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.
@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.
🇳🇱
General learning I'd say should go under the study. I can always add sections there.
If it is for a specific project or group we also have the project sections I can add to when relevant.
@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).
Its worse, the install is non standard docker. It is done in such a way it cant exist with other docker installs on the same box so it absolutely must be run as the only service on its own box...
It really is horrible.
Funny thing is they insist they dont force people to install it that way (and banish them if they try to help people with alternative installs) because "we want you to be happy with your instance and we want it to just work"... well guess what, I'm not happy!
@freemo @design_RG @zleap
Are there better alternatives?
@globcoco depends on what you consider better.. I dont know of any forum software I feel is better in terms of user expiernce. Plenty are better in terms of system admin expiernce im sure.
@freemo
I'm sure you had a look through this:
https://alternativeto.net/software/discourse/?license=opensource
@design_RG @freemo @zleap
Yes I was very surprised by the price!
It is more expensive to run something like that than to have a website.
I know it is not the same job but still.
As you say wtf...
@freemo @design_RG @zleap
what?
Yet their claim is an ease of installation in own server.
May I ask if you use it because there is no alternatives in terms of functionalities and open source. I was also going to say ethic (very important for me) but doing what you've mentioned is hardly ethical to me...
Well it is easy, **if** you do it exactly as they say on exactly the configuration they demand of you.. Want to run it on fargate, or customize it as a kubernetes cluster or anything beyond the standard install, your shit out of luck.
I use it because of all the software I used once its running it has the nicest expiernce and the best features.
@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.
The issue for me is not that I expect them to support people whether they want to or not.
They actively band discussion around support of alternative installation methods. Meaning even if someone wants to help you they are not allowed to.
Ironically they do have a section where you can ask for help on alternative methods, but it is exclusively for seeking out a contractor your willing to pay to do it. So seems they go out of their way do ensure free help of alternative methods doesnt get documented in public on their official systems.
@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...
@zleap @design_RG @freemo
I was wondering why would one need that?
For safety reason?
There is also Pluxml.
@linuxine talked to me about it.
I haven't seen that. Earlier Freemo mentioned Git as being a possible base for a Blog, but I foudn that non-trivial, and time consuming.
For a newer user, not a productive path, as there are excellent hosts for Write.Freely which is a superb blog platform.
so I gave up on the idea, after briefly exploring it. We need to focus on getting simple tools that work, testing and learning them a bit, then hone some more.
With our own content production, which is the ultimate goal and reason for getting all these tools.
I absolutely love my Blogging work, it's a pleasure.
Using gitlab for a blog is fairly non-trivial if you copy an existing template (and there are many).. for example you could clone my own blog and it will start working immediately. Want to do a blog post just add a markdown file int he directory of blog posts and it shows up.
It only becomes technical if you have a wish to start customizing CSS and everything else. But at that point youd have some similar problems with any blog platform.
@design_RG @globcoco @freemo @linuxine
I tried to use jekyll on github pages but failed, it sort of works if you really really know what you;re doing.
Maybe its hard for me to see the problem as im technically oriented. It always seemed tow ork with no configuration for me. Just pick a template to start from and it works.
@design_RG @freemo @zleap @linuxine
We have to make the best of it.
Her blog is fun and she talks about her migration from wp to pluxml:
https://blog.linuxine.net/article10/migration-du-blog-sous-pluxml
@design_RG @freemo @zleap
If it fits yes definitely...
Hi Paul,
A few years ago I looked into Open University.
I was very interested but at that time I was downplaying my abilities to study:
* I felt that I wouldn't be able to deal with the high level
* I thought I needed to have already high diplomas tothe coursesubscribe
* And I was a bit overwhelmed by courses contents.
At the time it's seems that the courses were different from country to country.
But I thought some day when I have enough money maybe I'll do it...
I'll have another look even though now may not be the best time financially wise...
Thanks for the exchange Paul.
@zleap
Oops, I see I've made some orthographic mistakes:
>When I was teaching english I wanted 1st to know what were THEIR interests and their passions.
Sorry 😊
@globcoco No problem :)
@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