Blog Posts

using our present to connect to our past

9/25/2017

We hold the key to thousands of doors and windows to new learning, as we bear witness to our life’s unfolding. Our world affords us with opportunities to connect and reach richer and deeper meanings, which help us understand our world and ourselves a little better, recognise new possibilities and motivate and inspires us to find and fulfil our purposes. Learning to use the right key at the right door at the right time, is a skill which often requires willingness and openness to learn, conscious effort, rational and intuitive knowing, a reflective ability and a childlike curiosity courage and willingness to play, take risks and discover.

Lifewide Magazine #19 is focusing on the concept of mental time travel. The very idea of time is a question that scientists and philosophers have struggled to understand and once we start talking about physically travelling through time we enter the realms of science fiction and quantum physics. But we all have the capacity to think our way back to moments in time that we have experienced as we access our memories, both clear and not so clear, of past events in our lives. Being able to look back and recreate mental images of those moments and imagine the future is something that is fundamental to who we are and when we lose this capacity for mental time travel we lose ourself.

In this issue of the magazine we invite readers to consider the possibility that in life we indeed make use of the skill of mental time travel from a very young age. Psychologists and neuroscientists tell us that we start this process from the age of 3 when we begin to develop, along with language, the capacity to create and imagine worlds, full of fantasy and adventure. And we continue to enjoy this amazing capacity to access memory and create mental imagery throughout our life span. One could argue that it aids our innate compass which is directing our attention to what we need to understand and feel, in order to become the best version of ourselves, drawing on past versions of ourselves and imagining what might be in the future.

But life is not always full of happiness and joy: it may also contain moments and events that are extremely challenging, difficult, stressful, sad or emotionally complex and traumatic. In such circumstances we might avoid or deeply bury our memories and creatively use our imaginative abilities in our present to escape from our painful past. In such circumstances we may seek help from trained professionals in the fields of psychotherapy, trauma therapy or hypnotherapy to help us live with our past and motivate us to live our lives, with the least risk and damage possible, always growing into better versions of ourselves?

Human beings are meaning making creatures. We enjoy creating meaning that resonates with our authentic selves. Meaning helps us feel we have a purpose and through our relationships and what we do, that we are fulfilling these purposes. We know when this meaning is resonant. It feels right.

All the authors in this issue of the magazine have embarked on rich and thought-provoking journeys. They share their learning (their making of meaning) and experiences in travelling mentally through time. This has required re-connecting and engaging mentally, cognitively, physically, emotionally and spiritually with themselves and creating their own ecologies in the present to assist themselves in their journey to their past. Contributors have shared their vulnerabilities and their willingness to connect with sometimes painful memories and experiences and in this process revealed things which are deeply personal, in order to help us, the reader, develop deeper understandings about the strategies and tools we use to help us connect to the past from our present.

Through the articles in this issue I am reminded once more that human beings have indeed a much more diverse pallet of knowing and wisdom. What is echoed on all the contributions to this issue is the sense of “becoming’’ somebody more enriched as a result of self-exploration .No matter what the journey, in order to reach to our own unique treasures, we are required to demonstrate an ability to be willing and playful learner, curious and open to reflect, courageous to connect, process and tolerate uncertainty in order to formulate new meanings. All skills and attributes shown by our authors. What is an over arching theme, albeit not explicitly pointed out, is the creativity which is underlying the way they lived and worked through their experiences. This manifested in the stories through an inextricable link between their memories, spaces and places and the imaginative use of those memories to alter the feelings and perceptions they held for themselves and their lives; Perhaps we could argue that creativity and use of imagination is an inherent life force, an essential ingredient in forming and fulfilling our purpose.

Maria Kefalogianni
GUEST EDITOR #19

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worldwide lifewide learning & education day THURSDAY april 13TH 2017

4/5/2017

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The idea for a day when people who care about lifewide learning and education can come together to celebrate the idea and help raise awareness of its value came out of a conversation with Chris Picone who is the president of the International Association for Lifewide Learning.

Our intention is to nurture a worldwide conversation on April 13th to encourage people to share their experiences of learning through life and their thoughts and perspectives on one or more of these questions on our new Google+ Forum https://plus.google.com/communities/100364215733010324333
Q1 Why is lifewide learning important to you what does it mean in your everyday life?
Q2 Why is lifewide approach to learning and education important in the modern world?
Q3 How are you involved in encouraging and supporting the lifewide learning of others? It could be your own family or friends, your students or colleagues or the wider world
Q4 What are the particular challenges in encouraging a lifewide approach to learning and achievement in your country?

Our hope is that by having a public conversation we might draw attention to the work we and others are doing to encourage and support people as they learn, develop, create and achieve through all the opportunities that life affords.

To find out more visit our worldwide lifewide learning and education page

April 13th is chosen in commemoration of Eduard Lindeman, a visionary adult educator who died on April 13th 1953. Lindeman believed that education is not bound by classrooms and formal curricula. Rather it involves a concern for the educational possibilities of everyday life; non-vocational ideals; situations not subjects; and people’s experience. He viewed education as life and gave us our strapline. The whole of life is learning, therefore education can have no ending. Lindeman felt our academic system to be in reverse order with subjects and teachers constituting the starting point and students secondary. In conventional education the student is required to adjust to an established curriculum; in adult education the curriculum is built around the students’ needs and interests. He believed:
·         Education should be coterminous with life
·         It should revolve around non-academic and non-vocational ideas
·         It should start with the lives of the learners
·         It should look to the learner's own experience as its most valuable resource

To find out more about Eduard Lindeman visit
http://infed.org/mobi/eduard-c-lindeman-and-the-meaning-of-adult-education/
The Meaning of Adult Education https://archive.org/details/meaningofadulted00lind

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'eXPLORING eXPLORATION' : Lifewide magazine #18

1/3/2017

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One of the great joys in life is to discover something that we did not know. Sometimes it’s by chance but often it emerges through deliberate acts of searching in order to find out. We explore to put ourselves into the places and spaces with highest potential to find what we are looking for and often discover other things along the way. This is the simplest act of exploration and it's something that is innate to being human.

Exploration occurs in all non-sessile (not fixed) animal species. It's the way in which organisms make sense of their environment and change their environment if they have to. It's a fundamental part of an organisms ecology for surviving: an organism's life depends on the success of it's explorations to find food and water if they are a land animal, security (safe places to rest) and procreation (they need to find mates to propagate their species). Exploration is programmed into the DNA of life and is a fundamental process in the ecology of every organism and every ecosystem.

This goes for people too. The history of man is a history of exploration - countless small steps and few giant leaps. Only through exploration have we come to understand the world and the universe we inhabit. There is no other way of achieving this. Every period of history, every culture and every advance in knowledge and technology is the product of many explorations, many of which did not succeed, and often unique to an individual who was motivated to explore something that no-one else had.

To explore or the act of exploring are used as 'transitive verbs' to denote either 1) systematic investigation, study of, search for or analysis, testing or experimentation or 2) less systematic forms of searching eg. to look into something, to become familiar with, to get a sense of.... Exploration and exploring involve travelling physically, virtually and or cognitively or psychologically into places and spaces that are unknown or unfamiliar.

We explore to experience the world and to learn and understand it, and often ourselves, better. The number of contexts for exploration is only limited by our imagination and that is pretty limitless. My Christmas read this year is a book called ‘Pragmatic Imagination’(1) after I got through the glowing endorsements, of which there were many, I came across these words, ‘efficacy in the world today requires a productive entanglement of imagination and action’. I think nowhere is this productive entanglement more apparent than when we engage in exploration regardless of whether we are exploring the far reaches of the universe or are own limitations and capabilities: in fact the two are often interlinked. Indeed life itself is an exploration from the moment we play with our first toy to the moment we close our eyes for the last time.

Exploration can be a psychological process of examining ourselves, our own thinking, emotions, purposes and actions, and or a cognitive process of inquiry involving the investigation of ideas or problems in any subject or any context or circumstance. It can involve travelling through physical spaces and landscapes that are new to us, for example when we explore a new place. And it can involve journeys in and through new virtual environments, using technological tools that are new to us and the new social interactions they present. It can involve contexts and phenomenon in our unfolding present, reconstructions of the past or imaginings of the future.

Each discipline or professional domain develops its own tools and methodologies for conducting explorations that are relevant to its particular field of knowledge and practice. For example, I once practised as an exploration geologist searching for mineral deposits in western Saudi Arabia. I used satellite and airborne remote sensing techniques and prospecting methods on the ground, I mapped and recorded what I found on aerial photographs, I conducted geochemical surveys and all used all sorts of imagination and reasoning based on the knowledge I had acquired through study and my experiences while conducting exploration, but often finding something useful was a matter of chance, of putting myself into the areas of highest potential, of walking a little bit further up a dry river bed because I just had a feeling that I might discover something. And that sort of hunch or gut feeling drives a lot of what I call 'wandering with intent': mostly nothing comes of it but sometimes our persistence pays off and we discover something that is significant to us.

We explore when we innovate and we explore when we are not sure where to go next. Exploration underlies research and it underlies, what John Dewey called 'productive inquiry', 'finding out what we need to know in order to do the things we need to do'. Exploring is an attitude or orientation requiring the willingness to engage with things that are not known or are poorly understood. It may involve overcoming fear and anxiety and dealing with uncertainty but also unimagined affordance. Exploration involves a physical and mental journey as we venture into the unknown or unfamiliar and it requires courage, confidence and self-belief that we will be able to cope with whatever emerges. Being willing to explore, to put ourselves into unfamiliar contexts to deal with unfamiliar situations and problems is an important orientation that we need in life - especially when life is disrupted or when we need to break away from existing routines in order to develop.

Exploring in order to develop something like an idea, is a necessary part of creation. Being willing to explore, and the act of exploration are important features of a self-determined ecology for learning or achieving something new. Exploration can be in any part of our ecologies for learning and achieving(2). It's the means by which we search for, develop awareness and begin to realise the potential of the affordance for something in any aspect of our life. It can be undertaken to understand the contexts and situations we are in - the problems, challenges and opportunities we have to deal with. The potential, limitations and constraints of the spaces we have at our disposal. To find and develop resources we need to achieve something, and to develop new relationships. The importance of exploration is manifest in the rich vocabulary we have developed to describe and give meaning to what we do when we are exploring. Common expressions like searching, seeking, questing, trying, playing, experimenting, investigating, developing, tinkering, messing around, poking around, sucking it to see what might happen, adapting, tweaking, examining, testing, probing, scanning, hunting, evaluating, inquiring, questioning, surveying, mapping, sifting, reviewing, studying, delving or digging into, having a look, convey not only the sense of activity and behaviour but also the mental processes that accompany our 'doings'.

The challenge for educators is to encourage learners to explore, to embark on journeys into what is unknown to them in order to learn. Given the way higher education is structured and assessed many might feel that we squeeze out much of the affordance for more explorative and discovery-oriented forms of learning, and this is the challenge educators face all over the world.

Developing students’ capability and capacity to explore is not simply a matter of developing the requisite knowledge and skills to explore in a particular domain. It also requires the building of confidence and attitudes, orientations and character like the willingness to take risks, to work with uncertainty and environments that are often not well ordered, to persist in the face of disappointment, and to try again if efforts fail to realise a goal. It also requires learners to harness their pragmatic imaginations to not only visualise a fuzzy goal but to imagine and turn into action the steps to achieving such a goal. To follow such a pathway without being sure of reward requires self-belief and trust in one’s own processes and practices. Learning environments that foster these imaginings and behaviours have become increasingly rarer as our higher education system and society for that matter has become more risk averse and where teaching efficiency and predictable outcomes are the most valued indicators of a quality education. Developing the explorative capacity of students is a challenge to educators and educational institutions all over the world, but it is something we have to do if we are to enable each new generation to solve the problems created by previous generations.

Lifewide Magazine is our vehicle for exploration: every issue explores a theme that is relevant to our educational mission. In issue #18 we explore the idea and practice of exploring to develop a better understanding of the way in which exploration features in our ecologies for learning, development and achievement. Eighteen contributors share their perspectives on, and experiences of, exploration. Through this exploration we might recognise the importance of exploration in many aspects of life and its importance in personal development and the achievement of things which we value. Through this exploration we might also recognise shortcomings in the affordance for self-directed, self-motivated exploration in undergraduate education. While exploring what was already known about exploration it struck me that very little has been written about the concept of exploration so I hope that our Magazine
will help expand awareness of its importance in learning and in the achievement of goals.

As always we cannot produce our magazine without the generous contributions of our writers. I would like to sincerely thank all the contributors for sharing their thinking and personal experiences of exploration: by sharing your perspectives and insights I believe we are making a useful contribution to our understanding.

You can download a free copy of 'Exploring Exploration' Lifewide Magazine #18 from the magazine page. In the next issue of Lifewide Magazine (July 2017) we will focus on exploration in disciplinary and professional contexts and we welcome contributions from our readers. If you would like to contribute please get in touch.

Norman Jackson
Commissioning Editor Lifewide Magazine

Citations
1 Pendleton-Jullian and Seely Brown J (2016) Pragmatic Imagination
2 Jackson, N.J.Exploring Learning Ecologies LULU
3 Exploring Exploration Lifewide Magazine #18

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Crossing Cultures: The Ecology of Developing Cultural Understanding

6/2/2016

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We learn and develop in lots of different contexts simultaneously and 'culture' is often an important aspect of the context. For example, our family, place of work or the educational institution in which we are studying all have their unique cultural characteristics and ways of doing things. Mostly we inhabit contexts that are familiar and culture is taken for granted as we understand what is expected of us and how people are likely to behave in these circumstances: nevertheless we soon know if we do something that runs counter to the prevailing culture. But there are points in our life where we move outside the cultural comfort zone we normally inhabit and encounter an unfamiliar culture or perhaps socialise or work with people who have a different cultural heritage to our own. In such circumstances the normal rules and principles we apply in our familiar cultural settings don't fit very well or not at all and we may well become confused and uncertain as to what is expected or how to behave. Learning in order to understand the new culture becomes a priority and an important goal for our learning ecology. Learning how to be/behave in a culture which we do not know is perhaps the most important way in which we develop our sense of what culture means in a social, symbolic and practical sense, and develop the confidence to live, work and socialise in other cultural contexts that are not familiar. Over a lifetime we may accumulate many such experiences and develop a broad understanding and sense of what culture means. Alternatively, if we rarely venture out of our own cultural settings our understandings will be limited and unchallenged.

There is no doubt that humanity has benefited from the sharing and mixing of cultures throughout the history of our existence. As this remarkable animation shows, we owe much to the people who have taken it upon themselves, for a whole host of reasons, to move themselves from their familiar cultural setting to another and in the process carry with them the ideas, symbols, behaviours and ways of perceiving the world, mixing them with what they discover in their new cultural settings to create entirely new meanings.

Lifewide Magazine #17

In the July issue of Lifewide Magazine we have explored the idea that our ecologies for learning, developing and achieving are the means by which we adapt to new cultural contexts and situations we encounter, where achievement means learning to function and perform in a cultural context that is not our own and we are seen as an 'outsider'. Articles do not focus on culture per se, but on our encounters with cultures that are different to our own and how we learn to adapt our thinking, our attitudes and behaviours within a new cultural context.

Readers might also be interested in the new Google + Forum we have created for discussion of issues raised in the magazine. To join the conversation click here.

Video - posted 11th September 2014 by Marcos Hung
Location: The University of Texas at Dallas, TX, USA
http://www.trendguardian.com/2014/09/ut-dallas-humanitys-cultural-history.html

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Climates & cultures for change, creativity and innovation in higher education

5/19/2016

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Preparing a talk for a conference is always a great incentive to take a fresh perspective on something. Preparing my contribution for the Dublin Institute of Technology conference on Educational Climate Change: Exploring Our Learning Environments got me thinking about the meanings of 'climate' in the context of change in higher education and more generally how the climates we encounter in different parts of our lives might affect the way we behave. In this way the climates of the different places and spaces we inhabit across our lifewide experiences might influence our learning.

The term climate is used in schools, particularly in the USA, where it refers to 'the quality and character of school life'.... School climate reflects the patterns of students', parents' and school personnel's experience of school life and the norms, goals, values, interpersonal relationships, teaching and learning practices, and organizational structures - its an experiential phenomenon (1). This meaning focuses on a particular school environment, how it is experienced and what it feels like but the same term might be used to describe the atmosphere in other contexts.

Climate as a complex atmospheric phenomenon, is influenced by many factors that change over time. It clearly exerts enormous influence on the living things and the physical environment within a particular climatic zone. Humans adapt to live our everyday life in different climatic zones and as change is slow, in general, we are able to cope with the effects of change. Within climate zones we have weather and weather can sometimes be extreme. Weather determines our daily responses to living within a particular climate and often demands an immediate response in our behaviours - for example to avoid getting soaked, frozen, over heated or blown away.

Both climate and weather provide us with metaphors for viewing the conditions for, and responses to, change within an ecosystem. If we take the educational ecosystem climate relates to the fundamental pattern of beliefs and ideas within a society about the aims and purposes of education, conceptions of learning and the way learning can be encouraged and supported and the ways in which institutions are configured to support students learning and development. The educational climate is sustained by the global patterns of thinking and behaviour of the people who teach, develop, research, administer and lead and govern our educational institutions and systems. Changes in this pattern of thinking and behaviour happen relatively slowly through the sharing and discussion of new ideas as they emerge and are distributed through books, media and conferences, and slowly translated into new beliefs and social practices of the people who work in higher education and policies that shape or control behaviour.

Within this constellation of climatic beliefs and ideas we have the equivalent of weather. In English higher education for example, these are such things as new government policies like the introduction and subsequent raising of tuition fees, or additional funding for certain types of activity - like widening participation, or new forms of regulation like the Quality Framework developed by QAA at the start of 21st century, the National Student Satisfaction Survey, or the introduction of new institutional policies, frameworks strategies and imperatives. Like the weather we experience on a daily basis, such things require us to respond quickly and collectively they combine to produce a climate within which people develop their sense of belonging and attitudes to change in their own work environment. We all have to prioritise our efforts and most individuals respond to the drivers of change only when they have to. But some individuals who develop and lead new practices, strategies and technological developments (innovators, developers and managerial leaders) generate their own 'weather' when they come up with new ideas and invent new social and/or technological practices and these can impact on the wider institutional environment.

Which brings me to the idea that organisations create their own climates and micro-climates reflecting the culture, the way people feel about their environment and the way people think and behave within their work environment. Organizational climate generally refers to the degree to which an organization focuses on and emphasizes such things as: concern for employee well-being and their learning and development, encouragement, involvement and empowerment of people working in the organisation, and appreciation and recognition for their efforts and achievements, and support for individuals' creativity and innovation. I've been fortunate in my career to feel that the environments I have worked in have generally enabled me to feel I could try to do things that required my creativity without fear of being pilloried if I failed. But I also recognise that this feeling is a very personal thing as I have worked alongside colleagues who experienced the same organisational environment in a different way because, for example, they had a more difficult relationship with our manager. So 'climate' is both a general set of circumstances that shape our attitudes and beliefs and a particular set of experienced circumstances and relationships that affect us as individuals and enable or inhibit our thinking and actions. This way of thinking brought home to me the importance of the climate that envelops us in our ecologies for learning, developing and achieving (2) in which we use our creativity, and how a positive and optimistic orientation to the climate in which we work, stimulates or inhibits our creativity to produce very different results and performances.

A higher education institution is a specialised eco-social system in which the inhabitants relate and interact for the purpose of learning and the development of knowledge and understanding. Each institution has physical features & cultural characteristics that are particular to itself and the people who inhabit it. The ecosystem is connected and open to the flow of ideas, influences and relationships with the world outside the institution. These continuous interactions result in change as people in the organisation assess and respond to emerging situations to adapt to, and take advantage of changing circumstances. Some of the more important factors that affect the climate for educational change, and encourage people to innovate their practices, are shown in the adjacent diagram.

A few years ago I was invited to study the way a university had tried to change itself through a three year programme of strategic change aimed at encouraging staff to innovate. It was very noticeable that the institution created its own climate for change which enabled staff to want to be involved and make change happen. As I was completing the study I had an insight that a university could be self-actualising by connecting is ambitions to achieve more of its potential to employees who were also trying to actualise themselves through the development of their own educational practices. It seemed to me that this climate for educational and institutional change that enabled and sustained a self-actualising ecosystem, was underpinned by a set of principles that related to leading, managing and creating a climate within which people felt enabled and supported. These factors and conditions are listed below.

Factors and conditions that support, encourage and enable strategic change through bottom-up innovation (2). These influence the climate for change within an institutional ecosystem
Leadership, management & facilitation of strategic change & bottom up innovation
1    Leadership is shared and distributed throughout the organisation
2    A strategic vision that inspires people to create their own visions for change that they will embody
3    A strategy for both planned and emergent change
4    A strategy that involves the whole socio-cultural environment
5 Involvement of agents or brokers to facilitate change across and between organisational structures, hierarchies and boundaries
6   The provision of additional resources and an effective but flexible approach to managing and accounting for their timely distribution
Environmental /cultural factors that support, encourage and enable strategic change and bottom-up innovation
An environment/culture that :

promotes effective, honest and meaningful communication
recognises and supports resolution of local contentious practice and facilitates rather than inhibits progress
encourages/facilitates new relationships and collaborations to foster change
provides emotional support and celebrates what has been achieved
values learning and encourages and enables people to share what has been learnt so that it can be used and adapted to other contexts
encourages people to take risks to put themselves into unfamiliar situations where they need to harness their creativity to realise their ideas and actualise themselves

These factors go a long way to showing what is important in creating an institutional climate within which people feel encouraged, trusted and empowered to contribute to the strategic change process through their own efforts and inventions. Innovators in higher education institutions are driven by their own visions of a better world and self-belief that they can make their world better and by a deep sense of moral purpose and concern for their students' learning and achievements. They are able to sustain these beliefs through thick and thin. They don't just have ideas they enact and embody their ideas and gain feedback from their actions that continue to reinforce their self-belief or enable them to adjust themselves towards better performances and solutions. But they benefit from being located in an environment in which they feel trusted and supported.

The relationships innovators have with their environment (including it's climate) is profound. In the words of Carl Rogers (3) creativity is 'the emergence in action of a novel relational product growing out of the uniqueness of the individual on the one hand, and the materials, events, people, or circumstances of his life' This ecological concept of creativity in which climate and culture influence attitudes and behaviours, fits well with the idea of organisations behaving as an ecosocial system and there is a strong overlap with the extensive organisational research conducted by Amabile and Kramer (4) on the socio-cultural work environment who identified four categories of nourishers that have a significant impact on the way people feel about their work environment and on their creativity, productivity and performance in their work namely:

1 Respect - managerial actions determine whether people feel respected or disrespected and recognition is the most important of these actions.

2 Encouragement - for example when managers or colleagues are enthusiastic about an individual's work and when managers express confidence in the capabilities of people doing the work increases their sense of self-efficacy. Simply by sharing a belief that someone can do something challenging and trusting them to get on with greatly increases the self-belief of the people who are engaging with the challenge.

3 Emotional support - People feel more connected to others at work when their emotions are validated. This goes for events at work, like frustrations when things are not going smoothly and little progress is being made, and for significant events in someone's personal life. Recognition of emotion and empathy can do much to alleviate negative and amplify positive feelings with beneficial results for all concerned.

4 Affiliation - people want to feel connected to their colleagues so actions that develop bonds of mutual trust, appreciation and affection are essential in nourishing the spirit of participation. One of the challenges for innovators is that they often feel alone because they are moving into new territory by themselves - where there is no-one they can affiliate with! By connecting innovators to each other and to an overall strategy organisations can help build new affiliations amongst innovators.

Climate is very much part of the institutional ecosystem and any institutional ecosystem that wants to involve people in innovation needs to be mindful of whether its own climate promotes or inhibits change or simply sustains what already exists.

So the question I am pondering is how does 'climate', in the sense I am using it above, feature in other aspects of our lives? Please share your thoughts..

Sources
1) https://schoolclimate.org/climate/
2) Jackson, N.J. (2016) Exploring Learning Ecologies, Available from Lulu https://www.lulu.com/ 3) Baker, P., Jackson, N.J. and Longmore, J. (2014) Tackling the Wicked Challenge of Strategic Change: The story of how a university changed itself Authorhouse. 4) Rogers, C.R., (1961) On becoming a person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin 5) Amabile, T. M. and Kramer, S. J. (2012) The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.

Norman Jackson

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Formation of community: wHAT CAN VLOGBROTHERS TEACH US?

4/30/2016

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I often find that some of the most exciting discoveries that we make, especially in the world of the internet, can be a totally wonderful accident, and that is certainly how I came across my most recent passion, the VlogBrothers. On the face of it the VlogBrothers are little more than a successful Youtube channel that have little to teach the Lifewide Education community, however, I think the VlogBrothers can provide us with some useful insights as to the nature of active onlie communities and how they form!

Some background to begin with. VlogBrothers is a youtube channel run by Hank and John Green, two 30 something year olds living in the American midwest. On wikipedia John is listed as the author responsible for best selling books such as The Fault in Our Stars, while Hank is described as a musician, educator and blogger. The two of them have, outside of the VlogBrothers each had significant successes, and yet this is not what I want to focus on.

Their headline channel, the VlogBrothers started in 2007 and is based on the very simple premise of two brothers communicating to one another via the medium of video blogs about things they find interesting. Topics range from books they are reading to their most recent projects, to their views on current social and political issues as well as simply interesting questions that come to mind. In short, in the last 9 years almost every topic you can think of has been covered in some way.

To date the channel has 2.8 million subscribers and 600 million views, these figures alone make for impressive reading, giving an insight into the power of the channel, and yet this is still not evidence of any kind of community, for instance there are channels dedicated to head massages that have similar counts. So what is it that makes this channel note worthy
as a vehicle for community?

This brings me to the crux of the point, ‘Nerdfighteria’. Nerdfighteria is the name given to the community that has sprung up around the VlogBrothers channel, the brothers describe it as “a community that sprung up around our videos that get together and fight against world suck”. The group have been responsible for arranging projects such as loaning over $4 million to entrepreneurs in devleopling countries, have raised over $4 million that have gone towards charities such as UNICEF, Autism speaks, Planned Parenthood, Water.org and many many more, as well as recently raising money for the refugee crisis in Syria.

However, the community element of Nerdfighteria goes further than simply raising money, and for me this is where the interest lies. The group has formal sub groups at a number of American universities, as well as incredibly active message boards and websites which are responsible for marshalling individuals and bringing them to action, be that researching a new fascinating tidbit of history, producing videos to participate in the conversation the brothers are having, or even getting involved with supporting AFC Wimbledon (a long, albeit quite interesting story that I won’t go into here).

In short, here is an online community responsible for raising millions of pounds for charity, becoming politically engaged, and actively participating in a wide ranging conversation. The group have been reported on by websites such as The Wall Street Journal, and have an active base estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands. So, how did all of this stem from two brothers making video blogs?

For me, there are two things consistent across all of their videos, firstly that while the topics are incredibly varied, they very often try to contain a message of sorts. The brothers are very good at taking stories from their everyday life and reflecting on it, analysing it, in a very relatable way. This gives their viewers the opportunity to learn from them by taking these lessons and applying them in their own lives. While the content of all our lives may not be the same, many of the lessons they tell transcend issues such as age, race and gender and focus on the shared, complex experience of living.

Secondly, the sheer unadulterated enthusiasm of the brothers is infectious. Through the success of VlogBrothers they have gone on to create additional educational channels looking at everything from ‘Big History’ to ‘Organic Chemistry’ with almost everything in between. They have a passion for learning, sharing their learning and engaging people, and this comes across quite clearly in all of their videos. It is clear that a cult of personality has sprung up around the brothers that in itself inspires a degree of devotion, and I am certain is responsible, at least to some extent, for helping to create such an active and engaged community.

The brothers themselves are keen to grow the community spirit, holding projects to engage and not simply inform people. For me this is an example of YouTube being used to encourage two way communication, not simply a top down information presentation service which is often the death of online communities!

You could argue, with merit, that the VlogBrothers inspired Nerdfighters are not the only online community out there, what are Tumblr and Reddit if not online communities? I feel what marks Nerdfighteria out as different is their devotion to courses outside of issues that are directly related to them. This is a case of a self organised group inspired to make real world changes led by two guys chatting on video blogs! To me that is remarkable, as anyone who has tried to keep an online community alive knows, maintaining wide scale engagement when there isn’t any obvious, direct personal benefit can be a challenge, and yet here it is being done and continuing to grow.

VlogBrothers are an important part of my lifewide learning. I have learned all sorts of things from them but they have given me three valuable lessons about inspiring people to form an active online community:
-Be passionate & committed to what you are doing
-Be relatable to other people
-Be willing to share what you know and accepting of what others are willing to share
If we meet these criteria then maybe, just maybe, we can help create an actively engaged online community!

Michael Tomlinson is a postgraduate medical student and a member of the Lifewide Education team

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what is The educational value of an ecological perspective?

4/9/2016

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Our learning, development and achievement constitute the most important ongoing project in our life. They are continuous (lifelong), diverse in their forms and pervasive in the multiplicity of everyday contexts and situations we inhabit (lifewide). Its the everyday lifewide dimension of our life that we engage with, while the lifelong dimension provides the memories of experiences that we can draw upon and make sense of our life.

In adult life, beyond formal education, our learning, development and achievement emerge from the circumstances of our lives often in an unpredictable and unplanned way. Over the last few years I have become deeply interested in the way in which we inhabit and interact with the world and the way our learning, development and achievement emerges through these interactions. I have come to see this process as ecological in nature and I have become so attached to the idea that I spent six months working on a book called 'Exploring Learning Ecologies'(1) and I now need to gain feedback on whether the way I have come to see an ecology for learning, developing and achieving has value to people who are involved in helping people learn.

Ecosystems & ecologies
In the natural world, every organism inhabits an ecosystem which comprises the complex set of relationships and interactions among the resources, energies, habitats, and residents of an area for the purpose of living. Each organism within an ecosystem has its own ecology within the ecosystem interacting in its own unique way with its environment and the other inhabitants, seeking and using particular resources and forming particular relationships with the materials and events in its world.

Human beings are no different. We inhabit our own ecological (ecosocial) system which comprises the set of relationships and interactions among the people, resources, energies, habitats, and other residents of the particular environments we inhabit for the purpose of living. Where we are different to all other organisims on this planet is in our ability to learn and develop through this learning and to pass on this learning to other members of our species. Learning is therefore one of the most important dimensions of our ecology for sustaining and enhancing our life and the concept of a learning ecology provides us with the means to visualise the dynamics of complex self-determined and self-organised learning process and appreciate how the different elements of the ecology - contexts, process, will and agency, relationships and resources, fit together in a particular set of circumstances.

The concept of a learning ecology provides a more comprehensive and holistic perspective on learning, development and achievement than is normally considered in higher education. The value of an ecological perspective is that it encourages us to see our learning and development as a process that connects us in a holistic and profound way to other people, to the material resources in our environment and the events and circumstances of our lives, and to the things we want or need to do and achieve.

The proposition I'm developing is that an individual's self-created learning ecologies grow from the circumstances (contexts and affordances) of their life and they are established for a purpose that is directed to accomplishing short term (proximal) goals connected to more distant (distal) goals or life purposes. Their learning ecologies include their processes, activities and practises, their relationships and networks, and the tools and technologies they use, and they provide them with the opportunities, experiences, information, knowledge and other resources for learning, developing and achieving something that they value (Figure 1 & 2).

Figure 1 Components of a learning ecology (1)

Our learning ecologies are the means by which we connect and integrate our past and current experiences and learning. They embrace all the physical and virtual places and spaces we inhabit and the learning and the meaning we gain from the contexts and situations that constitute our lives. Our learning ecologies are the product of both imagination and reason and they are the vehicle for our creative thoughts and actions. They are one of our most important sites for creativity and they enable us to develop ourselves personally and professionally in all aspects of our lives.

The perpetual challenge of development
The perpetual challenge facing all human beings is fundamentally adevelopmental challenge focused on problems like 'learning to deal with and make the most of the situations, resources and opportunities in our lives' and 'solving the problems and challenges we encounter day to day'. There is also a developmental challenge emanating from within, 'how can I be and become a better human being.' These two forces, one intrinsic the other extrinsic drive our motivations which lead to us creating ecologies for learning, developing and achieving. These forces involve us in the continual process of becoming different which invariably means learning new things by adding to existing knowledge or skill, or replacing something which we already have. In this way development is integral to our daily project of perpetually becoming.

Figure 2 Simple conceptual tool for evaluating the components of an ecology for learning and development (1)

Example of an ecology for learning, developing and achieving
Our ecologies for learning, developing and achieving are revealed in the narratives we tell about our significant learning and development projects and events. Our projects come in all shapes and sizes, and in all contexts. We might illustrate the idea of an ecology for personal development through the scenario of learning to drive a car (Figure 3) an important learning project for most young adults. The scenario involves the learner in a comprehensive and mainly informal way interacting physically and emotionally with his environment in order to develop the knowledge, awareness and practical skills to drive competently and safely.

The process begins when the learner decides they want to learn to drive(motivation/will) and take the test to demonstrate proficiency (proximal goal). Consciously or unconsciously their desire to drive will be embedded in the idea of a better and more productive life (distal goal). The individual has created a need and they must perceive and find the affordances available to them in their environment in order to meet this need. The individual, often with parental guidance and support, creates processdrawing on the affordances in their existing ecosocial system, to learn and develop themselves in line with their objective. The ecosystem they create includes context, resources, relationships and an unfolding (emergent) process over a significant period of time.

Figure 3 Personal learning ecology created in order to learn to drive a car and pass the driving test. Includes my context, affordances and process for learning to drive, the contexts in which I learn to drive, and a set of relationships and resources that enable me to learn.

Typically, the process involves:

several months of dedicated activity reading, practising, discussing, observing,
access to a car so they can practise
access to information about driving and the rules of the road - either as a book/booklet, DVD or on-line resources
a range of driving instructors including a trained professional instructor and untrained family members and friends

physical environment - safe areas for practising - like empty car parks and quiet roads - then public highways with various traffic conditions

This example of an ecology for learning shows the learner seeing and using the affordances they have to learn to drive in their particular context - their social, physical and virtual environment. They formulate a specific goals - to learn to drive and pass the test to become a qualified driver. Their self-determined learning process may well be aided by a professional instructor but the learner also draws on resources available for learning in their own environment - the knowledge and experience of people they know (relationships) - family and friends. As they practise driving they are immersing themselves in situations that are relevant to their learning and developing their own case examples of situations they encounter on different sorts of roads in different sorts of driving conditions. The experience is rich in emotion (I experienced some today as I accompanied my daughter who is learning!!) which helps anchor their learning in memorable moments and incidents. Over time experience is accumulated in a range of contexts - road, traffic, day time/night time and weather. As they participate in this process they can tap into the experiential knowledge (resources) of the people who accompany them on journeys as both drivers and passengers and their new awareness also encourages them to be more observant as a passenger so that they begin to think like a driver, reading and anticipating situations even when they are not driving. The conversations they have about their experiences will also encourage them to reflect and learn through this process. This ecology aimed at becoming a competent driver - may last several months and perhaps involve 10's or 100s hours of time and effort in which learning and its embodiment in their driving practise is the primary goal. If they are not successful in their test they will experience and feel failure and have to overcome this as well.

Through their learning ecology a person will gradually master a body of procedural and experiential knowledge and practical skill and embody this knowledge in their driving and eventually reach the standard to pass the test. Their learning, development and achievement have emerged from their interactions with their everyday environment and the circumstances of their life and the idea of a learning ecology embodies all these things.

What's the point?
The point of any idea is in its value. Does the idea convey meaning that is useful, that helps us understand, appreciate or explain something - in this case the idea is offered as an explanation of how we learn. If it does can we use the idea to help us design/create better educational practices and help learners become more effective in working with the complexities in their lives. In developing an idea like a learning ecology I'm trying to give the ecological metaphor new meanings that are relevant to learning, education and personal development. But its one thing to persuade myself that an idea has meaning and quite another to persuade other people. Its my belief that the idea of a learning ecology holds different value for different audiences.

Firstly does it hold conceptual value? Does it help us as visualise the dynamics of a complex self-determined and self-organised learning process and appreciate how the different elements of this process fit together to achieve a goal. Does it provide a framework for helping us think and act in a more relational and connected way - an ecological way of thinking perhaps.

What is its value for learners? Does the concept encourage us to see learning as a process and appreciate the ways in which we create processes that utilise and develop the relationships and resources we need in order to do what we have to do in order to accomplish the things we need to do?.

What is the value for teachers? Does the concept open up new possibilities for contexts, relationships and interactions as we appreciate that the learning ecologies of learners' extend beyond the ecology we have created for their learning and development? Does it encourage us to design educational challenges in ways that encourage learners to develop their own ecologies for learning?

What is the value for universities? Does the idea conflict with the ways we approach teaching, learning and the provision of educational resources and opportunities or does it open new possibilities for our imaginations and activities that we can utilise to enable us to become more involved in the ecologies of learning, knowledge development and creativity?

Invitation
I welcome feedback on the ideas I have set out in my book Exploring Learning Ecologies and the educational value in these ideas. You can email me at normanjjackson@btinternet.com All proceeds from the book are used to support Lifewide Education.

Sources
1) Jackson N J (2016) Exploring Learning Ecologies Chalk Mountain https://www.lulu.com/
2) Lifewide Magazine. Several issues on learning ecologies. Free to download at http://www.lifewideeducation.uk/magazine.html

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Panic buttons, learning zones & transitional states of being

3/19/2016

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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has the words Don’t Panic on its cover. Douglas Adams described the text as being in ‘large friendly letters’. This juxtaposition of panic and friendliness suggests being scared is nothing to be afraid of. Last week I was introduced to Senninger’s Learning Zone model. The bright red ring labelled Panic Zone caught my attention. I’ve been in transition between institutions and been asked by Lifewide Education to write about the impact of this on my learning and development, in particular from an ecological perspective (1) and with reference to Senninger's Learning Zone model (2).

The core of Senninger’s model is the Comfort Zone. Disrupting this shifts you into the Central Stretch Zone. The analogy is a good one. Change stretches you in all directions but like an aerobic workout, what’s tough at the time aims to make you feel better afterwards. Leaving Comfort Zones can have impact. There’s no going back. It’s like trying to recreate a fabulous holiday by returning the following year. People and places might appear the same but the moment has passed. As Heraclitus tells us, you can’t step in the same river twice.

Surrounding the comfort and the stretch circles is the Panic Zone. This gives the model a dystopian feel but I found the concept reassuring. However familiar you are with the symptoms of Imposter Syndrome, or have taken time out for meaningful self-reflection, it’s easy to take it personally if something doesn’t go quite as planned. Senninger gives us permission to feel a range of negative emotions and – more importantly – to contextualise them within the bigger picture of change.

Fear of change can keep us stuck in situations which are past their use-by date so we trade familiarity for comfortable security. It’s easy to see why. An essential element of dismantling an old world and accepting a new one is to invite temporary fear into your life. For a while you are the outsider, a stranger in the familiarity of others. Change can stretch you to the edges of what you know and this is a challenge. It’s good to remember being in transition is a process with stages. For me, the travel aspect is missing from the Learning Zone model. Norman Jackson’s Learning Ecology Model (2) gives a better sense of the journey and a combination of the two would best represent the change-route travelled.

Sources
1) Jackson N J (in press) Exploring Learning Ecologies Chalk Mountain https://www.lulu.com/
to be published March 2016. Also March Issue of Lifewide Magazine
2) 1 Senninger, T. (2000). Abenteuer leiten – in Abenteuern lernen. Münster/Germany: Ökotopia. Learning Zone Model. [on-line]
http://www.thempra.org.uk/social-pedagogy/key-concepts-in-social-pedagogy/the-learning-zone-model/

Image credits
Dont Panic http://www.tetchi.ca/dont-panic/
Imposter Syndrome https://www.sfu.ca/dean-gradstudies/events/impostersyndrome.html

Sue Watling is an Academic Technology Enganced Learning Advisor at the University of Hull. This post is adapted from her blog post
https://digitalacademicblog.wordpress.com/2016/02/26/panic-buttons-and-transitional-states-of-being/

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Reflections on everyday creativity

12/12/2015

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For the last few weeks I have been working on the most recent issue of Lifewide Magazine with my co-editor Jenny Willis. We took the theme of everyday creativity for this issue and tried crowd sourcing some of the content extending an open invitation to contribute a story of personal creativity. I also searched the internet for stories that we could use and found some great examples of creativity growing out of the circumstances of individual's lives. Altogether we had 20 stories and all of them reveal that someone cared enough about their creative ideas to turn them in to concrete experience or some sort of product or relationship. But creativity does not just happen in a vacuum. Individuals are located in the circumstances and situations that form their lives and the collection of stories gives meaning and substance Rogers' concept of creativity and the way it happens.

Creativity is 'the emergence in action of a novel relational product growing out of the uniqueness of the individual on the one hand, and the materials, events, people, or circumstances of his life' Rogers (1)

There are many suggestions as to why, when, how and where creativity emerges from and through people's lives and lists of how to improve our creativity (eg 2). Here are some general impressions we formed about the emergence of everyday creativity
after reading this fantastic collection of stories.

1 Our everyday creativity can be applied to almost anything - we are very good at finding the affordances in our life for our creativity - it's a fundamental characteristic of being a person.

2   The source of creativity - our imagination that gives rise to new ideas, feelings and actions, can be provoked by almost anything. We are the ones that find interest, meaning and inspiration in our own experience. being open to our feelings enables us to be inspired by almost anything. Our imagination encourages and enables us to connect ideas that are not normally connected because they are ideas we care about and the product of connecting has personal meaning and significance to us.

Three mothers of our creativity

3   Necessity is the first mother of our creativity: for example when we are faced with a challenge or problem that requires us to be imaginative and resourceful or and we need to experience and experiment with something in order to learn.

4   The second mother helps us cope with adversity or physical/emotional disruption in our life. It helps us cope with dissonance and conflict drawing on the emotional turbulence that emerges from the circumstances of our life. Our creativity can also be an expression of care and love in such circumstances.

5 The third mother fulfils our desire to achieve more of our potential as a human being. There is within us an innate drive to develop and improve ourselves and our lives - Maslow's notion of self-actualisation (3). So we seek out new experiences and explore and experiment within these new circumstances to make our lives more interesting and in the process we enrich ourselves and our lives. We search for affordance across and through our life. We use our creativity to replace the predictability of routines with interest, uncertainty and excitement.

But some contexts and situations are better than others for our creativity

6   Within the circumstances of our life, some contexts and situations provide us with more affordance for creative self-expression and deep satisfaction, than others. These contexts connect to our interests which motivate us to engage. We immerse ourselves in these interest-driven contexts and in the process develop our skills, knowledge and talents and discover particular mediums that we enjoy. Effort is rewarded as we get good at whatever we are doing as we involve ourselves in the things that we care about and aspects of our creativity flourish. Our interest and passion driven creativity connects to our need to fulfil ourselves as a the person we are.

7 Circumstances change and sometimes a context or situation within which we are creative cannot be sustained. For example an injury or illness may curtail our ability to create. Although our circumstances might be limited our creativity will often find another medium or context for expression.

8   Perhaps the greatest demand for our creativity is found in contexts that are unfamiliar dealing with problems that we have never encountered before. In such situations we are forced to invent ourselves and our practices and we may have to be exceptionally resourceful using whatever is available in our immediate environment. Making do with whatever is available connects to necessity being the mother of invention.

Factors and conditions that influence our creativity

9   All sorts of factors can influence our creativity. Our parents and our upbringing can influence and inspire us to live a life of creative possibility, while for some people particular conditions like having time, being relaxed, exercising or drinking coffee in a favourite cafe, help them access their unconscious mind to liberate their ideas.

10 Most of our everyday creations go unnoticed and we do not require an audience for our creativity to be exhibited - we do it for ourselves. But we do derive pleasure and satisfaction from seeing others enjoy and or value our creations.

11 From time to time we might find ourselves in situations that we cannot get out of. Talking about our problems and challenges with sympathetic and engaged listeners can open new ways of thinking and opportunities for creative solutions and actions that are not available to us without their involvement.

12 Some creative idea require us to involve others and gain their buy-in to our creative project. In such circumstances creativity may lie in the orchestration and facilitation of the process whereby people can make their own contribution.

13 Creative moments can be remembered throughout our lives and they may have a lasting impact on us.By sharing our creations and our thoughts and feelings around our creations we can inspire others. In the Social Age blogs have become important vehicles for creative self-expression, for sharing our creations and inspiring others.

14 Finally, if we are to create a more creative society: a society in which every person's creativity is nurtured, encouraged and valued, then teachers have a crucial role to play in ensuring that the right sort of conditions, relationships, affordances and recognitions are available.

These are just a few of the themes to emerge from the collection of stories of everyday creativity in Lifewide Magazine #15. If you have a story to tell please share it with us so we can add to the collection.

Sources:
(1) Rogers, C.R., (1961) On becoming a person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
(2) Tay D., (2015) The big list of 51 hacks to improve your creativity
http://piktochart.com/51-creativity-hacks/
(3) Maslow, A.H. (1943). A theory of human motivation Psychological Review 50 (4) 370–96

Norman Jackson & Jenny Willis
Lifewide Magazine Editors

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Holistic model for learning in the social age

11/1/2015

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Learning in the Social Age

We live in the Social Age which, thanks to the internet and the abundance of technologies that enable us to connect and communicate, has greater affordance for learning than in any other age. But it is sometimes difficult to connect the learning in the formalised world of education with learning in the informal social world.

Whilst formal learning may talk about application, social learning happens where the application takes place. Whilst formal learning talks about how to make links to reality, social learning is already in the pub, finding a comfy sofa and getting the drinks in at the bar (1 and image right)

But, thanks to my participation in the #creativeHE (2) on-line course, which is organised and facilitated by Lifewide Education Team member Chrissi Nerantzi, I now have a better understanding of these relationships.

#creativeHE

#creativeHE is an open learning process (OLP) formed around the idea of 'creativity for learning in higher education'. It is underpinned by information and content within the P2PU platform and a google+ community space for interaction and conversation (1). The OLP is populated by open educational resources and practices (OER/OEP). It is facilitated and time bounded (6 weeks) and there is a weekly set of activities relating to the core theme that participants can, if they wish, participate in. But there is also an intentional openness for participants to share their own interests and topics of conversation with others who are interested.

In addition to the on-line community space and interaction, the organiser (@chrissinerantzi) is also facilitating face to face learning events in her university. Furthermore, there is also a group of educational masters students participating from a Greek university. These groups of people connect the enterprise to more formalised professional development and education in institutional settings. This is why #creativeHE bridges the formal, semi-formal and informal worlds of learning, education and professional development.

Scaffolded Social Learning

Julian Stodd, provides a nice model (3 and left) for understanding the type of social learning that #creativeHE affords. He says that scaffolded social learning is built around two types of components: formal elements (‘boxes‘) and informal social elements (bubbles). At the boundary between each, there is a gateway. The bubbles are co-creative, community spaces, places where we can feed out questions, and responses to case studies, activities and exercises that are carried out over time and within communities. The boxes are formally defined learning eg classroom [prescribed activities] or defined resources. The overall arrangement is defined by an overarching narrative which defines the focus for semi formal learning, with a broadly defined outcome in terms of the expectations of learning and personal/professional development.

The overarching narrative for #creativeHE is formed around questions like 'what does creativity mean? and how can we apply it in educational settings? The emerging narrative is created by all the participants as they share their responses to the activities, pose questions and offer perspectives on topics that interest them. The learning process #creativeHE involves individuals participating in structured activities (the rectangular boxes) and the sharing of responses to those activities in community spaces and unfolding conversations that relate directly or indirectly to the inquiry themes being explored? Participants create portfolios to evidence their participation in the structured activities and they earn badges as they progress through them.

Collectives

In addition to the structured activities #creativeHE provides affordance for interest-sharing outside the programmed activities and the formation of collaborative projects determined by participants themselves. Two groups have been established in #creativeHE. The groups are open to all participants in the community but there is an expectation that the cost of admittance is 'participation' in the discussions and activities of the group. You cannot be passive in a group. In this respect the groups are more like 'collectives' in the manner described by Thomas and Seeley Brown (4).

In the new culture of learning, people learn through their interaction and participation with one another in fluid relationships that are the result of shared interests and opportunity. In this environment the participants all stand on equal ground - no one is assigned to the traditional role of teacher or student. Instead, anyone who has particular knowledge of, or experience with, a given subject may take on the role of mentor at any time.

A collective is very different from an ordinary community. Where communities can be passive, collectives cannot. In communities people learn in order to belong. In a collective, people belong in order to learn. Communities derive their strength from creating a sense of belonging, while collectives derive theirs from participation.

The new culture of learning, is a culture of collective inquiry that harnesses the resources of the network and transforms them into nutrients within the learning environment, turning it into a space of play and experimentation.

The group I have been involved in began by exploring interests in a google hangout space and identified interests in the topics of creativity and its involvement in emotions, relationships and visualisations. Over a couple of weeks we began to connect these interests to trying to understand how #creativeHE was working as a learning community. We connected our shared interest in creativity and emotion to the ways in which we could see emotions were involved in the formation of relationships in the on-line community and how creativity emerged through these relational interactions. Several members of Group agreed to form a project around understanding their own involvement in the #creativeHE community and learning process and this resulted in activity to represent and share these understandings. We each approached the task of evaluation in a different way and shared our efforts. This multiplicity of perspectives demonstrated the power of social learning.

Learning ecologies - the missing piece in the social learning jigsaw puzzle

Julian Stodd's model of scaffolded social learning offered me a way in to understanding the #creativeHE learning enterprise and it seems to explain most of what I observe. But it is deficient in one important respect: it takes no account of what participants are doing in the rest of their lives or how what they are doing in the social learning space, connects to their own learning projects - what I am calling learning ecologies (5). In my own learning ecology I am connecting what I am learning in the social learning space to the book I'm writing on learning ecologies and to the talk I am preparing for a seminar in Barcelona in ten days time. I will undoubtedly draw upon this personalised learning in the seminar when I talk to people who are far more knowledgeable than I am about on-line social learning practices.

The point I'm making is that Julian's model is not holistic enough. It must also connect to participants' own learning ecologies. Our contemporary learning ecologies provide us with the living vehicle for applying our understandings and new capabilities as they emerge. They provide us with the opportunity to develop new relationships with potential for future learning and achievement.

Norman Jackson

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worldwide lifewide learning & education day THURSDAY april 13TH 2017

'eXPLORING eXPLORATION' : Lifewide magazine #18

Crossing Cultures: The Ecology of Developing Cultural Understanding

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what is The educational value of an ecological perspective?

Panic buttons, learning zones & transitional states of being

Reflections on everyday creativity

Holistic model for learning in the social age

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