging by just following links.