Thursday April 20, 2006 6:30 am Bagotville NSW 2477

A. Morning Musings

6:30 am Perfect. The kookaburra has just landed on a branch outside my window. And the coffee is in the plunger ready for pouring.

I have three books in front of me:

• History: "Medieval Lives" by Terry Jones,
• Literature: "A Haunted House" by Virginia Woolf
• Technology: "CSS in 10 Days" by Russ Weakley.

While having coffee with Martin Hayden yesterday we happened to discuss the future of education for a brief moment. Martin pointed out that he could join a fitness club nearby and for a modest fee they would assess his current level of fitness, ask him a series of questions about what he would like to accomplish and then prescribe a program of activities. And the revenues from the various people who join the club are enough to cover the costs of the employees as well as the outlay of equipment and facilities.

Suppose, as a pilot project, one were to try something similar with an acadamic flavour. The fundamental idea is that it is voluntary and that the individual does all of the actual learning. There is no teaching and no classes. Instead what is provided is original assessment of one's background and understanding of the topic of interest, guidance toward resources (particularly the Web) as well as monitoring of progress. On occasion there may be a short tutorial to go over some particularly troublesome concept. Most of the "work" would occur in the facility, but this would vary depending on the needs of the individual. In addition there would be group activities where the students would compare and discuss what they were learning.

There could also be online activities such as discussion boards and chat rooms. Perhaps the idea of a web presence where learners could share their work and ideas would be integrated into the activities. This web site provides one such model. We just received an attachment to an email message that was a powerpoint presentation for a school unit. It was superb! It should be easy to set it up so the student could have this put on the Web where it would be viewable by other students and where there could be feedback from one's peers about the quality and suggestions for some next steps.

The overall idea would not be that of a fixed curriculum but would be one of pursuing a topic. Provincial/state guidelines would be useful resources for beginning the activities, but the student would be encouraged to explore beyond this. Instead of the instructor always prescribing the next activity the learner would have a major say in what occurs next.

Much of what is mentioned would be very similar to what is occurring now with home schooling. Or with the programs in some colleges that provide "remedial" courses for students who dropped out of the traditional school programs.

The key monitoring activity would consist of an accurate time journal of what occurred and how long was spent on the activity. Students would set up a realistic contract of what they were committing to, and would be able to verify that they were living up to these expectations. For example, they may commit to 5 hours a week on topic x. Each time they began work on x, they would note the time, and then provide either a brief statement of what they did (e.g. read chapters 2 of the book, did a google search and located the following 6 web sites, ...) or a sample of their work.

Reviewing this web site, I can see that the main difficulty is a lack of focus on one or two activities. Reviewing the monthly chronology summaries I can see that I am spread far to thin. Here are the monthly averages of time specifically spent on various topics based on the first three month of 2006:

Topic	Total	Average	Weekly
Technology	67 hrs	22	5
Literature	46	15	4
Mathematics	32	11	3
Birds	17	6	2
History	15	5	2
Totals		59

Roughly, I have been spending about 60 hours a month on Learning activities, or about 15 hours a week on these. Overall, I am not pleased with the results of this. The time is not as high as I would have predicted, nor are the results that impressive. The History has resulted in a genuine understanding of early British history as well as a bit of prehistory. The birding has been more impressive, but I need to sit down and study the various categories of birds and learn more about them. So far I am just stamp collecting. Mathematics has been interesting. I do feel that I have a good grasp of the ideas of function and limit, but I lack the technical skill to be facile with them. Similarly, I have a good grasp of the concept of derivitive and limit, but am not able to solve many problems about this yet. Literature is harder to pin down. I am continuing to read, but am not able to fit this into a cohesive framework. Technology has been mixed. I am learning more about digital photography, but I have let my interest in XML slide.

On a more positive note, I am pleased with this web site. It is relativly easy to maintain and the overall layout appears to be working. I have my notes for a wide variety of topics all in one place and following a similar format. I can easily move back and forth between a personal journal and my various topical notebooks.

But my topical notebooks reveal the present lack of time and focus that I have mentioned earlier. I need to refine my notetaking to include a clear statement of what I have learned at the end of each session. I then need to collect these statements into a page that I can review at least once a week. This is my main weakness - I am not building an adequate review procedure into my activities.

So far, two birds - a Laughing Kookaburra and an Eastern Yellow Robin. 8:00 am

B. Plan

Chores: none

Technology: begin reading CSS in 10 minutes

History: begin reading and making notes for "Medieval Lives "

Birds: regular monitoring of Alison's bird baths

C. Actual

3:45 PM We stayed at home to watch the birds. We saw Eastern Yellow Robins, Red-browed Finches, a Little Shrike-thrush (this took awhile to identify), Scarlet Honeyeaters, Grey Fantails, Rufous Fantails, a White-throated Treecreeper, a White-browed Scubwren, Striated Thornbills, an Emerald Dove and a goanna.

Little Shrike-thrush

6:50 PM I finally got around to copying a recent email I received last week about my concern for getting all my boxes of books ready for shipping home.

I just checked your website and I am crying from laughing so hard. You sound so stressed about having to send back some of your books and not knowing if you're keeping enough. It reads like slow water torture - (and I'm laughing.....so I don't know what that says about me). You just sound so perplexed at the notion of having to pack them up and send them home...box, by lonely box, by lonely box.....tears are streaming down my face!!!! have a good day - and by the way, I don't have a scale either but a great sign that the exercise/diet is working is when the clothes get looser.... just a thought.

I appreciate the reality check!

D. Reflection