This is the first of a series of posts I wrote while visiting my family in Iran. In England I have more or less unlimited freedom to roam the internet, make whatever connections I choose to make, and share my thoughts and experiences. But in Iran I could not access Facebook, Twitter or even my own websites to post my blogs. People I spoke to told me that there were ways to overcome the filters that inhibit connectivity but that you have to disable your antivirus software in order to install the necessary software which I didn’t want to do. So these posts are being made after the event. The experience has taught me not to take for granted the freedoms and opportunities I have and to appreciate the challenges people in some parts of the world face in accessing and utilising resources that are freely available to all who enjoy such freedoms.
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![]() This weekend we published the second issue of Creative Academic Magazine on the theme of play in higher education. Thanks to the creative efforts of our two editors, Chrissi Narantzi and Alison James, over 30 people contributed to the two part issue. Basically, the magazine presents a good case for higher education teachers and universities to recognise that play is important to learning and involving people in processes through which learning emerges. Sometimes it takes a child to remind us of the value of play. This weekend my four grandsons 2 to 8 years old came to play with each of other and my niece's children and play they did from the moment they came to the moment they left us. All they needed was a space - the garden, a few things to play with, and each other. And the role of adults was to not get in the way and help them play safely. It was a facilitating role and occasionally we were admitted into their games - or we became part of their game. It was a joy to witness and experience their playfulness and happiness. And their learning was in learning about and with each other, in sharing their imaginations and personal knowledge, and in developing new skills and confidence - like my niece's nearly two year old learning to bounce on a trampoline, or my three year old disabled grandson learning a new word, or my 8 year old grandson hanging upside down on the swing for the first time. Small things in the grand scheme of life but important things for that moment in their life. And to cap it all my son in law called from Dubai to tell me that I had a new grandson - life doesn't get much better than this does it? ![]() The June Issue of Lifewide Magazine is exploring the idea and practice of Personal Learning Networks (PLN's). I am familiar with the idea and I assumed that most people working in higher education would be familiar with the idea, but my conversations revealed that this was not necessarily the case. A PLN is a way of describing the group of people that each of us connects with to learn from, and sometimes with. It's personal because we choose the people we want to involve ie we see advantages of being connected to them, and forming and sustaining a relationship with them in order to develop our thinking and capabilities. We also participate in networks of connected people in order to be involved in something and/or to achieve something and learning then becomes a bi-product of our involvement. Connectivity - is the defining property of the Social Age, and it is central to the idea of PLN's. Forming connections and relationships with people who can help us learn and or achieve something, is part and parcel of being the social animals we are. But the idea of networking for learning has become more important as a result of the new affordances provided by the internet, smart phones and other mobile communication devices, and Web 2.0 and social media technologies. Our PLN is not limited to online interactions, but it is the ability to connect easily with many people from all over the world, in a sustained manner, that makes the social practice of a PLN so powerful. In a world of just-in-time learning the affordances provided by the internet means it is also possible to find people quickly at the point that a problem has to be solved. Such possibilities were simply not available ten years ago. When we give something a name it defines the way we view it. The words PERSONAL (meaningful to me), LEARNING (the act of gaining new, or modifying existing knowledge, behaviours, skills, values or beliefs) and NETWORK(S) (a group of people we connect to or who are connected to us), clearly emphasise these three ideas but perhaps the term encourages us to ignore other important features of the concept. When I look at my own PLN and read about the ways other people have used their PLN, it is clear that our PLN’s often assist and enable us to involve ourselves in something, often to accomplish something we value. PLNs and the relationships we build within them are also a way of involving people in our own learning projects and for disseminating the results of our learning. In other words they provide a vehicle for influencing the thinking and actions of others. These dimensions of activity are camouflaged within the PLN concept. Our PLN's change through time as we move from formal education, into a career, we change jobs, roles and careers or engage in new projects, and perhaps move to new cities or new countries. Because of this our PLN's have both lifelong and lifewide dimensions. Our development through life, it might be argued, is the result of a constellation of PLN's we have created and been a part of tracking the sorts of changes in our circumstances outlined above. Our PLN’s vary according to types of knowledge we want to access. If we need to learn complex things like ways of thinking, communicating and behaving in a specific field of social practice, we create networks for learning that will enable us to participate in such social practices and gain access to the embodied knowledge of others who are more experienced and expert than ourselves. To some extent we can engage in conversations through which tacit knowledge can be shared through on-line forum’s but such forms of communication will not allow us to observe people in action and appreciate the nuances of their actions in the particularities of the contexts and situations they inhabit. But there is a world of networking through which people share their personal knowledge, insights and experiences through the medium of the internet. It is these computer-mediated networks for personal learning that have extended our scope for PLN’s. Our PLN's are central to the idea of learning ecologies 'the complex set of relationships we create in a particular context for a particular purpose that provide us with opportunities and resources for learning, development and achievement'. PLNs are like the blood vessels in our body or the roots and capillary vessels of a tree. They provide the relational structure and means of connecting to others and the means of tapping into the medium and nutrients for learning - the flow of information, knowledge and wisdom within our learning ecology. They connect our ecology for learning with the ecologies developed by others for their learning. So gaining deeper understandings of our PLN's will also help us understand our own ecologies for learning better. ![]() Making Sense of My PLN I will illustrate the use of PLN using the one I created to produce Lifewidee Magazine Issue 14 . As Commissioning Editor I had to identify relevant and useful content in order to find the people who were responsible for the content. Every issue of the magazine requires me to draw upon my existing PLN and to expand it by identifying new people with particular knowledge, expertise and interests in the topics we chose to explore. The Figure reveals the emergent and iterative process which began about 8 weeks before publication. My process began with the self-made problem called, 'How do we produce a magazine on the theme of Personal Learning Networks'? With the knowledge I already had I tried to create a framing statement to explain what this issue of the magazine was about. I shared this framing statement with my co-editor and with a few other people who I rely on to give me feedback on my ideas. On this occasion I got some useful feedback from John Cowan and in true JC form he began to elaborate some of his own thoughts. So I took the opportunity of using his 'musings' to invite him to draw these out in an article. However, on this occasion he declined - and that is the way it works isn't it? Having overcome the hurdle called 'making a start', I was energised enough to begin searching for content that might be included. Google was my main search tool, combined with searches on twitter, google images and academia.edu. Over a couple of days I identified a number of interesting blog posts and downloaded several articles and I felt I had a 'feel' for what was readily accessible and for the key ideas we could include. Two articles in particular seemed to offer the most useful and comprehensive understandings: both were written by Kamakashi Rajagopal. I decided to approach her to see if she would be willing to be our featured author and, if she was, to offer her the opportunity to co-edit this issue of the magazine. She readily agreed and we had a skype conversation a few days later where these initial intentions were elaborated She sent me a copy of her thesis containing a lot of unpublished material that convinced me that she was committed to the project and willing to contribute to my PLN, at least for this learning project. In return I sent her my early thinking on PLNs and learning ecologies. Over the next few weeks we shared ideas and questions through the process of writing, editing and preparing illustrations, and in this way contributed to each others' understandings. I encountered four types of response to my invitation to join the learning network project: 1 The person responded and gave me their permission to include their article often citing that it was published under a Creative Commons licence 2 The person responded and declined the opportunity to participate, or in one case - an agent informed me they required a fee for participation 3 The person did not respond even after several attempts to contact them 4 The person responded in such a way as to open up the possibility for conversation and engagement. The way the person responded held the potential for making the desired contribution to my learning project and/or moving beyond my expectations opening up new possibilities. I contacted 13 individuals using the first two strategies of whom 8 agreed to contribute, 1 person declined to be involved, another indicated they would consider involvement for a fee, and 3 people did not respond to my inquiries. Four people responded with enthusiasm and the interactions that ensued held the most potential for learning and were the most satisfying and mutually beneficial. I also involved a group of higher education professionals participating in a workshop I was running, in a questionnaire-based survey and discussion. The information I gained through the responses to this survey helped me refine my thinking and develop the questionnaire for a larger scale survey. Through the on-line questionnaire I sought to involve many more people who were part of Lifewide Education's list of subscribers, or who belonged to the Higher Education Teaching and Learning and Higher Education Academy Groups on Linked-In. A total of 41 people completed the survey. The Magazine is the product of these conversations and commissions. Given that they are so important it is surprising that higher education does little to encourage students to develop and practice the skills of networking for learning: preferring instead to rely on learners assimilating knowledge that has been codified in books. But for most students their future lies in mastering the ability to discover, create and co-create new knowledge to solve their everyday problems in particular situations and contexts. They need to become adept at creating, maintaining and making effective use of the resources contained within their PLN's.
So what might universities encourage and help students develop their PLNs? Here are three possible strategies. 1) The professional route - universities might emulate the ways in which professionals working in business and industry develop and maintain their links. A starting point might be to utilise their network of alumni, and involve students in using professional networking platforms like LinkedIn and Academia.edu 2) The subject route - within the programme and the broader social/cultural environment of a department, students could be encouraged to network around social activities, study groups, and projects and assignments that deliberately encourage learners to discover things not only through books but through finding people who can help them. 3) The lifewide route - universities might recognise that students are active networks in other parts of their lives outside the academic programme through which they form PLNs. Perhaps these experiences can be used to explore the idea and practice of networking perhaps in the context of personal development planning? How important do you feel it is for students to develop their understandings and capabilities for networking and what sort of strategies might or are being used? Further reading LIfewide Magazine June 2015 Exploring Personal Learning Networks ![]() As always my learning is driven by one or more needs relating to my work. In this case a workshop I am facilitating next week on the ecology of learning and development. I'm also working on the next issue of Lifewide Magazine which will be formed around the theme of Personal Learning Networks so PLN's are very much in my mind. I wanted to connect and integrate ideas on Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) with the flow of information and knowledge through my learning ecology. Using my PLN I discovered the Seek-Sense-Share model of information flow developed by Harold Jarche(1) to represent the way we set out to find information that is relevant to our learning and development projects, make sense and use that information then share with others our understandings. According to Harold, Personal Knowledge Mastery (PKM) is a framework for individuals to take control of their professional development through a continuous process of seeking, sensing-making, and sharing. Seeking is finding things out and keeping up to date. Building a network of colleagues is helpful in this regard. It not only allows us to “pull” information, but also have it “pushed” to us by trusted sources. Good curators are valued members of knowledge networks. Sensing is how we personalize information and use it. Sensing includes reflection and putting into practice what we have learned. Often it requires experimentation, as we learn best by doing. Sharing includes exchanging resources, ideas, and experiences with our networks as well as collaborating with our colleagues. ![]() A little bit of SEEKING in my PLN led me to Jane Hart's Blog and her post (2) where she had applied the Seek-Sense-Share model to her own daily routine. I like this representation as it converts an abstract model into something tangible. I decided to personalise Jane's approach and the result is shown in the illustration below. Unlike Jane's disciplined daily routine, my approach to accessing the information flow from my PLN is quite chaotic. But it becomes more disciplined and systematic when I want to learn something. I dedicate the time and resources to SEEKING information that might be relevant (such as what I'm doing now) for a particular purpose. In other words, while this model explains the ongoing information flows in my life, it comes into its own when I have created an ecology for learning something(3). ![]() The illustration provides a representation of the flow of information through my current learning ecology. While there is a lot of use of technological tools what is hidden from view are the people who make use of these technologies who create, curate and communicate the information which I receive or SEEK. In accessing the information I make a judgement as to its relevance, validity and utility and then I either store it or put it to use by bringing it into my learning project. Through a process of trying to understand and apply the information SENSING, I create new meaning and change my own understandings which I can SHARE via my Twitter accounts or through my websites and the on-line publications I help produce, if I think other people will be interested or, it advances my own projects, The value of CURATING as part of the infrastructure for sharing is that it provides a context to enable deeper understandings to be made. Through this illustration I can visualise how my PLN has two different dimensions. The first is to provide me with a continuous flow of information that might be of interest and which I might be able to make use of. But once I engage with a problem I actively begin to create an ecology within which my PLN will take on new meaning as I SEEK specific individuals inside or outside my existing PLN, who can provide me with information that is relevant to my learning project. This is a transactional relationship in which I commit to SHAING some of what I have learnt with the people who include me in their PLN or who in future engage in their own SEEKING for information that I have shared. This is how the ecology of information works. SOURCES 1 Jarche H, (2014) The Seek > Sense > Share Framework Inside Learning Technologies January 2014, Posted Monday, 10 February 22 014 http://jarche.com/2014/02/the-seek-sense-share-framework/ 2 Hart J (2013) My daily PKM routine (practices and toolset) http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/2013/11/30/my-daily-pkm-routine-practices-and-toolset/ 3 Jackson, N. J. (2013b) Learning Ecology Narratives, in N. J. Jackson and G. B. Cooper (eds) Lifewide Learning, Education and Personal Development E-book Chapter C4 available on line at: http://www.lifewideebook.co.uk/research.html ![]() It's been one of the longest breaks I've had between writing for my blog. Mostly its because I have been very busy preparing a series of creativity Guides and delivering some workshops in Saudi Arabia. Such periods of business require every bit of effort to focus on priorities. But also its because I did not have the inclination even when I completed my assignment - I lacked the will. This week has been busy as I devoted a lot of time to producing and editing material for the next issue of Lifewide Magazine on the theme of Reflecting in the Social Age. I know feel in a better place to summarise my thoughts.. The use of web 2.0 / social media in reflection will be a personal matter. When I look at my own reflective practice, the technology I prefer to help me think reflectively is a blank sheet of paper or word document. The process of writing helps me clarify and connect my thinking - it encourages reflection and it results in a record or product. Writing is also probably the medium I prefer for creative self-expression, along with producing illustrations. So my record of reflective thinking - the codification of my thoughts, is essentially a word document or perhaps a powerpoint slide that contains ideas for an illustration and this becomes the source materials for my blogs, presentations and magazine articles. I don't publish everything I write in my word diary but I publish most of it as it is written with one eye on my blog because I am using it to demonstrate or model my engagement with lifewide learning. For me, social media does not cause me to reflect or facilitate reflection other than the information flow I receive, particularly from Twitter, exposes me to ideas, people and resources that I would never come across any other way. This flow of personal knowledge encourages me to explore how new ideas relate to my own life - so it is the information flow through social media that causes me to reflect and beyond this to explore. Increasingly, my reflective thinking is connected to the exploration and examination of ideas that I have not thought about before. My use of web 2.0 technologies (weebly websites) and social media enables me to 'present' and 'share' my thoughts through my websites and LinkIn blogs. I use Twitter and Linked-In groups to broadcast and gain feedback on selected posts. These spaces and mediums enable me to combine my words with images, illustrations, sound and video and even animations to present ideas in more interesting and engaging ways. I realised some time ago that the process of bringing an Issue of Lifewide Magazine into existence is one of the most powerful tools I have for learning about new things and for reflecting on what I have learnt. Through working on this issue I have concluded that most people reflect on experiences and events in their lives but they do so privately, informally and without a record. This general tendency carries over into the use of social media - even active users of social media typically do not use these media for recording self-reflection. So being an active user of such media does not in itself mean that people will use their affordances for reflection and recording reflective thinking. People who voluntarily record their reflective thoughts, in a diary, letters, blogs and through other means, do so because of the intrinsic value and meaning they derive from the process. For them reflection is a part of who they are and an outlet for their creative self-expression. They will search for and use the medium(s) that enable them to best express their reflective thoughts in words, drawings, paintings, photographs, making things. If they use social media then they will consider the affordances they offer. Most people spend time and effort recording their reflective thoughts only when they are expected or required to do so. For example, in work reports, training and development activities or appraisal procedures, or in formal educational processes. They might also reflect and record their thinking at important transitions in their life for example when they are considering leaving a company or applying for a job and they have to update their CV or write a letter of application. In other words reflection is fulfilling a particular purpose and the parameters are usually externally defined. People engage in reflection when they are involved in learning projects, CPD activities or a new and rich informal learning experience, such as travelling or living in a new country. They might also engage in reflection and recording their thinking for therapeutic reasons for example following trauma. The people who do spend time and effort recording their thinking, including their reflective thoughts, over sustained periods of time, are people who are interested in and committed to their own learning and development. Typically such people are involved in the development of others - teachers, trainers, coaches, educators, developers and one of their purposes is to lead by example by showing the value of recording their reflections. In addition to people who are directly involved in education, there are groups, such as Professional Bodies, that have a particular interest in promoting formal reflection through their role in professional recognition and maintaining good standing through self-managed CPD. This connects reflective practice in education with reflective practice in the professional world. Yet another group of people who record their thinking in a publically accessible way are the thought leaders and writers, who want to influence others, build their reputation and promote themselves in the process. You have to be an active user of social media in order to make use of its affordances for supporting reflection. Personal blogs using web 2.0 platforms like wordpress, tumblr and weebly, are the preferred social media tools for making reflective thinking publicly available - often supported by Twitter. But people who are highly involved in social media make use of many different tools in their reflective processes and practices. It's also clear that some people have tried to use social media to encourage reflection and have been disappointed with the results. These tools do not help them reflect deeply and meaningfully. Virtually, all of the contributors to this issue of the Magazine maintain a blog through which they publish, amongst other things, their reflective thoughts. Their blogs are connected to their purposes - usually their role, specific aspects of their work or other enterprises they are involved in or perhaps their passions. So on balance, it would appear that social media provide a medium for recording and presenting reflective thinking for those people who want to reflect and are interested in using such media to accomplish this. But it probably has little impact on people who do not see the value in recording their reflective thoughts. Regardless of whether we perceive social media to be of use in personal reflection, social media are good at helping us share the results of our reflective stories and insights. When I start researching a new topic I will often search for blogs where people have shared their own thinking and ideas. By sharing their creative contributions people help other people to think: people they will never know unless they make a comment on their blog. Seeing someone else make use of your thinking and creative products can be highly motivating and encourage you to share even more - but all too often people do not leave comments so we do not know what effect our sharing has. So I hope these musings are of interest and value to someone other than myself. ![]() Facilitators of processes designed to stimulate conversation and the exchange of ideas are in a privileged position to experience and witness the emergence of new ideas, or the connecting of different ideas to form a new idea or the reshaping of existing ideas to meet a new purpose. I had such an experience this week during a workshop I was facilitating at Sheffield Hallam University. My role was to encourage a group of staff to re-imagine what an educational process called 'personal and professional development planning' (PPDP) might look like if it were to embrace the ideas of lifewide learning, and learning ecologies. I have to declare a vested interest since I had introduced these ideas to the university at their teaching and learning conference last year. Also going back 15 years I was responsible for developing the policy framework for personal development planning in higher education. So I have strong motives for supporting this exploration, believing that any idea or practice should be periodically revisited, viewed and explored from fresh perspectives. I started my session by making reference to Stephen Johnson's RSA Animate talk - where great ideas come from and suggested that the workshop provided a great space for harnessing the thoughts and ideas of the participants on the matters we were focusing on. We worked through the approach that I had learned from Fred Buining, the great Dutch facilitator encouraging participants to suspend their disbelief and think imaginatively with purpose to explore the problem statement we had created and then generate many possible solutions. This process prepared them for the main task which was to work in two's or three's to create a poster to describe their solution to the problem. Here the process encouraged both imaginative and critical thinking within a well defined time frame. At the end of it each small group pitched their poster to the others and at the end of the pitch the other participants had to make at least one suggestion to add value to the ideas that had been pitched. What emerged were some 'great ideas' which had huge potential to be shaped into exciting new concepts and social practices. It was a wonderful experience and I caught the sense of excitement as some of the participants realised some of the potential in the ideas. Feedback at the end on my contribution was very generous and I went home a happy man. On the long (5 hour journey back) I reflected on the experience. Travelling makes you do this doesn't it? I re-read a blog post I had downloaded by Carlo Miceli who summarised the key points in Stephen Johnson's book and it seemed to me that the workshop satisfied two of his ten statements about where good ideas come from. First innovation pattern: The Adjacent Possible The first pattern he recognises is that ideas are connected like doors. Open a door and you can see new ideas, but only ideas that are connected can be seen. It’s by learning from other people’s ideas, or previous ideas of our own, that we come up with new ways of seeing the world. It’s a constant connection of innovation. The key is not to isolate your idea. Instead, try to connect it to as many doors -people, places, ideas – as possible. I think the 'design thinking' workshop provided an excellent space in which individuals could open the doors behind which their ideas sat and expose them to new possibilities. Second innovation pattern: Liquid Networks Ideas are not single elements. They are more like networks. They are not sparked by the connections between different elements: they ARE those connections. For ideas to happen, you have to place the elements at your disposal in environments where more connections can occur in the right way. The best networks have two characteristics: they make it possible for its elements to make as many connections as possible, and they provide a random environment that encourages constant “collisions” between all of its elements. The elements are worthless if they are not properly connected. The magic in the workshop is the way in which people who had participated in and shared a process were then connected in the act of designing their solution to the problem/opportunity. This was when ideas collided and new and better ideas emerged. The following day I sat down and tried to catch some of my learning from the event. I was particularly interested in the high level concepts and how the rationale might be developed to support these. As I wrote I realised that I was embodying the first of Johnson's innovation patterns. During the process I had opened my door to share my ideas and then been rewarded with the open doors of participants through which they had shared their ideas. My writing process was the way in which I tried to select and make sense of the multitude of ideas. I tried to identify the big ideas and connect them to existing subsidiary ideas that gave the big idea substance and deeper meaning and ultimately might enable new social practices to be created. Finally, one other thing I now have which I didn't have before is a personally meaningful story I can use in my work in encouraging creativity to flourish in universities. Such stories are valuable ways of bridging the gap between the abstract ideas of Stephen Johnson to the real world of academics, educational developers and managers. So this is how I witnessed the birth of some GOOD IDEAS. It was a deeply purposeful, social, collaborative, energetic and constructive and connected process and I feel privileged to have been a participant. But the good ideas are only that. They need to be developed and grown into something that can be brought into practical existence. This is the challenge for the developer - to seize the good idea and be inspired by it. To care enough about it to want to do something useful and practical with it. To accept the risk and discomfort of persuading and battling colleagues to convince them that this idea is worth investing time, effort and resources to bring it into existence. But that is an all together different story which I have yet to witness called, 'where good social practices come from'. Sources http://www.carlosmiceli.com/where-good-ideas-come-from/#sthash.Baif9dvQ.dpuf ![]() I have a really interesting assignment on Wednesday to work with a group of staff and students at Sheffield Hallam University and facilitate a workshop aimed at exploring and re-imagining personal development planning (PDP) in the Social Age. To say I have a soft spot for PDP would be an understatement. Back in 1998-99 while working at QAA I facilitated the process of developing the policy framework for PDP. What I learnt through practitioners and my subsequent research convinced me of the value of linking a set of interconnected activities and experiences that included:
So it's with great pleasure that I am returning to thinking about PDP. What has changed in the last 15 years since PDP was introduced into UK HE is that we have now moved into the Social Age of collaborative learning and sharing. The Social Age is defined by the massive use of social media platforms that are changing behaviours and habits in respect of how we find, use, develop and distribute information and knowledge and create new meaning and understanding for ourselves and with others. It is being brought into existence as a result of the web 2.0 and web-enabling communication technologies and ever faster broadband, wifi, 3G + 4G technology that enable connectivity almost anywhere at anytime with infinite information resources, and personal knowledge residing within the personal learning networks we create for ourselves. Enhanced connectivity is at the heart of the Social Age might be defined in terms of 'the creation of value (knowledge, understanding [or learning] and relationships) by connecting individuals who want to share their interests, knowledge, passions who form a relationship to co-create new understandings. I've not been a particularly fast adopter of these technologies but slowly and surely over the last few years I have tried out website building tools and various social media and gradually adopted, in a selective manner, the technologies that help me do what I need to do. In the process I have also decided against using some technologies, or using them in a selective way. ![]() So how has my PDP practice changed? I like to think I have always been reflective and this has helped me learn from my experiences. I also think I've been reasonably good at imagining what I need to do in different contexts and developing strategies for achieving stuff. And I have worked out through experience that plans need to be fairly fluid to accommodate all the unexpected stuff that emerges through life. All this is internalised and for most things I don't need to sit down and make a plan on paper or formally write up a reflective report. Throughout my career in many different professional my roles I have had to keep good records of what I have doing and plans of what I intended to do, and in the last 20 years of my career I went through annual appraisals of various sorts - many of which involved creating a narrative and filling out forms which asked the questions that managers wanted answered and did not necessarily tell the story in the way I wanted to. I don't have to worry about this anymore, the only appraisal I go through is my own, and my wife's from time to time! Neither do I have to worry about building my cv anymore. But I am interested in developing my ideas and sharing them with others to see if they have value. As an educationalist I am trying to model my ideas and practices for lifewide learning and creativity so I do devote quite a lot of time exploring how my ideas relate to my own life believing that if I can't apply them in my own circumstances they can't be much good. One thing that hasn't changed is that I prefer to write in word and upload to other technologies. I find the familiarity of word gives me the freedom and flexibility to express myself in ways that writing on-line does not. The characteristics of my PDP are documented below 1 My PDP is all informal. It's what I choose to do, when I want to do it and how I want to do it. I have to make up the rules and frameworks I use they are not given to me. The fact that I don't have to jump through any hoops and the products are not being used to appraise or assess me, is quite liberating. 2 Its contextual. My PDP reflects the circumstances of my life and it being created in the context of my interest in lifewide learning and creativity - which is my work. 3 I have to motivate myself to do it because no-one else will make me. So my motivation is intrinsic, driven by my purposes which is to model the practices I would expect of a lifewide learner and my interest in developing and sharing ideas that emerge through this process. For PDP to be successful it has to serve a useful purpose and fulfil a need which might be defined in terms of interest in myself and how I relate to others, and an interest in the educational ideas that emerge through the process. 4 It requires discipline. There are times when I'm so busy that time for writing about my experiences and learning is squeezed out, but somehow you have to squeeze it back in again. This means I have to value the process and what emerges from it. 5 it's about building a narrative of the events in my life and how I respond to them. The overall value to me is in the development of my narrative over time and it matters to me and probably no-one else. It is I suppose a vehicle for creative self-expression in a medium (writing) that I enjoy. I also see that my writings can serve a number of purposes which is another source of motivation. 6 It is about learning about myself. To develop my ideas I have to keep thinking about things I have not previously given much thought to. What often causes these triggered reflections is the stuff I read in other people's blogs which provide a prompt that I can't resist. How do I find these? Well I spend a lot of time on google searching for things that interest me but also I discover much through the Personal Learning Network I have constructed using Twitter. I usually check my feeds daily, although I can go days sometimes without doing this, and if a tweet looks interesting I follow the link to see where it takes me. I have learnt so much through this process. 7 I have to admit that I have the time or rather I can make the time because by doing it I'm not able to do something else. But not having to go to work every day 8 I am using quite a lot of technology to help me record my experiences and musings. Thanks to the Web 2.0 Weebly website building tool I have my own website which hosts my blog and a suite of other websites to support my educational work. My basic approach is to write a blog usually about something that has happened or something I have come across that has caused me to evaluate myself. I try to write something every week. If I think the ideas and perspectives in my blog might be of interest to others I share them either through my two educational websites (lifewide education and creative academic) or Linked in or for work that actually becomes publishable - academia.ed. When my ideas have been developed sufficiently I might publish them in our on-line Lifewide Magazine. I share my blogs through my three twitter accounts which serve different purposes and audiences. ![]() Here are some of the ways in which I think these technologies enhance my PDP practice and what flows from these practices. 1 For me there is the aesthetic appeal of a nice looking website rather than the word document I use as a starting point for my commentaries and reflections. Populating my post with an image or video clip that is relevant and interesting enhances my thoughts and makes it visually more attractive. 2 Situating my blog within my own website enables it to be contextualised within my bigger narrative which is about who I am and what I am doing and where I have come from. 3 Because my blog is on-line I can hyperlink ideas to other resources which open alongside my post. This can be a useful enhancement to my own content or a navigational aid to other work I'm involved in. 4 By offering it on-line to anyone, people can also add their comments and ideas. If I want to I can send a link to a particular person or group. 5 Posting some of my blogs in my social enterprise sites allows me to contextualise my ideas and reflections in the bigger narrative of the ideas and practices that these sites support. 6 Posting selected blogs on LinkedIn places my thoughts within a professional work context. Furthermore, I can use my blog post to actively engage the LinkedIn groups I have joined. In this way it's a way of attracting people who are interested in lifewide learning or creativity in higher education, my too work themes. Because of my profile, two days ago I received a message from someone inviting me to apply for a position as leader of a Steiner School. I didn't want it but it illustrates that if you are active by posting blogs, you get noticed and new opportunities emerge. 7 Using Twitter to broadcast my blog posts enables me to attract new followers (people who are interested in my thoughts and what I am doing) and to contribute my personal knowledge to the social universe. I like to think that I am being connected to the Personal Learning Networks of the people who connect with me. 8 Generally, having a presence and traffic to my sites leads to new things. Only two weeks ago I was invited to undertake a writing and training assignment for a university in the middle east. The client found me through the internet and because of my activity they were able to judge that I would be a good person to invite. 9 I also love to see where people who read my blogs have come from by looking at the geographic maps that can be generated using stat counter I embed in my sites. So those are some of the advantages of using web 2.0 / social media to support PDP practice, and that in a nutshell is my story of PDP in the Social Age of learning. ![]() Making sense of it Two friends who are in my PLN - Chrissi Nerantzi and Sue Beckingham, have developed a framework to help us understand how social media can be used. Its called the 5C framework - communicating, connecting, collaborating, creating and curating. Descriptions of how I'm using social media to support my PDP I can see that I am engaged with all 5 of the C's. Firstly, my blog is all about communicating in words and images, my personal knowledge and insights to myself and to others who are interested. Connecting - I use my blog to connect ideas, link to resources and to connect to interested others. By posting on multiple sites and with forums like the special interest groups on LinkedIn, I expand the potential for people to connect to my ideas. Similarly I benefit from the connections I make in my PLN's and quite a few of my reflections have been triggered by the posts of others. Collaborating - this is probably the weakest aspect of my PDP practices although the topics of my reflections often make reference to the collaborations I'm involved in (such as my involvement with Hallam in this post). PDP for me is mainly a solitary practice although I could present a case that every idea I assimilate that triggers a reflection is a sort of collaboration and therefore many of my blogs are in fact co-created with the resources and ideas of others. Creating - my blog brings ideas and thoughts into existence that are new and original to me and I change my understanding through the writing process. The digital medium allows me to play with ideas and images in ways that I could never do before this technology was available. Curating - I am curating my narrative and my ideas for myself and because I am always trying to be resourceful I make use of my writing for multiple purposes. For example I intend to use an edited version of this article in the next issue of Lifewide Magazine. By posting in my thematic websites I am adding content to other curated collections. The one thing I would add is another C - commitment. All this does require sustained commitment and effort. Why do I do it? I left the big question until the end. I commit to engaging in PDP because I believe in its intrinsic worth. I also engage in PDP because of my professional interest in exploring and growing ideas from my everyday life and because it helps me to understand myself. I also do it because to be an active participant in the Social Age, sharing my personal knowledge and insights with anyone who is interested. My PDP is an integral part of my learning ecology. For example this post is a personal inquiry, prompted by the forthcoming Hallam workshop, in order to gain a better understanding of what PDP practice means to me. My intention is to share this post with participants as part of the knowledge development process around the workshop. Last but not least, the PDP practices I describe above is one of my outlets for creative self-expression. Furthermore, the new insight I have gained from this examination of my own PDP practices is to conclude that I use my PDP process not only to reflect on what I have done and make sense of my experiences, I use it to actively explore new ideas and things I haven't thought about before. That is why it is such an important part of my ecology for learning and developing. If you would like to share your ideas and practices relating to PDP please leave a comment. Sources Nerrantzi, C. and Beckingham, S. (2014) Our Magical Open Box to Enhance Individuals' Learning Ecologies. Chapter 2 In N.J.Jackson and J. Willis (eds) Lifewide Education in Universities and Colleges http://www.learninglives.co.uk/uploads/1/0/8/4/10842717/chapter_c2_revised.pdf QAA (2009) Personal development planning: guidance for institutional policy and practice in higher education Available on-line at: http://www.qaa.ac.uk/en/Publications/Documents/Personal-development-planning-guidance-for-institutional-policy-and-practice-in-higher-education.pdf Stodd,J. (ed) (2014) Exploring the Social Age and the New Culture of Learning. Lifewide Magazine Issue 11 Available on line at http://www.lifewidemagazine.co.uk/ ![]() In a design brief for some training and development I'm doing I was asked to address the idea of 'mediums for creative self-expression'. In spite of having invested a lot of time thinking about creativity over the last 15 years I have never really sat down and thought much about the mediums I use. They are taken for granted. The context in which people work, study, play and socialise includes the medium through which people are able to express themselves through what they do and how they do it. The medium is an agency or means of doing and accomplishing something. In the context of personal creativity it is the means or mode of creative expression. According to Ken Robinson the medium rather than the context is the vehicle for creative self-expression. 'If you’re doing something creative, you have to be working in a medium. My experience is that the most creative people love the medium that they work in. Musicians love the sounds they make. Writers love words. Mathematicians love the abstractions that numbers make possible. Engineers and architects love building things' (Robinson 2007). ![]() For an artist the medium is his art - his drawing, painting or other form of creative expression and it includes the media he uses to create his representations, his sketchbook and tools for sketching and colouring. Or, if he is a digital artist - a computer or digitising pad, scanner and camera or smartphone and software to process and manipulate the images. For a writer his medium for self-expression is the words he writes be they in a notebook or on a word processor. For a performer like a footballer, his medium is the game of football he plays and his tools are the ball and the boots he wares. Finding the medium or media for creative self-expression is an important and continuous search across and through all the spaces and opportunities in our life if we want to find joy and live a fulfilled and meaningful life. Looking back through my life as a teenager I loved drawing and painting so I was used to the medium of the artist. Later I swapped my sketchpad for a field notebook as I became a geologist. My context became the 'field' and my medium my field sketches and the maps I produced as I observed and interpreted the world around me. Geological mapping is a craft that combines observation and critical thinking with imagination. In the classroom as a teacher, the lecture or practical became my medium and the resources I produced and used were my tools to engage and encourage students to share my love of my subject. These techniques were later adapted for educational professionals as I morphed into a higher education researcher, policy maker and developer. In this way, although the contexts have changed the medium through which I have expressed myself have generally remained constant. Outside my work I have enjoyed expressing myself through my garden and being in a band where I play drums. All these contexts, and more, provided me with challenges and opportunities, in which I could create a sense of purpose. Within them I found a 'medium', the means of doing and accomplishing something that I valued and within which I could create something - mostly by myself, but sometimes with others. The medium I prefer to express my ideas, imagination, beliefs and values in is writing. This has always been the way since I wrote my dissertation as an undergraduate, through the papers and thesis I wrote as a postgraduate, through the articles and books I have published in my fields of geology and education and now to the articles and blogs I write and most recently a book about my family's history. In recent years I have come to see myself as first and foremost a writer, then a developer, broker and lots of other things. Some would say I'm sad spending so much time sitting at a computer writing. My wife sees my writing as work, and there is a discipline that makes it work-like, but it often feels more like a hobby because of the pleasure and satisfaction I gain from it. Through writing I explore my ideas and imagination and bring some sort or order and meaning to their randomness as they are connected and contextualised. There are many definitions of creativity but as a writer I have always had a soft spot for Dellas and Gaier (1970) who suggest that creativity is the desire and ability to use imagination, insight, intellect, feeling and emotion to move an idea from one state to an alternative, previously unexplored state. That sums up very nicely what often happens when I sit down to write about a subject I know little about - like this blog. The process of crystallising thoughts in words is the way I discover and consolidate what I understand and believe. 'How do I know what I know until I say it?' is very real to me. Through writing I appropriate the ideas of others and make them my own connecting them to what I understand and adding to my understanding in the process. It's mostly a solo experience - so in answer to the question do you prefer to be creative on your own or with others, I would have to say that on balance, and in the context of my preferred medium, my preference is to work by myself. Although, there are certainly times when it is a joy to write something collaboratively. The desire to write is often what gets me up early in the morning (including this blog today). I have a thought in my head and that provides the stimulation and motivation and I get annoyed if something gets in the way. It's the medium that provides me with the means of doing something useful (to me) with the idea. When I sit down to write I usually have a bit of an idea about what I want to write about but not much. The words have to be invented as I write. When I get stuck I might google and do thanks to serendipity I will usually find something that someone has written that triggers new thoughts and ideas. I sometimes also bounce an idea off friends who will offer their perspectives. For example yesterday I wanted to start writing something on the creative affordances of social media but didn't know where to start. So I wrote down some simple propositions and emailed them to a couple of knowledgeable friends and within an hour or so I had their perspectives, as well as confirmation that what I had written was okay. This enabled me to progress my understanding in a way that was useful to me. The medium enables immersion. By that I mean I can lose myself in the process for hours, sometimes 10 or 12 hours in a day. It's not all fun though and there are often negative emotions and feelings of dissatisfaction as I struggle with something or lose something that wasn't saved, as well as more positive feelings as stuff emerges. Writing is a process that results in a product but the product emerges through the process and that is where the magic lies. So at the end of writing this piece the collection of connected thoughts and feelings that have been crystallised into words did not exist before. I enjoy writing for different audiences and in different styles - essays, academic articles and books, magazine articles and blogs to name a few. The space I write in is not so important - I can write anywhere and anytime but I prefer writing in my own space,which is my office - a converted garage where I'm surrounded by own things and connected to the world via internet. This perhaps is because leaving the house and walking to the garage is like going to work where I know I am going to be disciplined. My office space is my equivalent to an artist's studio. It's full of stuff that has meaning in my life. Like many an artist's studio my office is quite messy but I can generally find things I need. I remember reading that when they broke into artist Francis Bacon's studio after he died it was knee deep in discarded drawings and paintings. In life he reasoned that in this environment he created order out of chaos and I have used that as an excuse for my messyness ever since. My preferred writing tool is a laptop/word processor - I use an old version of word. I cannot touch type but I'm quite fast with 2 or 3 fingers and I type as fast as I can think and compose. I sometimes write with pencil and paper but I notice that when I sit down at my laptop I ignore what I have written and just write. But coming to it freshly, after having thought about it, generally makes it easier. Writing is an emotional rather than clinical affair: I often listen to music when I write and I choose music that fits my mood. The second medium I am at home with is visual representation. I like to turn ideas that are written in words into pictures - illustrations and diagrams, in particular. I enjoy the process of creating a picture in my mind but technically, I am not very good at drawing the pictures so I work with an illustrator to help me turn my imagination into reality. Sometimes I just tell him that I want to illustrate an idea and describe it to him in words and then let him interpret but this generally does not work. I have discovered that if I can create a design for him - usually based on cut and paste of figures he has already produced we get a much better result. To achieve this I've got proficient in using paint and photoshop to edit and amend existing illustrations or parts of illustrations. - Here is a recent example formed around the idea of learning and developing in lots of different contexts. On the left is my collage formed from previous drawings with notes to the illustrator and on the right the new design created by the illustrator. The process is collaborative and we both feel that we have contributed to the process of creation. Most recently, I have, thanks to Web 2.0 website building tools enjoyed creating websites in order to support my work as a developer and organiser of social enterprises and communities around the educational ideas I believe in. Weebly, and to a lesser extent other social media tools, like twitter have opened up a whole new medium within which I can express myself. The world has suddenly become richer for people to express themselves and share their creations. Robinson, K. (2007) Fresh Perspective: Creativity and Leadership: Sir Ken Robinson in Conversation with Russ Volckmann Available on line: http://integralleadershipreview.com/ 5377-fresh-perspective-creativity-and-leadership-sir-ken-robinson-in-conversation-with-russ-volckmann/ ADDENDUM As I finished this post I found on Twitter this wonderful example of creative self-expression by the School of Life ![]() This week I came across a lovely post by Shelley Prevost who shared an important piece of her wisdom. I thought it so useful that I shared it with two of my children who are in the early stages of embarking on their young adult lives. Shelley said, 'Your purpose in life has very little to do with your job' In the last four years, I've been a psychotherapist, teacher, mentor, investor, and entrepreneur. It's so tempting to say with certitude that this job or that job is my purpose. That I'm 'called' to be a counselor, a teacher, or a CEO. But rather than using them as labels to define and decode my purpose, I now think of my roles as reflections of who I am now, in this moment in time, with these people I work and share my life with. And perhaps more importantly, these jobs are helping me become who I am supposed to be. Your purpose is to unlock--and eventually fold in--who you are becoming with who you already are. The activities that force you to grow are your calling. Learning from those activities is your purpose. Your life purpose is way too big to be filled by one role, or even one long career. If you choose wisely, your job can point you toward your purpose. Your personal evolution--becoming wiser, kinder, more curious, more YOU--is the purpose of your human experience. If you're lucky, your job might serve as the flint that sparks your growth or, as some of you know too well, it may take the form of a psychic straightjacket that's inflexible and unaccommodating. Either way, your job is a reflection of your current conditions--not the purpose itself. How right she is. I've had five different roles / enterprises in the last 15 years and in each I have tried to pursue my purposes even though the roles have been different. In fact making the job or enterprise into something through which I felt able to fulfil my purposes and provide opportunity for creative self-expression, was and remains, a key element of my enjoyment and fulfilment in each role. In the coming week I am going to launch another enterprise - Creative Academic. Its purpose, and mine, is to support students' creative development in higher education. Looking back to 2001 I created a similar community based enterprise called the imaginative curriculum network while working for the Learning and Teaching Support Network . Both of these enterprises are, in Shelley's words, activities that force or enable me to grow and develop and give meaning, substance and purpose to my creativity. These interconnected projects underlie the fact that our purposes are too big to be filled by one role. We carry and enact them by repeatedly bringing new organisations, relationships, performances and products into existence. In this way our purposes become the real driving forces for our creative self expression. While our creativity gives meaning and substance to our purposes, its our purposes that drive our creative spirit. “Whether we’re artists, corporate managers, accountants or whatever, we all want to create; and we want to do it in a purposeful and meaningful way. I learned the hard way that, as agreeable an idea ‘Creativity for its own sake’ is, it’s not particularly sustainable, financially rewarding or emotionally satisfying over the long run.” Hugh MacLeod Shelley Prevost Two Unexpected Lessons I've Learned Since Changing Careers @shelleyprevost http://www.inc.com/shelley-prevost/two-unexpected-lessons-i-ve-learned-since-changing-careers.htm image source and quote https://brucelynnblog.wordpress.com/2012/06/04/creativity-with-purpose/ ![]() Its the start of a new year and I guess its customary to start the year with some sort of plan for how I will conduct it. I have been re-reading Clayton Christensen's book, 'How will you measure your life? In it he shares a lot of wisdom about how to conduct your life. I picked out three chapters that are relevant to a life plan. Chapter 2 talks about what makes us tick - what motivates us to do the things we do. Without understanding this we might as well not get out of bed in the morning. But once we have discovered what matters to us we are able to chart a course through life that enables us to engage with and fulfil our purposes. And sometimes it is not so much the achievement of something that matters most but the journey towards trying to achieve something that matters to us. I think I have discovered what matters to me at this stage of my life and so any plan I create needs to address these. The things that matter most to me to and which I anticipate devoting most of my time, energy, intellect and emotion to in 2015 are listed below. FAMILY & HOME
FRIENDS I am not very good at keeping in touch with friends (unlike my wife who is great). I do need to put more effort into this in the coming year. WORK&INTERESTS
UNANTICIPATED Respond to whatever happens to the best of my ability dealing with challenges and making the most of opportunities as they emerge Two of the chapters In Christensen's book are relevant to planning. Chapter 3 talks about the balance of calculation ( deliberate plans) and serendipity (taking advantage of unanticipated opportunities. 'You have to balance the pursuit of aspirations and goals with taking advantage on unanticipated opportunities. Managing this is often the difference between success and failure. Chapter (4) deals with strategy - or how you implement and accomplish your plan. 'Real strategy in companies and our lives is created through hundreds of everyday decisions about [how and] where we spend our resources (money, time, effort etc). As you live your life day to day how do you make sure you're heading in the right direction? Watch where your resources flow. If you're not supporting the strategy [with your resources], then you are not implementing that strategy at all. My rough plan is merely a list of things that matter to me and it would never be any good in a work context where I would be expected to produce a list of actions and work towards SMART objectives. But I'm not managing people and resources other than myself and the only person I'm accountable for delivering stuff is myself. So I think I can work with these broad themes and make things up as I go along as I have done in previous years mindful that things may crop up to disrupt my plan (blog 16/12/14) and as as long as I stay fit and healthy: the single most important condition for the implementation of my plan. As always, it will be interesting to look back through and at the end of the year to see where I have put my resources in implementing my plan. As always I look forward to the things that will happen that I cannot predict will happen, as long as they are kind to me and my family. Source: Christensen C (2012) How will You Measure Your Life Harper Collin Illustration by Hugh http://gapingvoid.com/2010/05/13/dbc019/ |
PurposeTo develop my understandings of how I learn and develop through all parts of my life by recording and reflecting on my own life as it happens. I have a rough plan but most of what I do emerges from the circumstances of my life
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