SelfDesign Learning Community

For more information:

The Village of Conversations

your office

When a learner, parent, learning consultant or mentor logs into the SelfDesign program, we find ourselves at our desk. Here we have our personal email and can access any of the conferences that we are working on as projects. Parents and learners can access their personal planners in order to communicate weekly to the Learning Consultant. Weekly time tracking, Observing for Learning and Learning Investments can all me managed from this location. When you finish your work at your desk and want to talk other parents, learners, learning consultants and mentor then you can go to the door and click on it to come out onto the balcony.

the village

From the balcony you can see the entire village. Each building holds different sets of conversations about various topics. If you are a parent you can click on the home in the bottom left hand corner and you can then talk openly with other parents in the village about ideas and challenges to the home learning parent. If you want to share ideas with others about learning you can go to any of the other buildings to find topics relevant to your ideas. There are hundreds of parents, learners and consultants participating in the village on a regular basis and we are linked to other home learning communities around the world and share ideas with them as well.

the learning centre

If you click on the learning centre in the village you come to a place where learners are writing stories together collaboratively. There is also a discussion going on about how to get into university without a grade 12 graduation certificate with real examples from the many learners in our program who have done that. If you click on the man in the bottom left hand corner in front of the shelf of books, you get a close up of the collaborative list of resources and website that consultants, parents and learners have found valuable in the many content and learning focus areas. This is a rich environment to share ideas and resources and to connect with many others of like mind.

Overview

Most 'DL' or Distributed Learning programs use the internet to simulate a classroom and conventional schooling. This is akin to using a broadcast method like television and radio to send lecture information to a student and then use testing software to determine what a student remembers and understands. If we drew a picture of the broadcast method it would look something like this:

Our program offers a different kind of experience. We understand that we exist in conversation and relationship and that we therefore need a learning environment that brings people together to engage them in open ended discussion and collaboration, much as the villages of yesteryear provided; e.g. Leonardo da Vinci was identified by his village of origin, Vinci, in Italy. In the same way that Leonardo apprenticed with skilled sculptors and painters, our online Village of Conversations offers mentors and draws people from all over the province to share common interests and understanding. Our model for learning looks more like this:

SelfDesign is an individual experience and, ultimately, an individual responsibility. However, we all learn in relationship and the quality of these relationships are significant in shaping our growth and understanding.

The Village of Conversations is an opportunity for participation. The collective efforts of our learners, parents, Learning Consultants and mentors brings the learning community to life.