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

My daughter and her children are a very significant part of my life. This week I did my Tuesday child care looking after the twins and also Wednesday afternoon while my daughter went to the dentist.  I love my twin grandsons as if they were my own children.. My wife said this and I realised it when she said it. There is no doubt about it I have bonded to them and them to me in a big way.

They are approaching their first birthday at the end of May. It's been a long, difficult, at times gruelling and emotionally challenging year for my daughter who has had to cope with her three children by herself much of the time. They were born 10 weeks early so developmentally they are really only nine months old. In the last few weeks Archie has learnt to sit and this has liberated him so that he can do occupy himself so much more.  His development is in stark contrast to Alfie's who actively resists sitting... In the last few weeks we have become acutely aware and concerned of differences in his development compared to Archie's. We have always been conscious of the consultant's diagnosis before they left hospital that Alfie's brain scans showed signs of damage - probably because his brain was starved of oxygen at some point. Something that I think is not unusual in babies with such low birth weights. We have lived in hope that everything will be okay but we think we are now seeing the effects of this damage in his development. For  the first time this week I googled to find out something about cerebral palsy. The information was both reassuring (that there is help and the condition doesn't get worse) and distressing (depending on the degree it can be quite disabling).  There are a number of signs that are pointing to this condition for example one of Alfie's arms seems less active than the other,  he throws himself backwards when sitting or standing and he often  goes into a trance. I know my daughter and her husband  are very worried as I am for them and Alfie. The physiotherapist came today and she is going to arrange for some tests for Alfie to check on epilepsy and his cognitive functioning.. I tried to reassure my daughter that the testing is for the best as the earlier any discoveries are made the quicker treatments can be put in place.. But my heart bleeds for them as parents. But she is a remarkable woman and Alfie is fortunate to have her for his mum.. She will I know do everything she can for him and I/we will try and support her and them as family as much as we can. We will not give up hope that his life will not be so limited and I will not dwell on all the potential scenarios and imaginings of of what lies ahead. Instead I will remember the wonderful smile he gives me when he hears 'Hello Alfie its granddad!' and the way he rests on my tummy when I cuddle him. What a funny mix of joy and sadness life can be.

During this week I began to develop a better understanding of the concept of wellbeing by reading reports and articles I found through google searches as I began to find information for the next issue of Lifewide Magazine. Four incidents triggered emotional and empathetic responses and helped me develop a deeper understanding. The first involved my daughter.. I suddenly got a call saying my grandson had suddenly developed acute stomach ache at school and she had to take him (and the twins) to A&E. I immediately dropped everything and rushed over to A&E where I found my daughter trying to cope with two screaming babies and a sick child. I took the twins back home and looked after them for the next five hours while she stayed with my grandson at hospital. It turned out to be constipation but what I experienced was a good example of my own wellbeing connected in a deep way with the difficult experiences of my daughter and her family. The second incident was watching a news report on the troubles in Syria and seeing the children victims of the civil war. It made me think of the comfortable and secure life I and my family were living and what a different meaning wellbeing had in such circumstances. In my searches on wellbeing I found an excellent article written by the International Medical Core called a Improving the Wellbeing of Syrians in Za'arari refugee camp. How different their sense of wellbeing was to mine many having experienced and witnessed terrible violence including the loss of relatives and friends.

The assessment showed that people in the camp were suffering from the camp environment (e.g. heat, dust, no electricity, unclean toilets), worry about friends and family in Syria, having nothing to do in the camp, safety concerns, and not being able to take care of their appearance (e.g. getting a haircut, clothes). The most common activities that helped men deal with stress were praying, seeking out time alone, talking and spending time with family and friends, going out, walking, and working. Most men were doing these activities in the camp except for talking with family and friends (due to being separated) and working. Activities that usually helped women were household chores, talking to family and friends, praying, walking, going to work, going out, sleeping, crying and smoking.  However, none of the women reported being able to do chores, walk, go out, or work in the camp. Suggestions from people to improve the camp included electricity and lights, play areas and activities for children, having more and clean bathrooms and showers, fans, better medical care, distribution of items closer to tents, paving roads, changing tents to cara vans, being able to work, education for children, better food and cold water, clothes, small stoves to make tea and coffee, hats/sunblock, financial help, moving the camp and meeting spaces for camp residents. The report came up with a series of practical recommendations to improve the wellbeing and comfort of these refugees.

The third incident involved bereavement in the family. My wife's auntie died in Iran and she made time to go and comfort another auntie before she flew to be with her family in Iran. It seemed to me that this was another example of how our individual wellbeing  is intermingled with other family members and how we give each other support in times of need. Such acts give meaning to our sense of wellbeing by giving something (time, empathy, practical support) to others and enable the receivers to maintain their sense of being through the love and support being given.

The fourth incident was also triggered by TV, this time the annual Comic Relief event which we watch as a family. There were many heart rending film clips of children in Africa starving or suffering from illnesses that are curable with the right medical treatment. Of course they are designed to disturb us, to shake us out of our comfort zone with the aim of making us give - and they do. This event raised over £70 million. But one clip brought home to me again that wellbeing was simply a matter of context.. being born to parents who were drug addicts meant that one man grew up without any sense of love, comfort and security in his life. And this was only a few miles away in London. How fortunate I was to be born into a family that loved and cared for me, and how fortunate my children and their children are to experience the same. We could all assume that our basic needs for security, food, comfortable home, love and affection, and a good education would be met and allow us to aspire to making the most of the opportunities we have in our fortunate circumstances with the support of family around us.

It's been a very enjoyable and emotional weekend as our son and daughter came home from university to celebrate their mum's big birthday and Mothers Day. Having all the family together these days is a rarity so we all savoured it and had a lot of fun and lots of catch up conversations.. We were a complete family again each fulfilling our role within it and it felt good.

It was fascinating to see how our son and daughter are growing up and becoming/being independent and this manifested itself on numerous occasions. In one conversation my daughter was discussing the possibility of travelling to Cambodia to work with an NGO.. her mum was not too keen but she suddenly said..'look you can advise me but I'm going to make the final decision on whether I go', I'd never heard that sort of thing before. 

I am just starting to think of wellbeing as a dimension of lifewide learning. My daughter has just started writing for her university newspaper so I have commissioned her to write an article for Lifewide Magazine (which she can also use for her newspaper) on how students understand their own wellbeing. I developed a simple questionnaire and interviewed her and her brother to pilot it. It worked a treat and we had good meaningful conversations. Both, in their individual ways, made the point that their wellbeing was not just about happiness or feeling good, but was much more about discovering, pursuing and achieving your purposes. Both indicated that trying to find your purpose and that they try to do this by taking on new things.. not at random, but guided by their interests, values and relationships.  

When I added my tags to the post I realised that this was the first time I'd had categorised a post using 'wellbeing' so it not a concept that comes in to my head very much. Perhaps the things I do and the relationships I have are so integrated into my wellbeing that I take it for granted. As a generalisation I do feel fulfilled and happy with my life. I am a valued member of a family that I am supporting and gaining much love in return. I enjoy my work which gives me challenge, interest and opportunity and a belief that  what I'm doing is worthwhile.

I latter completed the questionnaire myself and realised in doing so how much of my own sense of wellbeing was bound up with my family. Seeing them find and achieve their purposes, and playing a part in helping them do this, was perhaps the main source of my wellbeing.

WELLBEING QUESTIONNAIRE

1 What does 'wellbeing' mean to you?
I am very fortunate to have more than the basics in life including a lovely home and income to support my needs, time to do things I want to do and I am reasonably healthy and fit. These things all contribute to my sense of wellbeing. But ultimately wellbeing is about understanding and fulfilling my purposes - or at least the ones that I think are most important in my life.

My wellbeing is founded on the relationships I have with the people who matter most to me. My immediate family which includes my three children by my first marriage and my wife and three children and grandchildren from my second marriage. My greatest sense of achievement and fulfillment comes from the love and attention they give me and my involvement in their lives. Seeing and helping them grow up and find their own ways in life has given me my main purpose in life. A second set of purposes which cause me to get up in the morning is my work in promoting lifewide education. Here fulfillment comes from a sense of making progress in achieving the educational goals I believe in.

2 Is wellbeing linked to happiness? Are they the same thing?
Yes. I believe I am contented and happy with my circumstances and although things do crop up in life that make me anxious, sad and unhappy -  the big picture is one of happiness. But wellbeing is not only about happiness it is much more about discovering and pursuing purposes and doing things that you believe are worthwhile, meaningful and valuable and deep and meaningful forming relationships.

3 Which aspects of you does your wellbeing involve or affect?
Given what I have said it must affect me physically. Although I can no longer run because of my knee I am generally in good health and physically I can do most things that I need or want to do day to day. It affects me psychologically and emotionally - I generally feel positive and rarely suffer from negative feelings, and sadness can usually be offset with joy. Aspects of my daily life keep my mind active so it affects me intellectually. And spiritually, I am comfortable with my understanding of who I am, why I am here and what will happen to me when I die.

4  What sorts of things do you do that enable you to cultivate a sense of wellbeing?
I am surrounded by my family and I am involved in their lives, some more than others. At the moment I am helping my daughter a couple of days a week with childcare - looking after her 8 month old twins. Its hard work but very rewarding and it gives me a lot of pleasure to feel I am giving her practical help and time to do other things in her life. Beyond this my wife and I do lots of things with and for the family both immediate and more extended and these experiences ground me in the life of others.

I enjoy my work, and my writing it stimulates me intellectually and gives me the satisfaction of creating new things. I play in a band and  have weekly rehearsals and that also gives me enjoyment and challenge. When time and weather permit I like to get out into my garden and do things in it.

5 Is your sense of wellbeing something that comes from doing one thing or many things?
It comes from different things in different parts of my life - indeed having things happen and making things happen in different parts of my life enriches my sense of fulfillment and achievement.

 6  What sort of things erode your sense of wellbeing? Please give examples
Concerns and anxieties within the family have a big impact on my sense of wellbeing. For the most part these are small things that are all part and parcel of family living. But sometimes they are big. We have concerns that one of my daughter's premature twins might have brain damage because he stopped breathing when he was in the incubator. We watch intently for any developmental signs and it remains a concern that affects me emotionally. I also know that illness or injury has a negative impact. I damaged my knee playing badminton and discovered I also had arthritis and this has been painful, slows me down and inhibits me from doing anything really active like playing sport, jogging or long walks. Feeling overweight and slothful also makes me feel less good about myself. In the working side of my life feelings of not making progress or not achieving anything worthwhile erode my sense of wellbeing.

7 If you are unhappy about your state of wellbeing how do you change it? Can you give an example to illustrate?
Improving wellbeing always involves recognising what is causing the problem and doing something about it. A few months ago I felt overweight and this combined with my knee problem was making me feel not so good. I found a diet and stuck to it and began to lose my bulging stomach. But some of the really big things in life.. like the loss of a partner.. are hard to do much about.. grief and sadness are always with you no matter what you do. In my case I found someone else to share my life with her and her family, and my children,  helped me enormously to rebuild my life.

8  Is there a relationship between learning and developing and your sense of well being? Can you give an example to illustrate

Yes. I am conscious that so much of day to day living involves learning and developing in order to accomplish something or help someone else. This LWE project aimed at exploring the idea of wellbeing and how it relates to lifewide learning is involving me in finding out what others think wellbeing involves through on-line searches, in devising an interview protocol (this set of questions) and using it to have structured conversations with people (beginning with family). I will also use the opportunity to develop new relationships with people. I am learning through this process, and this is one example of a continuous process of learning and developing.

 9 Is there a relationship between wellbeing and achieving things that matter to you? If yes can you give an example?
Yes. Trying to achieve something I have decided to do becomes a significant focus for me and engages me on all fronts. If I do not make progress or the outcomes from what I am doing are not so good it makes me dissatisfied and that usually involves me in trying harder or trying something else. 

In the context of trying to help members of my family - just getting feedback that shows that what I have done has been valued is sufficient to make me feel that what I have done has been useful and worthwhile. Example - it was my wife's big birthday recently and she did not want any fuss being made. My wife is Iranian and in her culture birthdays are not celebrated as an adult and she is quite anti-birthdays. But I thought it was important to mark the occasion and planned/plotted a family celebration with the children and the two older ones came home from university for the weekend. I searched for and found a Persian restaurant with music and dancing and invited other close members of the family. We had a lovely evening and my wife really enjoyed it and the whole weekend. The best moment was when she said she would have to revise her view of birthdays! On such occasions you can tell when what you have tried to do has proved worthwhile.

10 On a scale of 1-10 where 1 is least and 10 is most important.. How important are these things in creating your sense of wellbeing.

1 Connecting with and having good relationships with people I come into contact with everyday 10
2 Being healthy and fit....physically active - walking, sport, dancing etc   9
3 Being involved in the world - being curious and aware of the world around me - looking and finding new opportunities 9
4 Feeling creative - doing things that give me a chance to be creative, inventive or resourceful 8
5 Continually learning and developing myself 9
6 Doing new things that interest me 9
7 Making progress in the things I am doing  10
8 Doing things with and for other people 10
9 Having a close relationship with someone I trust and can discuss anything with 10
10 Feeling that I am valued by the people that matter to me 10
11 Being able to do the things I want or need to do 10
12 Achieving something that I think is worthwhile 10

11 Why are the things that you rate most highly very important to your wellbeing?
All these things are important to my sense of wellbeing. Most of the things I rate highly are to do with relationships and affiliations. Perhaps I would add feeling loved as well as valued as being important, and feeling I am acting responsibly in fulfilling my role as a parent or friend.

Perhaps implicit, but could be made explicit, is the need to belong to something - to be part of a family and by extension to be part of a community (lifewide education).

The other feature about my sense of wellbeing is my need to achieve the things I value - the purposes that I have defined for myself. In this way it is intimately related to my lifewide learning and ongoing development as a person.

12 Is there anything that is important to you missing from the list?
My sense of wellbeing is an integral to the way I feel about myself and the life I live. It is not a static thing.. It is continuously evolving and has to be sustained through the things I chose to do and the way I try to do them. Because it is influenced by many things it has to be viewed holistically and evolving. I did not mention spirituality but perhaps our sense of wellbeing is what nurtures our spirit that carries and sustains us on our journey through life.

As my last blog revealed I have just begun a regular commitment to look after my daughter's twins so she can start working again. Its hard work but wonderfully rewarding in being able to spend the time with them. Coincidentally I came across the 'Granddad Programme' in Sweden which raised my awareness of the importance of intergenerational learning and how grandparents can be connected to new social processes for educating young people in schools.

I was a dad of three babies once (I still am a parent of older children/young adults) but I have never been a 'mum' before and I never had to look after two babies at once! Fortunately my daughter provides me with an excellent role model for how to look after and care for twins, she is totally dedicated to her children's wellbeing and development and I have leant much from watching her..But as I have been doing all the things that I needed to do to keep my grandsons safe, clean, well fed, contented and stimulated, I have been struck by the situational knowledge, capability and resilience it demands. These are things that have to be learnt through being involved but I was interested to come across this posting by Matthew Taylor on the idea that caring is a core capability and a disposition that we should be nurturing through our education system if we want a  better society. His ideas align well with our concerns for a lifewide concept of education.

Care as a core capabilityMatthew Taylor CEO at RSA

There is a crisis of care in our country and it comes in many parts. For a start there just isn’t enough to go around; whether it’s deprived children or isolated elders, in our crowded society many people lack the human contact and support that they need to flourish. This is despite the fact – reported by the ONS – that one in ten people provide unpaid care, that the proportion is steadily rising and most quickly among those who provide more than fifty hours a week.

Although the Coalition’s  announcement of a new funding framework is welcome, regardless of who pays professional care is proving increasingly unaffordable. Virtually every local authority in England has now restricted state funded provision to those with the most severe needs, and even they get a threadbare offer.

At a time when we need to maximise productive work, the expense of child care means UK employment rates among mothers are disappointing and much lower than many other European countries. And, as recurrent scandals in hospitals and care homes – of which Mid Staffordshire is the most recent and shocking – vividly illustrate, our institutions and professionals seem capable of ignoring the most basic care needs of their patients.

Meanwhile recently another debate has reopened; what should children learn in schools? Michael Gove’s policy shift on the EBacc still leaves him out of line with a growing international consensus that schools should equip children not just with subject based knowledge but the core capabilities they will need to be successful and responsible citizens. Below the u-turn headlines last week was a surprise reprisal for citizenship education, which contrary to expectations will remain a statutory part of the curriculum, with renewed emphasis on active participation in community volunteering.

This is an opportunity. It’s time we saw learning to provide care as essential to young people’s development.We learn about the joys, trials and tribulations of providing care in practice not in theory. Teaching care should revolve around a new ‘young people’s care experience’ through which all youngsters at some point between the ages of 14 and 18 are expected to undertake a hundred hours of work experience in a care setting such as a community nursery or a residential home.

There would be many benefits. Young people would have an experience which has a good chance of being useful to them in their career and which – unlike a lot else they learn at schools – certainly of value at some point in their life. The care institutions would get a flow of prepared young people to enhance the offer they make, especially around the face to face interaction which so often seems to be missing when things go wrong at places like Mid Staffs.

Having worked in Downing Street I am painfully aware that the implementation of an idea is as important as the idea itself. The devil is in the detail. I should thank my readers for some useful comments when I floated this idea last week and an insightful sixth form group at St Xavier’s college in Clapham who gave me forthright feedback when I recently floated the concept with them.

The Government decided some time ago to scrap mandatory work experience for older secondary school pupils. This didn’t get much push back, partly because the low quality of many work placements has given the whole idea a bad name among teachers and young people. So this scheme must be linked to accredited classroom learning and to high standards of supervision and support by the care workplaces. Pupils must be prepared for the experience and if they meet the standard they must get credible accreditation to put on their CVs. And the participating organisations –which could be from the public, voluntary or private sector – should be strongly encouraged to reward young people who successfully deliver the 100 hours – some public recognition and £50 can go a long way if you’re fifteen. Perhaps as Carl Allen suggested  we could make use of alternative currencies as the mode or reward.

It is also vital that the scheme is mandatory across all schools whatever their social mix. One of the problems with paid caring occupations is their low status. Feminist economists argue it is part a broader problem of downgrading what is seen as ‘women’s work’. The care experience should be seen as an opportunity and a privilege for all not a burdensome imposition. And, incidentally, this is vital for our economy. For all the talk of investment in science and high tech business, improving the quality of work in our ‘high touch’ service sector is vital to the sustainability of public services and the overall productivity of the economy.

The St Xavier’s students asked another question: Millions of young people are already care providers, looking after parents, grandparents or younger siblings. Isn’t it a bit much to ask them to add another 100 hours onto the several many spend every day looking after loved ones? It is a telling point and implementation has to leave room for schools to show common sense and compassion. But perhaps this is another upside. Far too often young carers lack the space or confidence to talk to their peer group about the challenges they face. By making care giving something we all value and all experience as part of growing up perhaps that too might change.

With being a granddad sometimes comes the responsibility of childcare... I have done my fair share of 'baby sitting' but last week I started an ongoing one day a week commitment so my daughter could go back to work... The twins are now 8.5 months.. they are quite chunky but have yet to start moving around by themselves..

I knew it wasn't going to be easy.. so I was mentally prepared but my goodness looking after their every needs from 8am to 5pm  and keeping them amused was full-on ... and my daughter does it day after day without ever complaining.. So I treated the job like any other job... my daughter had left me written instructions on feeding times and had left the food prepared so all I had to do was keep them safe and happy.. they were kind to me and somehow I got through the day okay and I was quite proud of myself.. our treat was to go shopping in Woking. It was funny walking along with all the mums pushing babies in push chairs.. Overall I think I coped reasonably well and I'm sure I'll get better at it.  I also knew that my daughter needed to go back and do something intellectually stimulating and interact with other adults. She came home very happy and I knew I had done something that had made her life better. She has not had a break since they were born 10 weeks premature in May and I knew she saw going back to work as a break. Not surprisingly I fell asleep as soon as I sat down to watch TV!!

There are some special events in everyday life which throw up more unusual experiences. Christmas is one of them. It's the 27th December and my son has just gone back to uni so it feels like the event is over.  So why is this event special in my everyday life? First and foremost in our family Christmas is the one event we all share as being significant for the whole family. The coming together and connecting of different parts of the family - all ages from my parents in Australia who are nearly 90 to the newest editions of the family 6 months old twins and even the about to be born grandchild who we know will be born some time this week. And although we know there is stress around the occasion in terms of meeting expectations and preparing the house for visitors, preparing the Christmas meal, buying presents and a hundred other things.. there is also a deliberate attempt to create space for spending time with family and benefiting from the experience of giving and sharing memories and stories. More than anything else Christmas in my family is about renewing and maintaining family bonds - it's a relationship thing. Interestingly technology helps us connect... Christmas would not be Christmas without a skype conversation with my mum and dad in Australia. 

But the best Christmas present ever was the birth of my fourth grandson - the first child of my eldest son and his wife. It took me right back to his birth nearly 34 years ago and completed one of the cycles of life of which I am a part. I could see we shared the same emotions about the birth of our first child.

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.
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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.

When I discussed this with my 14 year old daughter she provided me with another interesting perspective. She felt that her mother and I, who she acknowledged as being the main adult influences on her as she has grown up, were shaped by our own past histories and therefore who we were, had been shaped by the communities we had ourselves participated in. So who we are is really a synthesis of our own upbringing  so what we passed on to her - our values and beliefs, was in a sense passing on part of our history. Add to this the influences of siblings and our rich multicultural extended family (with members living in England, Iran, Soth Africa and Australia) and a step sister who is currently coping with new born twins, she felt she had quite a lot of exposure to the idea of being influenced by people in her family village. But my daughter also acknowledged that she had, with the encouragement and support of her mother, participated in activities outside school in order to develop new skills like ballet, swimming club, drama and horse riding.

My daughter's reasoning made a lot of sense to me when I look back on my early life. My mother and father grew up in 1930's Manchester. Both came from poor but proud working class families and their values and work ethics were forged in what were undoubtedly harsh conditions. Even though I am a child of the 1950's and 60's and I wasn't brought up in such a tough and impoverished environment, these values were passed on to me and remain very much a part of me, and I in turn, am passing them on to my own children.

The next issue of our Lifewide Magazine is being formed around this
African proverb... a cultural story with deep meanings, and I thought it was
worth spending the time to reflect on my own early life. My first thought was
that this is a story about lots of people being actively involved in helping and
enabling a child to grow up. That seems obvious I suppose most of us have
parents, siblings, aunts/uncles, cousins and grandparents and I guess in an
African village all would have played a part.. But I interpreted the story to mean that other members of the village would also be involved..perhaps to teach essential skills and pass on cultural wisdom that was essential for the health and survival of the village..

There was nothing exceptional about my childhood. I was born in 1950 in the middle of Manchester.. and my earliest memories (less than 5) are of a street of terraced houses (Camelford St) with front doors that opened onto the street. I have quite a lot of fragments of early memories and impressions of my surroundings. I know we had good neighbours who sometimes looked after me but I'm sure my early upbringing was dominated by mum and dad and home. When I was 5 I moved to the northwest side of Manchester a place called Monton.. to a home with a front and back garden..I remember that moving was a traumatic experience fore me. It was still a town, with a cotton mill and canal at the end of the road, but at least there were fields to play in..and without too many cars it was safe to play in the street..which I did with the kids nearby... the neighbours were friendly but I don't remember much of a community in the way I imagined the African proverb describes. As I became increasingly aware of who I was. I learnt what was right and wrong and suffered the consequences (usually a smack and being sent to bed) if I did not follow the rules or crossed a boundary...like playing on the railway.. or falling in the  canal..or answering back..

We considered ourselves as a good working class family you achieved through hard work and a good job was you aim in life. My parents ambition for me was not very great at that stage.. you left school at 16 and got a job... my dad left school at 14 and what was good enough for him was good enough for me.. (at that stage).. so I don't think I was encouraged in the
 sense of ever thinking that education was a way of making something of yourself. My mum had to look after all of us.. by the time I was 10 there were 5 of us! so she had her work cut out. Being the eldest I felt I was the one that was treated the harshest and I was the one that was always pushing at the boundaries .. like bed time.. So perhaps that became part of my
chararcter..

My mum was the one we spent most time with and she was the one who had to keep us under control and look after us..she worked very hard and for years she never had a pair of knitting needles out of her hands. She had a tremendous positive spirit and always saw the good in everyone and everything (still does) and although her ambitions for us were also limited she never
stopped encouraging us.. I owe my own positivity to her I'm sure. I know I was loved and cared for and their role model as parents has stood me in good stead for being one myself.

My father's gift to me was his work ethic (his own a reaction to his father who had been unemployed for most of his childhood when the family had suffered real poverty and led to his mothers early death). Whatever the weather he cycled the five miles to work and never missed a dayunless he literally couldn't climb on his bike.  He suffered from bronchitis and his presence was often announced by coughing.. I had to do my share of jobs like run errands and I was also volunteered! to cut
the hedges and grass of neighbours. I remember resenting it but if I'm honest all these things fed into me.

I'm sure I leant at primary school. I certainly learnt to be a member of a community, make friends, treat people with respect and
follow rules pushing at them from time to time and suffering the consequences.. I remember being caned on several occasions.  My school had not learnt how to get pupils through the 11+ with only one or two passing each year so no one was
surprised that I didn't pass it. 

From the age of 8 church choir and cubs expanded my horizons enormously -
and gave me my first taste of freedom away from parental control! Day trips by
train to Derbyshire and the Lake District or the N Wales coast... In all of
these activities I think I learned much from just being out in the world and
interacting with people and adults.  When I think more deeply about this I think
that both choir and cubs taught me the value of being part of a community, of
learning their cultures and being part of it, of doing things together and in
the case of the choir practicing an anthem over and over again and then performing it. I can with the benefit of hindsight see that this was important learning. Both cubs and choir required discipline and commitment.. once a week for cubs .. Sunday morning and evening for choir and Friday for practice..they both taught me a sense of belonging and they both taught me that if you stick at something long enough, with time you will become a leader one day.... head chorister in the choir or a sixer (responsible for at least people) in the cubs.. When I look back these were important things to learn at that age and I'm sure they shaped me psychology and spiritually (though not religeous).

What I do know is that by the age of 10 I had a good sense of who I was but
not who I wanted to be. Going to secondary school was my first defining moment - a gym, playing fields and organised sport was all I needed to become who I wanted to be. Sport (any) and teams became my life..and I was good at these things..my confidence and belief in myself grew. I loved my school and just being in the environment helped me grow up.. I was in the top class and I don't know how but I came top in my first term which entitled me to a crack at the 12+ exam. The first of three important second chances in my formal education. I was reluctant to try for the Grammar school as I liked my Secondary Modern school so much. My mum and dad thought I should try and sent me to see the vicar who they thought could influence me and he did.. I decided I would go and do the exam and then decide what to do.. I passed and then had to make the decision which was a no brainer for my parents but more difficult for me.. Needless to say I went and that was my second defining moment as a child.

Looking back I did not have any sense that I was raised by a community.. perhaps a village would have been different....my values were learnt through family, school and church, there were adults who undoubtedly influenced me and particularly controlled what I did but I think I learnt more from my friends and just being out and about in the world : a pattern that continued through my teens. Growing up and becoming me was a social process but it was more to do with participating in life than being shaped and influenced by significant others.

I am not sure that my early childhood story plays well into my interpretation of it 'takes a village idea'.. My story I think reflects more the idea that as we grow up we have to find and put ourselves into different communities in order to learn from
others and gain the experiences that will help us develop as people. Nor does my story play very well into the saying “Give
me the child until he is seven and I’ll give you the man”.  While early life influences are very important, and we
they most certainly shape our  beliefs and values, once we become aware of who we are and of our own agency, there are
opportunities that if we take them will enable us to become the person we want to be indeed perhaps its the way we start to learn who we want to be, We are not rigidly held in the mould of ourselves as a seven year old.