My goal is to explore the process of individuation and becoming more and more autonomous.
I jotted down some ideas here:
@globcoco Fully agree here, I started this process yesterday, Quit both Computing at School and Torbay Together forums as they were proving to be a waste of time.
Using the discourse forum here, as a community we can share experience and where to learn new skills or follow interests through learning.
Very important now that schools are closed and people are falling over themselves to provide home learning, no one ever seems to ask the learner what they want to learn or go deeper in to.
@zleap
It is true.
And asking "the learner what they want to learn or go deeper to" is for me one of the basics.
When I was teaching english I wanted 1st to know what were there interests and their passions.
If they didn't know about it, I felt this is where it has to begin.
I definitely feel the same way now!
I heard of course about the rogerian approach and of an old school based in the UK that centered on student's interests and desire to learn rather than enticing them to learn something they wouldn't care about (kinda the mainstream's teaching culture)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summerhill_School
@globcoco This is the nice thing about OpenLearn with the Open University, you can try out different subjects. The course, I am doing now (just slowly), is 24 hours long roughly,
Just given it a mention on the forum
In school I know some reading is compulsory but you are never really told why,
When I think back reading about 'An Inspector calls' by JB Priestly actually seems to teach or suggest what happens when individuals act without considering the wider implications.
Good morning, good afternoon for both of you in Europe. I am really glad to see the ideas developing and us making use of resources that are here, at hand, and open to new suggestions and approaches.
It was amazing to see how Paul took to the Discourse forums -- a resource I cherish but it's not that used by the community here. That can change, and I sure hope it does. I will support and help in any way I can, as I see potential and love to explore myself.
We are always open to new ideas. The same way that Paul suggested and got a new Astronomy subforum, and I got a much needed Pinafore one, we could accept requests if people bring suggestions and take leadership in providing content and supporting one of those new areas.
Serendipity is wonderful, and I am so glad we crossed paths and started conversations -- not only us, but others will benefit from them.
Have worked in Education for many years, and now I do it in this new environment, under my own direction, learning every day.
Wonderful to see new ideas germinating. Thank you both.
Long post
It's funny what serendipity does sometimes.
Part of the process I'm involved in (re-owning one's autonomy) has always included taking the learning into our own hands.
I have to search for all the notes I had about it and maybe I could summon my courage and articulate it to share it - why not in our Discourse...
I would love to see it, Coralie. And Discourse is wonderful as it not only allows a richly formatted presentation, but it can be the buidling area for something later copied and pasted directly into a Blog post.
The Markdown source works so well -- I put out 3 new blog pages yesterday, in fairly short order, as the original Discourse was already polished and the text perfect.
Just added an intro above, trimmed images for Blog ideal sizes, and voilá. Trés facile.
Discourse seems a very nice place indeed.
If the theme I deal with would not fit in the theme of the group (which is more on STEM if I understand it correctly), I may have to create one myself.
But the price per month is a little bit pricey for now and I am yet to gain the skills that would allow me to host it by myself...
You could think and articulate a proposal for an added area at our Discourse - really it's too much to front the cost and hassles of hosting one's own.
@freemo is the person to approach, just prepare a good post with the ideas lined out, the reasons and what you are proposing. He will listen.
If it could all fit into on Subforum, a new Project Forum like the one we added for Pinafore is very easily approved.
And an actively used subforum or area adds value to the whole Discourse instance -- we can really benefit from that, as it will attract other users.
Very good to known!
My 1st idea was that the group is on very specific subject all dealing with learning... but thinking of it Learning to develop (personal) autonomy, self-sufficiency and individuation might actually be ok in there.🤗
@globcoco
He will be seeing this as I included his attrib in the conversation. So think over what you would like to have, and present it here or in a Discourse topic even; whichever you prefer.
At Discourse it has the added advantage of staying visible for longer times. Toots disappear unless you know they are there, or search and find them accidentally.
@design_RG @freemo @zleap
Now I understand why you go back and forth between the 2...
I went looking and seaching, and didn't find a Free Discourse Forums host so far.
Best I found was a professional install and config, done for you, costing $150 USD one time fee. This is installed into a Digital Ocean droplet small server, which is a $5 a month service fee.
Screenshot from : https://www.literatecomputing.com/discourse-installation-packages/
Discourse.org also says you can do it yourself -- and provides this page to guide :
https://blog.discourse.org/2014/04/install-discourse-in-under-30-minutes/
A Digital Ocean signup with a FREE one month of service deal -- https://m.do.co/c/a5bf212d9a92
Although staying here and using the already running service is the simplest option of all.
🇳🇱
The official discourse support channels are a joke. I highly recommend you stay away from it. Its open source software so I cant really be too mean on them, but they are some oily business people on that forum in my expiernce.
They intentionally design the installation docs to be very narrow and rigid so if anyone wants to install discourse in a cheaper or more professional setup they have to pay one of them a fortune to do it.
I was stuck redoing a lot of discourse to get it work in docker and with no help from them. To even ask for help would have gotten me banned (I was warned when I tried).
@freemo @design_RG @globcoco I think this is part the issue with quite a few free software products / projects, they are good at writing software but when it comes to help and support some fail and fail badly.
I think it was also agreed they fail when it comes to documentation too.
The bigger issue for me is that the failure is explicitly states as intentional.
The Discourse people are being clearly greedy -- and making hundreds of thousands a month from the companies paying their fees.
That in itself is not the problem, it's fair if they get an income stream to support their running costs and previous development lean years.
But to actively obscure any simpler ways to use the open sourced product they offer? That is the bad point.
The Write.as company also seems to have had some tugs with open source people in the past; I didn't read much about it, but I know Ellen mentioned it and wasn't impressed.
Plume is an alternative to WF, but I don't like it as much. Uglier and with less features I need and use.
@design_RG @freemo @globcoco I know writeAs charge quite a bit to install the software for you if you are unable to do it yourself. .
In some ways when you consider that some people think they can simply 'demand'; help from others, or they can exploit or mess other people around. It is fully understandable.
It just means the rest of us end up not being able to afford to run some software if we are not confident setting something up.
I can set Debian up, i can install Apache I always worry if it is secure, and you then get an army of 'experts' saying do it this way where each person just says something different, just gets frustrating , confusing and people give up and lose even more confidence.
@zleap @design_RG @freemo
Gosh I completely agree with you.
That is one the reasons it was hard for me to finally get to it!
Because of that I felt quite dumb...
People don't seem to know about it, I would promote locally, however there are too many freeloaders, who also then try and take credit for something I have told them about, I am not ego driven but it would be nice if they gave me some sort of credit.
I was asked months ago at a children's partnership meeting re websites, i sent the lady some info on where people could learn HTML/ CSS etc, I followed up, and they got one of their volunteers to do it, adj it was almost like , thank you now go away sort of attitude, people don't appreciate the amount of work that goes in to collating information for this.
Maybe I am just some mug that gets taken advantage of.
I generally share with people on a 1-2-1 with people who I know appreciate my suggestion to use something.
@globcoco
If you are a Writer, your primary focus should be on that; on paper, on web, on ebook, but Content Production supercedes time learning publishing platforms.
We can help each other -- Ange's WF manual, the awesome MarkDown tutorial, an upcoming tool kit post for myself.
These can shorten the learning path to productive postign for new people, and we can see more people getting into it.
The number of accounts in WF instances is surprisingly low, considering how good the platform is, that it's free and easily accessed.
Time to change that!
@zleap @freemo