PLENK2010: Learning Management Systems versus Personal Learning Environments from a learner's perspective

As a learner the worth of a learning management system for me is that it is a single bucket of information about my course, essential readings, how I'm progressing, a place to upload my assignments and interact with my tutor and maybe some of my fellow students.  Possibly it also allows me to access or order materials from my learning provider's library and gives me a place to reflect and share ideas and give feedback. My personal learning environment includes the LMS but also gives me better ways to interact with others, reflect and share, source information on topics more broadly and basically tap into a much bigger network or connection both on line and with the off-line people and environment in my life.

isolating concepts

As a child I was taught to "love others as yourself" but doesn't the whole concept of "other" immediately create a mental boundary between yourself and the "other".  Maybe it should be "love ourselves as ourself".

In his 1981 book called No Boundary: Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth, Ken Wilber did much to explore how we can progress beyond the artificially constructed boundaries that we are taught through our education and culture to conceive.

Perhaps what we need is a transition from Us & Them thinking to Us & Ourselves thinking. We need to extend this concept of "ourself" to include our whole environment and everything in it.  When trees are no longer something that grow "outside", somewhere in the country which is "outside" the city etc would we take more care with them.  When our "enemies" are part of "ourself" do we extend compassion to them, reflect on our behaviours and try to root-out the injustices in society? While we continue to treat things, people, plants and animals as separate to ourselves will we unconsciously undermine our good intent towards "others"

just musing...

PLENK2010: There is nothing that is outside of my PLE

Having had one of my early morning ah-ha moments it came to me that there is nothing that is not part of my personal learning environment.  Whatever is my current topic of interest I will often find something relevant to my learning about it in such obscure places as romance novels, something in a tv show, a seemly unrelated comment by a friend or the ideas I am considering go into that void called my subconscious where something happens to that learning and a day or so later or 3am in the morning it will all come together - perhaps the neurons have had time to run a few programs and reconnect in different ways.

Learning starts when there is something on your mind.  I've called it in my diagram a topic or interest but it can be anything, positive or negative that requires new thinking, problem solving, new skills or just a new approach.

The most obvious place to find learning is those things that directly relate to the topic but we do not exist in isolation from everything else going on around us.

For me, I learn something quickest once I can bring it into the mainstream of my life and start making wider connections.

peer supported and networked learning

My interest in e-learning has been on the back burner since the start of the year. I think that's actually been for the best as its given me time not only to finish a Diploma in Library and Information Services that I've been doing but also I can now look at e-learning afresh.  I've been getting back into reading my favourite e-learning rss feeds as well as news about the latest technologies from Google and others. I've reinspired myself by re-reading some of the works of Ivan Illich which seem as relevant today as ever.  This time what I got out of his stuff was his emphasis on mentored and peer learning. For me this means finding people, either on-line or in person, who can help you learn what you are interested in.  Sure you can learn in isolation, to an extent, using the resources of your own brain, experiences and surroundings but when you want to take an interest to a whole new level, to go beyond old ways of doing things you need fresh stimulus and the input, encouragement, different perspectives of peers can be a way to progress your learning interest to a whole new level.

At the same time that I have been re-inspiring myself I've also been looking at the new light-weight compact digital cameras that can record HD Video in a format I can easily upload to Youtube. I have dabbled with some extremely basic videos about worm farming but I want to do more with this medium.

Flaxseed, Quinoa and Maca Vegan porridge

Its that bone-chilling time you get at the end of winter and I haven't been feeling like raw apple and amaranth sprouts for breakfast so experimented until I came up with the following porridge:

Grind about two tablespoons of flax seeds in a coffee grinder, add a heaped spoon of Maca, about two heaped tablespoons of quinoa or amaranth flakes. Mix together then poor on boiling water and stir some more until it thickens.  Put some no sugar jam on top or some frozen berries.  If you still need sweetener add agave syrup to taste.

Sprouts for breakfast

Going vegan a few months ago meant that I needed to make sure I was getting a wide variety of fresh and nutritious food into my diet.  My initial interest was in growing Amaranth and Quinoa given their high levels of protein and minerals. Both tend to be bitter in their unsprouted state due to Sapoins.  Having had mixed experiences years ago with muslin cloth and rubber band covered jars I decided instead on getter some jars with the specially designed lids.  These have been great: easy to clean the lids between use and easy to rinse the sprouts - there is no nasty bacteria build up on cloth or rubber bands. Impressed with my first sprouts I ventured into trying mung beans and the much talked about broccoli sprouts.  The broccoli sprouts are nice to add to a summer salad as an added seasoning but you mightn't want to eat too many on their own as the taste is quite strong and the price is very high for even a small packet of the seeds for sprouting. I'm growing some broccoli plants now and will save the seed from them. The mung beans though sprout nearly as quickly as the amaranth and quinoa. I'm not a  fancy cook so I use my sprouts in fairly simple ways:

Breakfast sprouts:
Rinse some mixed amaranth and quinoa sprouts in cold water (to remove any residual bitter taste that builds up quite quickly)
Take a heaped spoon of the sprouts and add to a breakfast bowl with chopped up apple.  Top with no-sugar blue berry or cherry jam (or berries in season) and flaked almonds.

Stir fry mung beans
prepare a small frypan with olive oil and a little madras curry powder and or some cumin seeds and brown just enough to mix the spices into the oil
chop up and add one onion or if you prefer a milder flavour use two shallots
put a 1/3 of a sprout jar of sprouted mung beans into a fry pan
chop up a 1/4 of a sweet capsicum and add
stir fry until the onion is just cooked.
makes a very quick one person serving and is great if you've just come home and you're hungry.

I tried sprouting flax seeds which was a total failure - they just formed a gooey gluey mess.

A more recent success though has been sunflower seed sprouts which are lovely and crunchy and great to sprinkle on a salad or a tofu sandwich.  Whole sunflower seeds are actually quite hard to find in my part of the world.  I ended up getting mine from an agricultural supplies vendor very cheaply if you buy by the kilo bag.

Lastly, I know from Chinese medicine that I'm supposed to eat plenty of those little red adzuki beans but have avoided them in the past because I can't digest them to well.  Sprouted I find them quite digestible, especially if I cook them with a little bit of shredded nori. For a simple winter dish cook sprouted adzuki with some brown rice and then add to a stir fry of pumpkin, nori and shallots or onions.  This makes quite a tasty filling feed.

My experiment with a vegan diet.

Increasing frustration with my worsening pre-menopausal drop in calcium absorption I hit the research - again - looking for options. My first question was "is eating so much dairy the best way to go (which is what I had been doing) or are there better foods out there that do the same?".  I'd already found seaweed calcium and was having ricotta at lunch and yoghurt with breakfast and supper, as well as the occasional hot milk or chai latte but my nails were still deteriorating and I didn't want to go down the path of some of the less organic calcium supplements.  And I can't eat cheese because of my allergy to molds and fungi. I get plenty of sunshine in the garden on my days off so the Vitamin D is good.  My reading around the subject showed me that most fruits and vegetables have calcium in them and that some seeds and grains like amaranth, quinoa and chia all have very high proportions of calcium in them.

Three weeks ago I decided to be brave and try out a vegan approach (I'd already gone back to being vegetarian about 15 months ago), keeping a close eye on my finger nails for any improvement or deterioration, with the fall back position of visiting the doctor for a blood check of my calcium levels if I had any doubts.

So far

• my nails are holding out on their verdict - certainly not breaking but I need more time to see the quality of new nail growth to tell any changes for sure.
• I have a sense of smell! - something that has only ever been a rare event for me in the presence of very strong smells - its a fascinating experience acquiring a new sense.
• My sinuses are clear - which probably is the cause of the above regaining of the sense of smell and I don't know yet whether its a one-off but standing out in the cold waiting for the bus my eyes weren't streaming this morning
• overall I seem to have more energy, better concentration but not sleeping as long as I used too.