I am Felicity Molloy - just come back from a massage conference in Invercargill - the most significant thing about this period of time (not the event) was a trip (hauntingly ugly Mataura - we chose to go through the back roads and came by the mill and a dirty sad river and crumbling houses - is this who I am - a traveller on a misused pathway??
Felicity means happiness and Molloy is an oldish Irish name. Born in England of Irish/ New Zealand heritage. I live here but I am not from here. Nor am I from there because I have not lived there for the last so many years - so in many ways I see myself as a gypsy - this informs how I think - about myself and about thinking. Also about knowledge - that it is transient - fixed impermanently in the scribes who care to write it and it seems more recently - I have come upon a perhaps gross assumption - that all people have a capability for flexible learning because all people are capable of reading and writing.
I (dont think of myself as an expert in anything but I have been doing and integrating these things for a long time)
parent
wife
read
write
dance - perform teach critic choreograph direct
massage - clinic teach
practice and teach yoga/ somatics
cook
think
research
there's more but I always get bored with this as a list - the lables are as transient as the emphases on why I do them
I am interested speciously in this flexible learning course. As always I am tempted by the thought of more ways of thinking about learning to inform the framework from which I teach. I had no real aim before starting and my previous aim since was to use it as a way of skills building into technology/ blended delivery.. - I have found disappointingly that this is not the case so instead I maintain my focus and interest (spurious) in the attempts of others to endorse learning through technology as a way of reachnig all students. As a student I have not found this to be the case so suffer. Once again flung about as gypsy - unbelonging.. etc. etc.
as a flexible learner - I find this course more of a brainwash attempt. Oh well. Safe in the thought that no one reads stuff - my absent teachers..
I have no questions or demands on either the schedule or the orientation. My demand for learning skills was met with a negation. Suffering is part of the learning pathway - I am familiar with that.
Some other course I had I realised that what I learnt most was about how other people experience things - Nussbaum (2008) calls this the capabilities approach... more about that later..
Nussbaum M.C. (2000). Women and human development: The capabilities approach.
Oh and I think for this course I will endeavour to only use books as a resource - this may not be possible. I hope that some readers - if anyone does read this blog will make there way in cool clear air to a library (maybe smile at some other human on the way) and find the volume (asking for help from a real live person?) - smell the rich read smell of books and feel that lovely feeling of opening the "right" book, finding the page and wondering how many others have touched those pages, connected their thoughts slowly single focussed like I do, and thought how those same thoughts are then revealed as a shared sensorial moment. Spend time in the roomy silence of a vast spacious cavern of mingled thought. Touched, smelt, seen..
The massage conference was great!
FM
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As always, a pleasure to read - even if I'm a little frustrated that my attempts to brainwash you are failing!
ReplyDeleteTell me more about this feeling you have of being brainwashed? Hopefully taking into account the difference between this course, the Social Media support sessions, and informal chit chat. If you could be a little more specific in your dissapointment, I might be able to react with information, clarification, challenges or questions. Even better, maybe your colleagues will jump in. Looking back over your blog, I can see comments and feedback on each post that relates to the course, and in one post - the one where you tell a short story, you do a nice job at sustaining a short discussion.. yet you still feel deserted here.. off to find the comments you have left on other people's blogs...
From where I sit looking at what skills you have picked up, I can see you now know how to set up and maintain a website of sorts, including making your own hyperlinked references and other formating, as well as starting to manage communication through this website (or some early thoughts on why it is so sparce in communication.. still looking for coments on others) So if you did decide that online access to your course would enable flexibility to your students, you know how you might go about it in an inexpensive and independent way (or how not to go about it judging by your comments on this course).
Apart from technical skills, hopefully you are coming to see that flexible learning is not a defined subject or anything specific. Its not just online learning as most people have come to recognise it, nor is it just part time class options. Some might simply call flexible learning a buzz word, as it is obvious to experienced teachers that flexibility is something to work towards all the time - within reason.
Hopefully, through our attempts to encourage cross referencing between participants and their blogs in this course, such as reading other's short stories telling of people who need flexible learning options, this has helped us in thinking about real people and their needs and barriers. Student debt, employment, having to move to Dunedin, language issues, life matters, personal learning abilities etc.. all these issues came up in people's writing, and these are all significant things that might be stopping people studying a course or getting an education - but they are issues that it seems many teachers choose to ignore as their daily workloads swamp over them, and that 'within reason' zone increases in size...
And so after the short stories, we looked at examples of flexible learning, including the work of past participants of this course, processes like RPL, the marketing rhetoric of other organisations.. our hope was that the combination of thinking about the need and then looking at examples, might trigger ideas. And those ideas are hopefully going to take more shape in the coming weeks.
But I suspect (and as you point out) that through a combination of lack of time, and difficulties managing the 'readings' and various links, there is a sense of dissatisfaction in many people. A frustration that they didn't get what they came for, while at the same time acknowledging that they came with no clear aim or ideas.
These past 2 weeks, we've been attempting to consider a few issues with flexible learning. Cultural sensitivity, sustainability, access and equity.. obviously there are many more issues, not least the ones you bring up regarding technology being a barrier, and we hope these considerations will shape and inform your own ideas on developing flexible learning options in your course.
I'm sorry you feel as though you haven't gained much from this course so far Felicity, or that it reminds you of a deserted and polluted town.. even with that being the case for you, I'm sure the experience will inform a lot of your own ideas about flexible learning.
Rushing to read your next post.
That was a lyrical post Felicity covering a broad range of feeling about flexible learning and aspects for consideration. You obviously bring a lot of lived experience with you into this course. For your style of learning the structured approach may not be what suits you the best. We need to build on your existing expertise. Perhaps a negotiated learning plan tailored more specifically to what you want to learn about flexible learning would be more appropriate. Leigh and I have been toying with the idea and I would like to discuss this approach with you and any other interested participants in the course.
ReplyDeleteThere have been a range of sessions on offer that you and others have not been able to attend. I wonder what is the best way to help people feel included and yet provide the flexibility people need not to be tied to rigid timetables and attendance requirements? Some people have written about the events on their blogs and it can be helpful to look at their perspectives.
The other place to involve yourself so you feel there is a class to associate with is the email forum. There has not been much discussion on there so far as people appear to be very busy and also not particularly comfortable with the onlien format. I can feel a face-to-face session coming on where people can share their flexible learning ideas so far. What are your thoughts on these suggestions?