Friday, January 26, 2018, 02:08 PM - Adult and Popular Education
A key element of transformative learning is experimenting with real-world problems. David Kolb's experiential learning cycle continues to be central. Yet cycles, even spirals, don't capture the dynamism now possible with online and blended learning. Frames have never had more possibility to engage with such a complex range of realities and inter-sectionalities. But emergent paths are also unclear and frustrating, subject to norms. How to bring critical pedagogy (andragogy) to these spaces? Working on a paper to extend the learning cycle with a hologram which helps to capture online multi-dimensionality.
Holographic visualization offers multiple dimensions, movement, refraction, doubt. Likewise, online learners can be supported to move freely where they find meaning between their online community and their own deliberations. All the while, they are embedded in life and work. This shared reflexivity and muddling is key to the transformative potential of online learning. The lag between insights and experimentation, negotiation is gone. The space also collapses gender and power dynamics in interesting ways as learners shape their own paths and voices at their own pace for reflection. Framing is even captured to better support both self-directed and collective learning. Facilitators and peers can act more like coaches, real-time in real messiness.
Friday, December 29, 2017, 04:41 PM - Inspiring
Met an inspiring dancer/professor, Jo Blake, at a meditation/yoga retreat in Nepal. He uses dance and movement in community. He introduced me to Crystal Pite who also uses dance and theatre to work through trauma, freedoms, self-actualization. I've really come to realize, in my work, that these forms and explorations are so critical to our collective analysis and action. The spaces it opens for connection, healing. We are somatic, individually and collectively. | related link
Friday, December 8, 2017, 09:13 PM - Poetry and Writing
Dragon flies in drag
over river spits,
mustard grasses,
tissue wings
zim hummering.
Their needled bodies
threaded beads, azure
hyphened by ebony
to the period of their
tails. Tumid eyes to tips
to eyes, waging circles
where another begins,
where mist and sigh,
early sky shaking its wings,
water below splitting,
spreading hemispheres
a slow spinning blue
mouths
consuming
tails
consuming
mouths.
(earlier version published Antigonish Review 151, Autumn 2007)
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Friday, December 1, 2017, 03:42 PM - Adult and Popular Education
Working with The Story Kitchen and the Coady Institute in Nepal co-facilitating with an inspiring leader, Jaya ji Luintel, who heads up this organization. Increasingly, I've found in my work that technical solutions around alternative economic or community based models bump up against gendered social norms. Turning more and more to address these issues where media, artists, elders play such important roles. Jaya ji and I facilitated on the Rao/Kelleher feminist framework for change that has so grounded my work around gender and power. We met in a feminist leadership course at the Coady Institute.
From their site: "The Story Kitchen (TSK) is driven by the passionate belief that upholding the stories of women can unravel systems of gender oppression and patriarchy that continue to exist in Nepal. The domination of stories from men's perspectives leaves women out of the history of Nepal and fails to recognize the extent to which women are currently contributing and have always contributed to the development of the country." TSK works with women of different castes, ages, communities to share their stories nationally. They also train justice reporters. Their work with survivors of armed conflict, particularly the self-formed network that came out of it, has led to meetings with the Truth and Reconciliation Council as well as a special meeting with the President.
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Friday, September 15, 2017, 11:14 PM - Outdoor adventure
Photo credit: Maggy Burns
There is a stunning wilderness area just an hour north of Bridgewater. One of the prettiest campsites in the Province. One of the starriest nights I've ever seen in Nova Scotia. Great trip with Maggy and earlier in the year with Oliver and Maggy.
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