I have a few draft blog posts sitting and staring at me right now. They are the early workings and individual components of something bigger which I am yet to fully realise.
I’ve started to work on a treatise for an updated model for education, and now I’m a little nervous.
All I have at the moment are thoughts, ideas and concepts that interplay and intersect, which stimulates my curiosity and makes me want to ask more of them. Now here’s the but – BUT – education is not where I come from, it is however where I find myself and where my ideas are drawing me. I’m not a heavy weight researcher, I’m not even an academic. My highest qualification is a BA.
So I’m nervous about putting these out there, but at the same time keen to see where they might go. I’m determined to be more open with my work, as I’ve started to find I get more out of sharing and collaborating that I do sitting alone with my thoughts. Publishing them, if only through this blog, is an act of vulnerability.
So lets be up front – I’m not pretending to be anything, these are just ideas and I’m a little afraid of what they might bring.
To be fair, I do believe that I can contribute a fairly unique perspective to this area. First of all, because I’m not a researcher, academic or post-grad I sit outside academia and most of my experience lies outside of higher education. Most of my work is design based – so when life gives me lemons I develop a brief, a budget and a timeline – but I try and find out what the user wants and what’s actually feasible before making any decisions. I feel unique because if we were to use Prensky’s terminology, I am neither a native or an immigrant to the digital world – I was already here, part of the First Nations of the digital landscape if you will.
For what i am about to write i have a few caveats:
- I haven’t sought out clarification, researched deeply or thoroughly investigated any of the ideas I’m going to put forward – so first time round there will be holes in arguments and things I’ve missed. This is a brain dump so to speak, it’s the process of getting my ideas out of my head to analyse and pull them apart. I’m publishing them to critique them, so I am open to public critique – just not blatant criticism or abuse.
- I don’t claim that they are all original. Again, having not researched extensively someone has probably voiced them before me, or they resemble someone else’s work. If thats the case then I will acknowledge them and review their work. Its OK, to me it’s part of the process. Learning that someone else has thought the same way actually lends weight to them and opens up new channels for me to explore.
- This is developing a vision and its by no means whole or complete – it is a work in progress, something that WILL adapt and WILL change over time. I don’t treat it as fact or even truth – at least not yet!
After a bit of consultation and thought here is my plan. Over the next couple of posts I’ll put my ideas out as a series. At the same time I’ll work on congregating them into a single more substantial document. At each stage I’m open to comments and to take on board any criticism and try to refine and hone my concepts.
So here goes nothing!
Heart | Soul | Machine 