“The moon and sun are eternal travellers.
Even the years wander on.
A lifetime adrift in a boat,
or in old age leading a tired horse into the years,
every day is a journey,
and the journey itself is home.”
For me? More blogging inspiration, in the here and now.
Currently looking into the viability of teaching blogging to academic staff and students, at Sussex University initially. It’s certainly the way things are and need to be going. Heck, Universities created the internet for these reasons in the first place, but long-lead-time dead-tree journals seem to have taken over the publishing side of things and there is not a lot of deep content out there.
Specific (participant) outcomes expected:
- Your own free weblog site for individual or group publishing.
- Instantly and easily publish your own or a group’s academic /
creative work (in progress or completed) online, without having to wait
for it to be updated by webmasters.
- Share thoughts and work with an extended learning community for
feedback and discussion.
- Collect thoughts, notes, longer pieces / items and reflect on your
own learning with private or public posts.
- Support the development of student and staff voice and collegiality
- Develop greater confidence in expressing yourself
- Be heard!
- Enhance your public profile for media and public speaking.
So far the response has been great. Will see what doors starts to open…
Increasingly my teaching practice is focussing on blogging for a wide range of learners and contexts, including:
Here is a general, introductory message about the tailored courses available.
Come and join the global conversation. Blogging is a profound, effective new way to express yourself, connect, learn and be heard. It’s a process and an outcome, supporting personal, academic, business or organisational growth.
Many and diverse people, all around the world, are successfully blogging online about their:
- learning
- lives
- diverse interests and hobbies
- businesses
- electorates
- public roles, and
- creative pursuits.
Blogs (or web logs) can include words, images, sound and links as well as comments back from your new-found audience.
This is your chance to find out what blogging is all about and get your very own (or a group) blog working for you. Suitable for anyone that can use a basic word processing package that has used the internet before. You do NOT need to be an experienced writer, as you will be developing this skill in your own style. Within three sessions you can have your own free blog site up on the internet.
By the end of the course, you will have found your voice and be confidently blogging. Join in and watch yourself and/or your business grow. Plus, learn how to have people find your blog when you are ready.
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About your Teacher
Libby Davy has over 15 year’s experience working professionally and teaching communications – for individuals and organisations. She contributes to several blogs and was a pioneer blogger at www.barkingowl.com/learning and other spaces.
Currently studying a Masters in Person-Centred Education at the University of Sussex, Libby is interested in how blogs support life-long learning through their open, reflective and communal nature. Libby is a co-founder of one of the internet’s most exciting new online communities www.scouta.com, where she hosts groups on Education and Brighton.
After gaining a degree in communications and media Libby eventually went on to teach writing, editing and publishing at a university and community level. She is a published and awarded short-story writer, and has had her work broadcast on national radio. For many years, Libby worked in strategic communications, marketing, organizational development and business coaching.
Libby is a fun, friendly, Australian mother with a passion for education and human potential.
Contact 01273 540 023 or 07968 687 107 to book a place or arrange a tailored workshop series.
Are you a curious person? If so, does this help you learn more? Do you think it is a blessing or a burden? How can you harness it to educate yourself, in the fullest sense of the word. What is learning?
These questions and more are examined in the learning biography I’ve just submitted to Sussex University’s Institute of Innovation in Education towards an MA in Person-Centred Education.
The language is somewhat academic, but there are lots of poetic moments. That’s integration for you!
It was a transformative process of deep learning, and testimony to the benefits of person-centred education, despite the university’s inevitable challenges in embracing the whole person.
Here’s the first page and the full .pdf
Towards Integrated Learner Curiosity
We need to create a culture that leaves room for the constant “contamination” of a hundred subjective and objective experiences, in an atmosphere of reciprocal help and socialisation. Implicit in this thesis is a decisive response to a child’s need to feel whole.
Feeling whole is a biological and cultural necessity for the child (and also for the adult). It is a vital state of well-being (Malaguzzi in Reggio Children 1996, p 34).
Synopsis
This learning biography uses narrative to explore personal knowledge being formed about the cause, nature and function of curiosity and its relationship to learning, within a cycle of inquiry into spirituality.
Looking closely at pedagogues Paulo Freire and within the Reggio Children project, along with psychologists and philosophers such as Carl Rodgers and John Macmurray, it begins to articulate a vision of integrated learner curiosity and a personal expression of an ancient way of looking at knowledge.
It also critiques a university’s early beginnings in practicing emerging theories of person-centred education and challenges academia to embrace the potential of the Reggio “hundred languages” in understanding adult learning.
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Having lived a life rich with curiosity and learning, I am now curious about curiosity. From my earliest memories, I engaged deeply with the world around me. I have been highly motivated to learn through being curious. I have felt great joy and great sadness through this trait and state, and have come to embrace it – and consciously, carefully harness this Promethean flame.
More…
Learning Biography
