The Third Attention

To summarise Miguel Ruiz's "three attentions", I see them as follows:

The First Attention is when we are programmed by others (family, school, work, the media etc). As babies parents get our attention by holding up something or pointing to it and saying the word for it - this is how we start to learning the language and meanings of things in our culture.  This continues all through our life as various people try to get us to agree with their view of the world, with what they want us to do or with what they want us to buy. As soon as we agree with this word, definition, idea, religion or sales pitch we are successfully programmed. This is reinforced by further conditioning (positive and negative). It is usually so successful that not to agree gives us a guilty conscience, reduces our self esteem, causes self doubt, makes us feel alienated from those around us or even worse makes us ill.

The Second Attention is when you manage to deprogram yourself. You do this by changing your agreements to the above, being mindful that any discomfort is to be overcome.  You become a warrior in doing this.  Using Ruiz's "Four agreements" is a great tool for doing this. You can also play with the alchemy of opposites (check out the writings of  Robert Anton Wilson, John Lilly and Christopher Hyatt).  If you only use this to recreate yourself then you are only creating a replacement for your existing programming, although hopefully a better bit of software. If you do this to gain power over your own life the dangers are minimal but if you discover the inherent power in this kind of reprogramming you could use it to control the world around you (go over to the darkside as they say in Star Wars).  That is why until recently this path to enlightenment was hidden - because sometimes you don't release your programming/story altogether - just replace it with another that you control. The best tool I think I've found for reminding yourself you are not your program is to focus on enjoying your breath, as Miguel suggests.

True release from your programming comes when you reach the "Third Attention".  This usually comes through a near death experience. For me it came through the near loss of a couple of significant others in my life and I realised that I really needed to enjoy them as much as possible now as the future can change in an instant. Petty issues become something you chose to ignore or avoid because all you want to do is love them.  This is called getting to "the bones" of what is real, love. Tibetans get to the third attention by spending long periods of time in graveyards contemplating the illusory and transitory nature of what most people consider the world to be (which ironically is called Maya by the Tibetans and Indians as, for me, it seems to be the meso-americans (Mayans) who are best at explaining the way out of it).

The third attention is one of those intangibles that is hard to explain but I think these symptoms are an indication:

• What you thought mattered doesn't matter anymore
• The oneness of love and life which is at the core of all things (hidden by our layers of illusion) becomes the only reality
• forgiving and loving become things to do without reason
• fear dissolves
• living in the immediate moment

I am not, by the way, claiming to be in this state of consciousness all the time - I'm just doing my best.

A new year - time for a different way of living and thinking

The end of last year saw me holidaying on the Murray River, Australia. Not wanting to lose the holiday in thoughts about the years successes or failures, worrying or planning for the future I decided the only way to do that was to let it go for the duration of the holiday and "enjoy the moment". Each time I caught myself at past or future focus thinking I just brought myself back to enjoying the beauty and people around me and enjoyed just being. Coming back home I didn't want to lose this.
One thing and another led me to reading Don Miquel Ruiz's "Voice of Knowledge" and now I'm reading "The four agreements". This has given me a few more tools to help keep the above perspective. simple things like:

• enjoying breathing - just focus on one breath and enjoy it. Repeat, often
• asking myself what story I am creating, is it a story I like - if not edit it.
• ask myself if other people are creating my story - if so regain my rights as author of my own story.
• Remembering that "the story" isn't the true me and that minus our stories we are all one - not only with other human beings but all other beings
• don't take things personally - other beings are acting towards me from the perspective of their own stories.
• don't believe my own or other people's stories as they are only illusion anyway - a kind of play or programming.

Three effective training experiences in one week

Those who know me may have a laugh at this (given my usual loathing of classroom learning) but this week I attended a classroom-based workshop to learn a database. The first part of the course, the theory, I had studied online and the classroom component had two reasons for being: 1. to provided a simulated environment using a test database so those attending could learn how to use an international database, before they got let loose on it. 2. a supervised assessment for the same so that an industry recognised certificate (license to use the database) could be issued. Both valid reasons in my opinion for requiring a face-to-face, that is: to enable delivery of training that might otherwise have ramifications if students were left to their own devices and for licensing purposes. What really surprised me was how well the course was delivered. The tutor revised what we already new from the course and checked our knowledge levels in the process. The agenda and expectations for the day and half course were clearly laid out. Delivery used a demonstration, redomonstrate and then have a go in pairs and finally on your own approach. Delivery was what I would call onion based - it started with the small core of what we already knew and then kept building on it in small acheivable chunks, adding layers to our knowledge until the whole class was fully competent by the end of the workshop. This was done in a friendly, non-demeaning and non-threatening manner. I heard other students comment that it was a refreshing approach and unstressful. I enjoyed my time at the workshop and met some great people too.

Earlier in the week I had another effective training experience. My hobby/addiction is learning languages (mostly Spanish and German with lots of dabbling in others thrown in) but one that has always been a brick wall for me is Welsh, the language of my grandmother. I'm not alone in this. Various approaches have been used for trying to teach this unique language over the years. The dialogue with grammer points explained is used by the Teach yourself book series. Some teach it using a bilingual approach with simple welsh and english on facing pages, supplemented with a basic vocabulary and key sentence patterns. Others use a formal grammar based approach - memorise the grammar and the vocab lists (Ugh!). All this resulted in me being able to read some Welsh but with no ability to put a simple sentence together. Where SaySomethingInWelsh http://www.saysomethinginwelsh.com/home/ differs is that it uses much the same onion-ring delivery approach as my above database experience. It starts with a very small core of pronouns (I and you) and some basic verbs (to go, to want, to speak etc) and some basic spoken sentences using these. It keeps building variations on these basic sentences by first turning them into questions, introducing yes/no answers, then negatives, future tense and past tense. It only adds a small amount of key words at a time. So by the end of about the first five lessons you (or at least I'm) putting together some pretty complex sentences without having to think to much about it and in one of the more different of the indo-european languages. Its almost like the original speakers of Welsh spoke a non-indoeuropean language and then one-day just up and replaced all the words with indo-european equivalents but kept the grammar of the older language.

My third effective training this week was real life. I have had a mentor for the last year who's been trying to get me fully conversant and confident in applying robust project management, risk management, continuous improvement, clear and specific communication, measurable goals to enable evaluation and a client focus to my work. Of course I already thought I did all this but life had a way this week of really pounding home to me how important it is to take this stuff seriously.

The role of educators in supporting independent learners

Here's my slidecast (hopefully as I haven't tried to put one inside a blog before). Rather than plan a flexibly delivered course I've taken the student's perspective and outlined the suppotive role educators can take in helping self-directed learners to acheive their formal learning goals:

Supporting Independent Learners

View more OpenOffice presentations from dzyanna.

Lectures by influential teachers

Reading the latest on Peter Shank's http://tassietoolbox.blogspot.com/ blog I came across: 100 Free Online Lectures that Will Make You a Better Teacher. I think they were right to list Gilbert Strang in the lectures by influential teachers but they forgot the best of all http://academicearth.org/speakers/walter-lewin-1. He's a 71 year old who runs up and down ladders to stage his demonstrations and does demos like measuring the speed of a bullet - if you're not interested in physics its still dry but its probably as close as they've come so far to Mythbusters style university. Academic Earth is also has a presence in Facebook now. A directory to a lot of educational material (videos and podcasts) is oculture http://www.openculture.com/

Supporting diy learners

So you have a self-directed learner who doesn't want to sit in class for more than is necessary - how can you as a teacher, mentor or learning facilitator support their learning and their achievement of their learning outcomes. Maybe this is my topic (thanks Brownwyn - see comments to the post below). This might be loosely titled "how to not-teach but support and guide a diy learner". This could be broken down into the following parts

Finding out what is driving them to learn the subject. How do they emotionally feel about the subject ( are there any fears and hangups brought over from earlier attempts at learning this)? How do they want to learn? Do they want to take on the subject wholistically and fill in the bits as they go or do they want it in a linear fashion, delivered in small achievalbe chunks, or a mix? How do they want to use the knowledge or skills once they obtain them - can you help them to discover the applications, benefits and other rewards. Where could adding even further to this knowledge take them in the future (the dream)?

What are the holes in their existing knowledge and how you can support them in discovering what these holes are and working with them to help formulate a strategy for progress - developing a roadmap, preferably visual and maybe helping them to construct a connective map of how the knowledge they wish to acquire will fit will connect with what they already know and do in their life.

A knowledge resource map of where to how to start their own search on the web (suggest search terms). Sites to check out but don't worry to much with specific urls as they get old quick. Give them a review of a choice of free online texts or readings that they could use for reference. Whose video's should they watch. Is there anything or anyone in polular culture (videos, fiction or online games) that might inspire them in the topic. Are there animations, puzzles, games and other interactive memory aids that might help them embed some of the harder stuff. Let students add their own reviews of stuff they find so they can improve the experience for future students (maybe on a wiki)

Teaching skills - where possible use videos and animations that the student can watch and rewatch, slow down and rewind, see from multiple angles etc. Is there a retiree in the student's community that can mentor the student. If its difficult or dangerous then do some face-to-face delivery. Support the student in discovering or choosing their own preferred ways to learn.

A context to learn and try out skills. For high risk skills this may have to be in a supervised workshop but for many things the student may be able to find a context in their own life, work, club, study-group or community where they can try out their skills. Set realworld based problem solving activities so the student can see relevance in what they are learning. Report back can be by video, webcam and supported by reference, as a way of confirmation, by a third party.

Assessment - preferably without ever using the "A" word. Let them explain or demo to someone else, share what they have done through reflection etc. Written tests should be left for "must have" knowledge that is madated by curriculm or licensing requirements. Where possible use what they have done to recognise skills and knowledge used in real contexts.

Throughout - check with the student often to see how they are going and offer reinforcement, guidance, suggestions and encouragement. Connect with them by Skype, elluminate, email, sms, face-to-face - what ever they prefer.

What to do?

I'm up to the "What's your idea?" bit on http://wikieducator.org/Flexible_learning and its asking

1. What is your idea for flexible learning?
2. What examples of Flexible Learning does your idea draw on?
3. How does your flexible learning plan fit with an educational organisation's strategic directions?
4. What are the considerations, risks, concerns that you will need to resolve before you can implement your plan for flexible learning

To be frank I'm stuck, as I'm not actually teaching a particular subject. I'm a learner at heart and I'm passionate about elearning. I do work in the vocational education field but not actively as a trainer, at the moment. I do have a micro business (just started out this year) creating and customising learning objects and material for other people.

I'm wondering if the reason why I'm in a mental block on this is because I'm uncomfortable coming up with an actual course. As a learner what I want is more a learning map to get me to a particular goal within an agreed time - much like this wikieducator course has done. As a learner I want something that saves me searching time, highlighting the best and free learning resources out there, gives me hints on how to construct my own learning and gives me a way to test my progress against a widely acknowledged benchmark. In part I've tried to do this through my existing wikispace in regard to ways of learning languages, without the testing/self-assessment part because I don't have a good enough knowledge myself of the (for example) European levels commonly used internationally for such bench marking.

If I was to do something similar on say "worm farming", "edible landscape gardening" or "small-scale rainforest rehabilitation" (two things I do in my "spare" time http://dzyanna.googlepages.com/anadventureinediblewoodlandgardeninginta) would I do it in wikispaces or wikibooks or wiki-educator? - I'm really not sure.

Adult numeracy also interests me. Most people reach a point in their maths ability where they can't progress. what's needed when that happens is someway of self-assessing what underpinning knowledge needs strengthening so that progress can take place. Its also hard to get a visual interconnective map of how the different types of math: geometry, algebra and so on fit together to enable future learning and vocational application within industry - ie where can I use this stuff? what's it good for? But that is probably something of huge scope and not something that I have enough underpinning skills to take on.

I'm more used to helping others with their stuff than doing this myself