Its been a funny month and at the end of it I feel I have less to show for my efforts than I did nearer the start of it. The list of what was done is given in the monthly report. In the first two weeks I completed the report on change in the School of Design for SS University. I was very pleased with the way it had come together and I had commissioned at Chalk Mountain's expense AA to produce some illustrations. It turned out to be a big job and we went backwards and forwards with ideas. I showed PB some of the images and I could tell that she wasn't overly impressed. But we pressed on as I was keen to have an example of an illustrated report even though I was paying for it myself. We completed the task and submitted the report and didnt hear anything for two weeks but today (last day of the month) I got an email saying  PB and JL were worried that the VC might not like them - so basically they wanted the report without the illustrations.  So I feel as if we have gone backwards. But this is what happens if you take risks and you have to take risks in order to show people and give them things that they can decline as well as accept. The lesson for me is that we need to develop the illustrations with the clients and this process has to be designed into the knowledge creation process - although it won't always be easy.

The other set back has been in connection with the StoryShare idea which I will describe in another blog. Firstly, the person who I commissioned to draw some illustrations for an example story book did not stick to the brief and I am not entirely happy with the results. That is recoverable I think. Secondly, I approached AA with the proposition to be our principal illustrator on a profit sharing basis. Unfortunately, he declined the opportunity. So I feel we haven't made much progress there. On a really positive note ES has been a great asset to the company and has got on with his own projects and delivered to a high standard. He has also added new ideas to our enterprise.

One of the reasons for making the recordings was to advertise ourselves to get some gigs. The next step was to build a website. Some of us wanted a nicely designed bespoke and I was hoping that Ed, having given us a lot of time to produce the recordings, would be commissioned, but some of the band are stingy when it comes to investing in infrastructure and they hummed and arred...In the end I sat down and created a simple one in couple of hours thanks to the new skills and recent experience of building my own site. A good example of enhanced capability finding a use very quickly.
http://freeworlders.weebly.com/ 

My grandson, who is nearly five stayed with us over the weekend. He is at the wonderful age where he lives half his life in an imaginary world and half in the social world of reasoning and rules and right and wrong.

To stimulate his imaginary world he will pick up something that wobbles and run around watching it wobble talking to himself.. you can see him transporting himself into another world. He gets very self conscious if he catches you looking at him and he only does it in front of people he trusts. He told me this.

The other part of his life is spent trying to comprehend the world through what I would call productive inquiry. He asks lots of questions which elicit responses from the people around him. 

I was burning some dead wood in the woodland area at the bottom of the garden when he came and we spent a very pleasant couple of hours chatting and feeding the fire with wood, then going off and doing something else and coming back and making the fire grow again from the ashes. We talked about all sorts of things, school, his friends, his forthcoming birthday, other countries, fire, family, the topics are endless and that is one of the nice things about talking to children - their minds are completely fluid.. there doesn't have to be a logic or reason for talking about something.

When I look back on the afternoon I realised that more or less everything we did and said was, from his point of view, learning to comprehend the world a little better.. apart from the time he wobbled of course.. 

The end of the month holds a special significance when you are trying to accomplish something because its the time you take stock by looking back and considering what has been achieved. This is especially so if you are leading something - in my case the two enterprises - Chalk Mountain and Lifewide Education. In February Chalk Mountain has necessarily taken a back seat in order to give Lifewide Education a push. As the month drew to an end I decided to put together a short report (initially for the team but then I decided to make it public so that the whole community could see our activity and where we were going). I have a strange need to make myself accountable to others: by doing this it seems to drive me even harder. The satisfaction comes from seeing concrete achievements and I like to see these written down rather than just sitting in my head. 

I attach the report which shows our collective activity and the  results of our enterprise. 

This was the month that we created a core team (rather than a team on paper). We held our first team meeting (Jenny, Russ, Brian and me) at the start of the month and this was a very important point in our history. For the first time we were all involved in a conversation about what this was all about and we got agreement on the way forward. But the most important thing for me to emerge through our conversations, emails and individual engagements during the month was the way in which our core team came together. We are all volunteers and people give what they can when they can but somehow we manage to achieve a lot and I think that makes us feel good as a team. Everyone plays their part and we have already established a culture of participation . I feel supported in my decision making for the company and I think the team feel that they are involved in the planning and decision making. 

We agreed that we should begin our campaign to raise awareness of the enterprise and invite people to join us.At the start of the month we began with about 30 people registered on the site and by the end we have 156 people. A phenomenal achievement really and one that fills me with hope that there are a lot of people working in higher education that see value in what we are offering. The devil is in the detail and a lot of time was invested in engaging the networks and forming communications that were appropriate and appealing.

Written reports rarely convey the detail that underlies the actions that lead to something useful. For example - we decided to look for people who were influential who would be willing to act as patrons. We identified Charles Handy as being someone suitable - I spent time hunting down his address on the net, bought a book he had written about himself and used the information in this to confirm his address - there were several Charles' Handy's listed, then carefully composed a letter that was circulated to the team for comment. After making adjustments in response to feedback I posted the letter with a copy of the book and Newsletter and behold I had a positive response by email, which I then responded to.. The detail gets invented as you act and you are never quite sure what amount of detail will work but at some point you decide yes this gives us the best chance of success.

When you look at the whole programme of work there are headings like - engage JISC networks but decisions have to be made and communications have to be crafted, and groups have to be set up to encourage participation.. everything is an unfolding, dynamic story and once committed you have to go where the action takes you. But this is what I enjoy doing. I enjoy creating activity and action that causes things to happen and at the end of the month I can see that we are in a very different place to where we were at the start of the month.

So what I have learnt from this first month. Well I am more confident that our ideas and enterprise has wide appeal and in my mind I am already scaling up my conservative estimate of the size of the community we can grow - assuming that we can maintain interest. Activity that leads to good results enhances confidence.

I have also developed a lot of knowledge for practice for examples, I now know that we have, through the JISC maillists, and our own community email list extracted from our website, the means to communicate with a lot of potentially interested people.

I know that we can produce a good quality Magazine. We have a good editor and we are able to either write ourselves or attract good people.

Having invested a lot of time in learning how to manage the website I am also now confident that I can be an effective administrator and with Ed Sillars (Chalk Mountain technology director) we can manage the technical side of the website. I have also built/ created a new website and have begun blogging as a piece of activity-based research in order to get more experience of how we might use technology to support an accreditation scheme. So this website is the result of my efforts. I must say that I have felt this to be a very creative process.

I also made my first wikipedia entry 'Lifewide Education' and learnt through the experience how the peer review process works. The article I ended up with was so much better for the intervention of a peer.

In the past month I have invested a lot of time in learning how to use different technologies in order to support the lifewide education enterprise.

I have also begun to engage with the RSA. I attended two meetings and managed to speak to a number of Fellows. I also registered in the Fellowship Social Network and made my first posts. I now have a better idea about what is possible and I am less optimistic about engaging Fellows after my first attempt to post in the Fellows Social network.

Finally, thanks to John Cowan's ideas, we made good progress towards setting out initial ideas for an accreditation scheme. This will be a major focus for work in the next month. 

Overall the month has confirmed to me that, yes you can have plans for action but the detail of the activity, and a whole pile of new activities, emerge in the process of turning your vision and plans into something concrete. Ultimately, its your ability to sense what is the right thing to do at the right time and to improvise appropriate actions that lead to the effects you want. And if they don't you simply try something else.

Originally written 27/01/12

Although we have recorded ourselves on video several times we have never tried to get a good sound recording. In the belief that we will only get better if we can really listen to ourselves when we are not playing - as opposed to the very different experience of listening while you are playing we had a go last night.

Thanks to Ed Sillars we had a go at making one last night. What surprised me was the amount of preparation time involved. Ed spent over 2 hours close microphoning all the instruments and testing out levels before the band arrived then another half an hour balancing. But once everything was set we worked for four hours and managed to record 10 songs. What was different to our usual practice was that this was performance involving a level of focus, concentration, self-awareness and self-critical analysis that significantly higher than practice situations. We also had feedback from Ed so that second and third recordings of the same song could be improved. We all found it both more tiring and more exhilarating than practicing and tempers got a bit frayed towards the end as we could see we were making mistakes because we were tiered.

Recording adds a new dimension to the pleasure of mastering a tune and creating a sound that you are proud.From a lifewide learning perspective the lessons reflect:
1) the importance of teamwork involving everyone who is playing and the person who is recording - creation is a collaborative effort
2) the importance of preparation in order to get a good performance - we had been practising several songs for four or five weeks and Ed's meticulous preparation before the session.
3) the value of technology in the hands of a skilful technician in the process of creation
4) the importance of feedback in order to improve something that is already pretty good

2 weeks later
I have just listed to Ed's recordings and they are great. The best I have ever heard the band and for the first time I can sit and listen to my own contribution. Members of the band are very happy with the results.

Here are a few examples

Originally written 10/02/11

I had a call from my sister in Australia.. she was just pulling out of mum and dad's drive on the 4 hour journey home after taking dad to the hospital.. the wonders of modern day technology.. I expected the worst possible news but was delighted to hear that his illness and loss of weight wasn't due to cancer but to a none infectious form of TB and it was treatable with a cocktail of antibiotics.. Dad had also suspected the worst and he was bowled over with the news. Needless to say everyone is greatly relieved and the soldier soldiers on..

As if this wasn't enough, my youngest daughter's partner called me from Dubai to ask permission to marry my daughter.. Well that doesn't  happen every day so when I had gotten over the shock I made some enquiries about his intentions before giving him the permission he sought.. I was flattered if the truth be known.. my son in law didn't do it! A few days later my daughter rang to say he had proposed at a desert resort..very romantic.. So now thoughts of a family wedding are crowding into my already crowded head. What a momentous few days!!!

From a lifewide perspective you cannot prepare for the sorts of events I have described above. They shock you to the core and you have to deal with the emotional turmoil that ensues.. Certainly talking about the situations helps enormously and my wife has been a big help.. in fact she triggers even more stuff as you talk through the implications, reorganise your life and gain reassurance that your children are making the right decisions. The role of significant others becomes essential in dealing with  these sorts of unusual family situations.

Originally written 04/02/12


I find that families are definitely the places where emotions are experienced the most. Perhaps because this is where our most significant relationships are. This week has been a bit of a roller coaster as simultaneously, in two different family spaces I have been hit with events that have both elated and disturbed me.

Thursday lunchtime my daughter Jodie called , a bit breathless because she was walking but she is expecting her second child and she had just had a 3 month scan and she wanted to tell me her news.. which was she was having twins - identical twins!! To say I was shocked (gobsmacked) is an understatement. There are just

It was only a quick call but its one of the moments when you feel your life will not be the same again and you start to imagine the implications, as I did over lunch with Taraneh (Jodie's step mum) who was just as excited as me..  That evening Taraneh spoke to Jodie and she told her that the person doing the scan had seen a possible abnormality..I felt totally deflated as the consequences flashed in front of me and thoughts of how my daughter must be feeling - she has an anxious three weeks wait until the next scan.

On top of this I also received the news from my sister in Australia that my 87 year old dad is likely to be very ill with lung cancer. He's always had a bad chest - bronchitis in childhood  and emphysema in later life but somehow he has soldiered on. The move from Lancashire to Australia with my five brothers and sisters in 1972 has also helped as has his 25 years of retirement in the beautiful seaside town of Narawallee on the south NSW coast. I always knew that one day I would get a phone call or something like this would happen. I spoke to him briefly and he seemed quite cheerful  reminding me that he was 87 and he'd had a good innings.. He is going to talk to his GP tomorrow.

So its been an emotional week with all sorts of emotions churning around and I know these will influence my decisions about what I do.

originally written 28/01/12

I have been reading Charles Handy's book 'Myself and other more important matters' (great title!). He describes a wonderful story about when he was in charge of a management programme for up and coming executives. He would start off by asking each of the participants to reflect on the most powerful learning experiences of the lives, so far. But never, in all the times he asked the question, did anyone mention a course of study. People always came up with accounts of, a brush with death of their own or someone close, or an occasion when they were overwhelmed and out of their depth, or of being stretched beyond their competence. 'So now you know' he would tell them, 'you will not count this course as one of your most memorable learning opportunities unless it helps you to reflect upon and understand the experiences you have had in the past. If it does it will enable you to deal better with the situations that lie ahead. 'Experience + reflection is the learning that lasts.'

Seems to me that this goes to the heart of what we are trying to encourage through the idea of lifewide learning and education. By encouraging and helping people to think about their decision making, their actions and their effects in different life spaces, we are helping people to make better sense of current and past experiences and enabling them to approach new situations with more awareness and confidence. 

Charles Handy is someone I think we could approach to see if he would lend his support to our venture.

originally written 21/01/12

Every story has a beginning, middle and end but not always easy to define the beginning, or any of these points for that matter, in an unfolding and interconnected life story. I have chosen a point in May 2006, five months after I had become Director of the Surrey Centre for Excellence in Professional Training and Education (SCEPTrE). This is the point we launched the Centre at a public event and it was here that we had to declare publicly what our mission or purpose was. Just before the event we invited an artist Julian Burton Delta 7 to help us create our vision in words. HE came armed with boxes of pastels and began asking us questions about what we were trying to do. As we spoke he turned our conversation into this picture which stayed on the wall of the Centre for the five years we occupied the space and we used it over and over again to show people our purpose - to explore what learning for an ever changing, complex and challenging world might mean. As an educator this picture crystallised a goal that I believe is worth pursuing and it has taken me down a path that has resulted me in creating this blog. So I think its a good point to start this story and provide an underlying reason for the lifewide learning enterprise I am involved in.

I am exploring how the weebly website technology might be used to support the lifewide learning enterprise so the purpose of my blog is to record some of the experiences that make up my life and draw out my ongoing development from these experiences.

I have started a blog on several occasions but I have to admit that I am not very good at creating a diary. My ambition is to make at least one significant posting each week. But at the start I will make a number of entries that I have made over the last few weeks in word. I will use the same framework I have established for my lifewide activities to categorise my stories and their purpose is to 1) demonstrate my own commitment to lifewide learning and personal development 2) show how I am developing myself.

I have to admit that it was my son Navid who introduced me to weebly and after creating my own website - something I had wanted to do for a long time. In the past I had the excuse that I could not programme but the tools weebly (and others) provide have changed all this. Now it is just a case of spending a bit of time learning how to use the tools effectively. I am very impressed with guidance and tools weebly offers. The whole environment makes me feel creative and empowered, and because of this I think that this time I will persist with my blog.