sustainable practice- new learning? or refocussing on old?

I am fascinated by the trends in recipe books in New Zealand over the last 6 months.
Much of what we are going to now is "comfort food" food our grandmothers used to make- witness the Baking recipes, the home garden recipes, the eggless, butterless (from the days of rationing,)and the collections from fundraising publications. Further than that the grow your own gurus, (Linda Hallinan, Anabelle Langbein) are taking us into a former life. (Of course our cleaning with Wendyl Nissan could be going that way too. Baking soda and vinegar will get you to a clean heaven).
And bless us, the advice to those who seek well-being is taking the same pathway. Nigel Latta in both his magazine columns and his tv programme talks about "stuff" not making you happy,while Martin Seligman looks for a satisfying life that is as much about doing things for others as for the self.
It may be that in a time of recession we become nostalgic for what was and from a distance seems much better. (Have you seen "Midnight in Paris"? There anything 'before'has to be superior)It may be that such regression is actually progression towards more sustainable lifestyles that will make fewer demands on both our environment and our society.
I wonder what you think?

porgress up and down

I have recently been involved in a serious and important discussion around how to assess experiential learning and match it with taught stuff. It is like copmparing apples with oranges, BUT if you shift up a conceptual level they are "fruit".
SO how do we recognise Fruit? can we allow distinctive varietal differences? or do we have a must have and might have list?
are the critical definitions of fruit sufficient? or do we need a flavour of each specialty (major) fruit?
quite a challenge really, AND very important when prior/exepriential learning is presented to assess.
I'd love some comments on this from you all.

workbased learning

I wonder often if the world recognises some of the "hidden" aspects of learning at work. oh yes, there is the skill demonstration, and sometimes the "you would be wise to.." mentoring, but aside from that?
If all workers were required (under the most dictatorial regime you might imagine) to document thoughts/feelings/learnings what would aprear. I suspect that something we might see as Grounded Theory might emerge. then the challenge is to support the working learner to compare their groundedness with the formalities.
So how does the wolrd recognise the learning? maybe the world has to challenge its own assessment practices.

Today was Otago Polytechnic graduation. The section in which I work -CAPABLENZ -that works with experienced people to promote critical reflections of that experience towards a presentation to a panel of expert assessors, had 100 graduands. The qualifications included tertiary teaching; Apllied management; Youth Work; Business administration; Building surveying; Counselling;career practice; Construction management;Design (Fashion); Design (Product).

It is an affirmation of the value of experienced people and their timely links to reflection on their experience.
It is also an affirmation of the value of intentionally supportive practice for those who have not been part of the regular education system for some time.

This is what makes the work worth while.
AND the challenge is how to work well with distance people.

I wonder if what we see is what is there? I have brought many biases and interpretations to education and my work with learners that I'm sure have been slightly off-focus. It is in the listening to the learner that the lens is recalibrated.the mini conference topics will allow this focussing to happen I'm sure.

restraining (retraining) Tweets

I have had a Twitter account for a month now. In that time I have followed several people and learned some personal and some professional details of their lives. (I have also connected with a relative and that is a bonus.) the meeting I attended didn't do it for me, as my tweets got lost somewhere and so didn't gain traction.
I have decided that for the moment my on line personality and the platform that Twitter affords this is not of sufficient reward to continue.
I'm interested in the recent work on Web3 presence and wonder if we are simply working through a period of web2 stuff to get us all to be without a computer at all?

which system,which tool?

having experienced several platforms for connecting and found most of them rather frustrating, (including Boldchat that the NZ Career service uses), I'm wondering about the whole notion of having an e-learning prescence.
I find the cautions of Synapsis rather helpful. certainly Plan B is an omnipresent imperative.
alas, we don't always have one.
So we are left with the notion that the technology can (and often does) drive the pedagogy- a situation I find almost intolerable.