POST REWRITTEN 21 Nov   I just spent 15-20mins thinking up a nice process for a workshop at a conference on Friday.. Creating the ideas was enjoyable and they flowed easily but I know the really hard part will be to make the design work - to sell the idea quickly and get people engaged and get them to use their creativity to invent, record and share their own designs.  That will be the hard part of creation. The other thing I realised afterwards was the way I thought about the problem 'can you put on a workshop on this theme? was something I could not have done a few months ago because I did not have the skills or experience to use the technology in the way I have. So turning imagination into practical reality is clearly constrained by the skills and experiences we have. Here is my workshop design.  to be continued after the workshop....

Post workshop - the session was not so hard because I put a lot of time and effort into preparing the resources - a web page with instructions and examples. My role then became one of motivating and time keeping. I think the session went well and it was well received by the participants. Some of the products are posted HERE

 I didn't intend to do this today - it just happened. So this is my reflections on how and why it happened. Working
backwards from the provisional outcome - the outcome was an email invitation to John Cowan to share his expertise and wisdom in mentoring through a Guide on how we might mentor learners on the lifewide learning award which we
are planning to start with a group of students in 3 weeks time. In framing this invitation in an email I had to think through the dimensions of the problem - they won't be complete but they do represent a significant chunk of the problem.

The story began 2 hours earlier when I sat down to update the front page of my website. From this action I went to my blog and felt it needed updating but wondered what I would write about. I decided I needed to amend my Personal Development Activity Plan to include the URL of my blog and this took me back to the Lifewide Award Guidance Document. I re-read the Guidance and made a number of amendments including a summary statement on the front page explaining what someone had to do to participate in and achieve the award (a recommendation that had been made by my daughter who is trying out the tools). Having updated my own PDAD and lifewide activity map and the Guidance I decided it was time to get final  feedback from the team on these documents before we start using them. Also we are going to expose them in an online seminar in two weeks time. So I emailed John who emailed back saying 'Good to hear from you and be given something to do'. I always get a nice feeling when I sense that someone enjoys doing the things I like doing, so seeing an opportunity to involve John further I put my invitation email together. 

Through this unfolding process I feel I've made a bit of progress towards achieving one of my goals and more importantly I have tuned in again to the continuous development needs of the LWE project, drawing it from the back to the front of my awareness again. So not only do I feel good because I have made a bit of progress, I am re-engaging with the challenge and as a biproduct I have an example of emergent learning for my blog!!!!

I made a mistake. We had commissioned an artist to provide some illustrations. I thought they were not very imaginative. passed them to the author who also felt they weren't very good. I suggested that she sends her suggestions to the illustrator. Not surprisingly he didnt like it. He felt his work was not appreciated and felt that working process, that had worked well so far, had been compromised. I knew I had to apologise and try to re-build bridges and create better conditions for working. He is a great illustrator and I didn't want to lose him.  


Applying wisdom - In my life I have made many mistakes that have the potential to damage relationships but way back I learnt that these situations often hold much potential for strengthening a relationship.It all depends on how you respond. I am delighted to say that this is exactly what happened on this occasion. Here is the email which shows how I tried to deal with the situation I had created. 


MY EMAIL TO TRY AND DEAL WITH THE SITUATION
Dear ......
I apologise for any confusion. I indicated in my email that I was sending your illustrations to the author of the booklet to get her responses. I hadn't in any way signed off the work. I am at fault for suggesting the author contacted you directly rather than directing her responses through me believing that you should talk to her directly. In future I will make sure that all conversations are directed through me to avoid any confusion.

In future 
1) I shall be more specific in my brief
2) I will be the single point of contact for discussion and approval
3) I will try to give you at least two weeks
In return I will expect you to provide preliminary sketches for discussion/approval

I accept responsibility for the situation and if you are happy to continue we will
1) Cover the cost of the original brief the agreed £xxx fee once the revised cover image is supplied
 2) Treat the additions as a new commission ie five new illustrations £xxx with sketches for approval followed by completion in two weeks.

Is this acceptable? 

I do appreciate that you have chosen to work with us because you enjoy the work and you also believe in what we are doing. It is very important to me to know this because I want to work with people who also see the value in what we are trying to do. I also wanted to say that we do appreciate your work very much. After me, J.. (the author) is one of your biggest fans and when I invityed her to pick an illustrator she chose you rather than several others we have worked with.

Once again sincere apologies for the confusion. I hope that you will want to continue working with us.

best wishes
N

Sent: Wednesday, 23 May 2012, 14:27
Subject: RE: chalk mountain commission

Hello N
I think we have managed to strike and understanding, and the fault rests equally on both our shoulders, we can agree on that and start afresh. I am happy with your porposal and I will try my best to stick to my side of the agreement. I would also like to keep our flexibility arrangements in place, I am happy to edit works unitl both parties are satisfied.

To confirm what you have written, the deadline for the works is no longer this Friday, I get two weeks to work on the illustrations.

If possible, can I start on the works from this coming Monday, including the front cover. I ask because, the way I work, the first illustration sets the tone and informs the rest and I usually work on multiple illustrations at the same time. This way, I can revise images as they are done, and also know from the onset what will work stylistically and what will not.
I work well with your art direction as you digest the material and point out what you thinks will stand out, or will work as an illustration, and I would like us to continue working this way. If you still need the cover illustration before Monday, please let me know and I will start emailing you the roughs as soon as I have something concrete on paper. Also to confirm, the final fee at the end of the project will be £xxx

I apologise for any inconvenience caused on my behalf, and if I have delayed the publication of THE article. I will endeavour to make sure this does not happen again. I am more than happy to continue working with you and your team. The few benefits of working freelance is being able to choose who you want to work with and on what projects. Last few lesson's I was taught at University was to have integrity in one's work, to choose who to work with and work for, and to choose the reasons that will make me be satisfied with the outcomes of the project and work, irrespective of the monetary rewards. I believe your company is one such experience. You aim to improve the state of others, and I am to use my work to aid in that vision.

Regards
KMY RETURN EMAILThank you for your understanding. I am very impressed with the professional way you raised the issue and how you have dealt with it. It speaks volumes for your integrity and like you I only want to work with people who act in this way. Yes we will start a fresh from Monday. I had hoped to get the guide out sooner so we will, in the first instance publish, it without illustrations. 
bw norman

As a committed lifewider I'm a firm believer in the principle that what you gain from an experience is proportional to what you put into it. One of my failings perhaps is, if I'm busy, I don't try things for long enough or put enough effort in to appreciate the value in something. I had made my mind up to put effort into our twitter week long conversation even though I was quite busy. And looking back over the week I can see that I did learn lots of new things. I knew next to nothing about how to use twitter before I started and the practice I had had only confirmed my prejudices so I suppose I was quite sceptical about its value to me. But I can now appreciate some of the value in twitter (thanks to the people who helped me - Nick, David and Jane in particular) and how I can incorporate twitter into my personal learning strategies

1) Knowing next to nothing at the start it is easy to see that I now know something.I am now confident in composing and posting messages and being able to search for people and topics.

2) I gained some new experience in trying to engage people in the twitter conversation and in setting up the invitations on the website.

3) I have to say that I found the form of conversation frustrating and I didn't think I progressed my understanding of LWL beyond what I already knew. In fact I found some of the ideas confusing I think because I was not appreciating the contexts in the minds of those offering the ideas. But I acknowledge that others did seem to get excited by things that I wasn't able to appreciate so there is value in witnessing how others are inspired. 

4) Which takes us into the affective domain. We all look for inspiration and I posted a question on a Linked in forum this week relating to what inspires us. I could clearly see that some of the posts that were made on twitter seemed to inspire people and I did towards the end of the week (see below) experience some inspiring moments. So I can now appreciate that posts made in twitter can be a source of inspiration. * I'm also trying to engage with linked-in so I have been able to make comparisons between twitter and linked in and see how twitter posts are used in linked in.

5) The event introduced me to new people and their work which was important new relational knowledge and off-line I approached one person with a view to trying to engage them as a supporter of and contributor to our work.

6) I took the trouble to search out blogs that provided concise and useful knowledge about twitter so began to use codified knowledge and personal wisdom gained from experienced users. Twitter now began to make more sense to me because I have had the practical experience of trying to use it (see attachment)

7) By Day 5 (thursday) I was beginning to adopt an exploratory approach - forcing myself to go beyond the conversation. I was not so interested in what people were saying in the conversation as the links to video's and blogs that people provided. I started to follow up links e.g #learning that one of the participants was providing. And then did my own searching for messages that looked interesting following up the links in them. I came across David Gerteen who I was aware was a well known thought leader. L clicked on one of his links and it took me to a great website with some excellent video speaker content - now I realised that by following links that looked meaningful I could find resources that were useful to me - my work and expanded my understanding. I began to see for the first time the value of twitter from the perspective of incorporating it into a personal learning strategy. But I had to invest quite a lot of time to get to this stage of enlightenment.

8) Then moving from links to people I identified one or two people who seem to be productive thought leaders in fields that I am interested in and began to follow them so on Friday morning I spent 20mins checking up on links provided and found some interesting resources. So I can see the value of following and hopefully if you post things of interest to others - of being followed.

So all in all I have developed through this experience some useful experience-based insights (some knowing how to), acquired and made use of existing codified knowledge, gained some very valuable relational knowledge, identified and connected to some thought leaders that I'm sure will inspire me, improved my media literacy ( a little), and I can now see how I can incorporate twitter into a personal learning strategy. In other words, through taking the time to engage in activity through which I might learn something new,  I have shifted from being ignorant, sceptical and having no competency in using this technology to a position of relative enlightenment and having some new capability, confidence, interest and belief. And I have overcome my prejudice and scepticism.

Not bad in 5 days!! 


APPLYING MY LEARNING 19/05/12
Learning about something and then enacting what you have learnt are two different things. On Saturday morning I added a twitter button to my blog and made myself spend 20mins checking out #Learning and found a really interesting link to Charles Jennings blogs. Its an area of learning and development I was not aware of and I have read his articles and re-posted one of them on the Lifewide Education website. The proof of the pudding is in the eating then I have eaten twitter and it tastes good. I was also pleased to see this post by David Roberts which showed that someone had taken an interest in my learning.

David C Roberts ‏@DavidCRobertsVery telling blog post by @lifewider1 about a learning exploration on#Twitter http://www.normanjackson.co.uk/scraps-of-life-blog.html#learning #heutagogy #LW1 #PhDchat

Technology is responsible for more than its fair share of giving me new experiences - often not particularly nice experiences. Last night we (the lifewide team) tried, with the help of NB, to run an introductory twitter seminar. I have to say it wasn't a very good experience but I think we learnt quite a lot from it and it cedrtainly made us shift into problem solving mode.

NB provided a useful background paper with lots of prompts and I along with 4 others tried to log on to the twitter page and have a conversation - albeit limited to 140 characters. Most of us managed to get onto the page but one of us was not aboe to see everyone else and we couldn't help him with the problem.

I think we all fumbled beyond the basics of posting a message and we never had a structured discussion. I didn't find the hosting page at all helpful. There should be a way of putting up some basic instructions about the timing and format. I came away with the impression that it has to be essentially for people who are already familiar with twitter rather than for complete novices.

Neverthless we are committed to trying to run a series of events from next week so we have a real need to learn how to do it quickly.

Postscript - not surprisingly there were lots of email exchanges afterwards and JC did a splendid job of highlighting the potential benefits of twitter for 'students'.. the upshot of the discussion was that we agreed that it would be more sensible to host a week long event..