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 ([email protected]) and the amount you would like to give. 

Or if you prefer to do via bank transfer just email me ([email protected]) 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

I remember completing a diary once as part of a work evaluation exercise where over a two week period every hour I had to record everything I had done. One of the headings was 'planning' and at the end of the week I was surprised to discover just how much time I spent doing it. That changed my view about the importance of planning in my work but its also true of every day life.

A busy organised world requires us to spend a lot of time planning. If you want to undertake anything out of the ordinary that also requires planning.
My reflections on planning were triggered by a deadline I had to meet to provide an abstract for an event at which I was to be a keynote speaker in Macau in November. It forced me to think about what I was going to speak about and how I was going to structure my talk. This then led me to think about logistics of how I was going to get there. For the first time I searched to find out where exactly I was going and was pleasantly surprised to find it adjacent to Hong Kong. I discovered that there was a ferry service from the airport. I also checked out the visa situation with the conference organisers. I decided I would try and combine it with a flying visit to see my parents in Australia. So I spent a couple of hours searching for flights and comparing routes and costs and then drilling down how I would get to the airport early in the morning in Sydney. I found myself thinking about all sorts of things all of which were about imagining the future and what I needed to do inhabit that future.

This was not the only thing I planned this week I designed a workshop for an event at Southampton Solent University and interacting with co-presenters at the university. Thinking ahead to how we might better optimise our websites I also downloaded a booklet for future reading. I had a conversation with my daughter about how she might conclude the piloting of the Lifewide Development Award pilot. I also spent time thinking about our Lifewide Education conference next March and contacted two potential speakers and someone who could record the event. With my wife I discussed what we would eat at a dinner party planned for the weekend, and with my daughter we thought a few weeks ahead to her twins birthday party which she wanted to hold at our house. With my band I discussed the idea of a doing a concert in our garden in late August.. weather permitting!! Planning and thinking about the future in imaginative and analytical ways pervades all aspects of our life and without it I don't suppose as many things would happen.. or if they happened they would happen in a disorganised way without the results you want to achieve. Planning can simply be thinking generally about something in the future or it can be about deciding exactly what to do. And plans - the results of planning can be explicit and somewhat rigid or vague and fluid. And personal plans evolve over time with different levels of detail being added at different stages in a perpetually evolving process. And plans can be changed as new circumstances emerge. That's the beauty of planning... nothing is fixed until it has actually happened.

In my google searches this week (actually searching around what is learning?) I came across a nice short paper explaining why, in the corporate environment, planning is learning. Its trying to understand the future and all the complexities associated with it and trying to imagine how you get there. In doing so it is taking the fundamental step towards learning to find a way into the future. I think the same holds true when we plan our own future. In our imaginings we are trying to understand what we have to do in order to secure a future of a certain type... and from that point of imagining (our rough plans) we continually refine our thinking until we get there.

PLANNING AS LEARNING
http://www.sims.monash.edu.au/subjects/ims5042/stuff/readings/de%20geus.pd

Opportunities to help shape thinking about the future of learning and education don't come very often so I jumped at the chance to submit a paper to the EU's Joint Research Centre Call for Vision Papers on the Future of Open Education. 

In 2011 the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies published a report on the Future of Learning in which they outlined a vision for learning that was 'lifewide and lifelong'.  Not surprisingly we used our own Lifewide Development Award as a model for an European Award and related this to the ways in which it might support the vision of personalised, collaborative and informal learning that was envisioned in the Future of Learning Report. Our paper was not only accepted but was deemed a winning entry by the organisers so, as the author of the paper I was invited to a Foresight Workshop led by Christine Redecker in Seville at the end of April.

About twenty people with backgrounds in HE education, policy, research, commercial learning enterprises, interests in technology and not for profit educational enterprises were brought together to engage in a facilitated structured process to consider the question of Open Education and Open Education Resources in 2030 in the context of lifelong learning. Underlying this exercise is the political movement towards greater openness especially with open publication of data and information and the European Commission's new initiative on "Opening-up Education" to be launched mid-2013. 

With such a diverse group of people contributing to the workshop it was not surprising that there were tensions, for example between those who seemed only to be concerned with meeting the learning needs of people developing themselves for work, and those who wanted to adopt a more holistic view of lifelong-lifewide learning.  Some participants were primarily concerned with formal learning that was designed and directed by institutional or commercial providers, and more or less conformed to traditional content-based, transmission models of education, while others were concerned to recognise the needs and interests of self-motivated, self-organised/self-managed learners who would create their own ecosystems for learning and personal development and draw on networks and communities and information from many sources rather than simply relying on pre-packaged educational materials. This group also saw the value of multiple sources and types of recognition systems eg open badges and open awards as well as more traditional forms of assessment and recognition. The workshop revealed that openness and trust are important cultural requisites to achieve the 2030 vision.

Some of the more significant discussion themes are listed below.

1 The need for a 2030 society that values lifewide-lifelong learning and is committed to openness. We need to start talking about lifewide learning if it is be a recognised reality.

2 The need to develop capabilities and confidence of learners of all ages for the diverse forms of learning that are envisaged in the Future of Learning vision.

3 An abundance of open source information resources including OER and vast quantities of information not specifically designed for educational purposes. Knowledge grown in social networks and personal narratives of growth and development are likely to be important contributors.

4 The need to maintain good levels of competency in a technologically enabled world. In 2030 technology will be used to help people in all aspects of their learning and development eg

·         to reflect on their situations and evaluate their learning and development needs

·         to help match needs and interests to high quality relevant information and learning opportunities

·         to identify trustworthy communities where knowledge is being co-created

·         to provide on-going support and feedback

·         to identify potential sources of recognition and accreditation of learning and perhaps make comparisons between 
          sites

·         to enable people to capture and represent their learning and development in ways that will be accepted by any
          scheme for recognition

·         to help them create the narratives of their development.

5 A wealth of open educational practices to support individuals learning - the issue will be decided which practices to adopt.

6 A wealth of mechanisms and practices for valuing individuals' learning and development. 'By 2030 I want any aspect of my learning and development to be recognised and validated by an appropriate authority if I wanted it to' (workshop participant). The issue will be decided which practices to adopt.

7 A policy that supported the vision but contained plenty of space and resource for improvising and responding to the unexpected.

Reflections on the process

I am thinking about the idea of personal learning ecologies and the process I got involved in provided a good example of one that was partly my own creation and partly someone else's (the JRCs).  My own ecology comprises my big learning ecology to support the lifewide learning enterprise. Much of the learning is emergent and comes from seeking an opportinity - like the call for vision papers - and working with it. But once involved I had to quickly grow an understanding of Open Education. But I was aware that I was part of the learning ecology the JRC team had built to fulfil its goals of exploring open education.

Because of this process I have realised that what we were trying to do in the Lifewide Education community is entirely consistent with the visions for lifewide-lifelong learning being developed by the JRC team for Europe. I now see the lifewide education enterprise as open educational practice being co-created and shared by a trustworthy community. Our Magazine, e-book and PoD book are open educational resources and we are continually growing these within our community. We distribute the knowledge we have grown through a suite of websites and make it freely available to anyone who sees value in what we have produced.  We also offer open educational services through our Lifewide Development Award and we are growing open educational practices to help learners gain recognition for their lifewide learning. For Lifewide Education, Open Education is already here, we provide a concrete example of an idealistic, inclusive, free, community-based learning enterprise that embodies the Future of Learning vision.

The EU Commissions Open Education/ Future of Learning project provides Lifewide Education with a fantastic opportunity to contribute ideas on how the 2030 vision might be realised.

Joint Research Centre, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies WEBSITE
http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/openeducation2030/

References
Jackson N J  An EU-wide Lifewide Development Award. Open Education 2030 Vision Paper
http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/openeducation2030/files/2013/04/OE2030_LLL_Booklet.pdf

'The Future of Learning: An EU Lifewide Development Award' can be found in the Booklet 'Open Education 2030' Contributions to the JRC-IPTS call for vision papers Part 1 Lifelong Learning Available online at:
http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/openeducation2030/files/2013/04/OE2030_LLL_Booklet.pdf

Today at breakfast I noticed that our two Canada geese were on the lawn...This was the first time they were together for several weeks and I said..ohh the eggs must have hatched. Sure enough there were four bundles of fluff... running around next to them..  Life and death are all around us..  

The spring has always been my favourite time of the year. But since my wife Jill died fourteen years ago on May 5th it has also been a time of sadness as I am reminded of her and the life she did not have.

I play the events over and over again in my mind always feeling guilty that I did not say more or do more for her. It is the deep sadness within our family that will always be there.. rarely spoken about because we prefer to talk about the happiness she gave us rather than the sadness we feel at her passing.

The one thing that makes me smile is the foreget-me-nots that seem, no matter what the weather, to time their arrival for this significant anniversary. They seem to spring up everywhere, without any need for encouragement, ...they carpet parts of the woods and poke out of the nooks and crannies on the paths, and stick out of every corner of the garden. They are spontaneous and rampant and have no need of a cultivator they do it all by themselves.

They even appear in the unruly pile of leaves that we call the compost heap this year is sporting a clutch of pale blue flowers. They are modest little flowers and their beauty only reveals itself when you get up close. They remind me so much of her radiant in their beauty and tenacious in their spirit to shine in the world. They have become a symbol of her memory - a memory I know my children share because we have talked about it.

This year I resolved to do something more to honour her memory... I bought a couple of big pots and filled them with forget-me-nots from the garden and gave one to my son and one to my daughter. We will never forget you but this simple reminder fills us with joy.. Life is full of symbols and creating a life of shared significance is probably one of the most meaningful things we can do.