Another Start

Well this was supposed to be a lived learning journal beginning last semester, but due to the death of my father, the Christmas holidays and the the manic run up to my wedding in February nothing much happened on the diary front. I'm not sure how much happened on the learning front either and I've got a fair backlog of reading to get through, but that's just a pretty good example of how life-long learning needs to fit into people's lives and not vice-versa.

That's possibly the biggest lesson that the Government should be taking onboard about life-long learning. Unlike children, who's entire lives revolve around education (should be learning, but not sure that it is), adults have lives already crowded with responsibilities, activities, families and formal learning has to find a space in that. Instead all the current administration seem worried about is that we all have a level 2 qualification in Literacy and Numeracy, though not English and Maths anymore, which raises a question about those that are perfectly literate in a community language: does that count Mr Blair?

Anyway, having begun once and failed, this semester seemed like a better choice from a teaching and learning point of view. The next MA module begins on Thursday (no I've done nothing about the last one Tony - this is it!) though yet again it wasn't the one I wanted to do, but I had a pretty limited range of choices anything on a Tuesday or a Thursday due to my current teaching and music commitments. We're back to learning fitting in! So "Management in Post-Compulsory Education" it is then; this has become the year of adult ed modules for me after a year of school modules last year - fitting I suppose since I have a foot in either camp.

This semester I'm also attending the Apple Teacher Institute in Cheltenham for the 3rd year running which is a four day workshop based learning opportunity on Digital Media and other ICT school technologies. This may contrast well with the MA course in terms of learning and teaching styles and methods.

In addition my two CCNA courses are fairly well bedded in with the pilot course down to a core of three tenacious students and the second course holding steady with 9 students who all seem largely committed to completing the course - interestingly it's the internal staff that don't seem to let things slip a little.

So teaching and learning all happening. All I have to do is to keep updating this on a daily basis.