Re: About Teaching and Learning #1
On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 10:35 AM, Lorna Bateson wrote:
most usefully, how to build a washing up station from bamboo and string!
-=-most usefully, how to build a washing up station from bamboo and string!-=-
I know how to do that!? I didn't have bamboo, but I know how to lash a table between two trees, If I have two long branches, a whole bunch of sticks, and twine.??
I could probably do it with two yardsticks, plastic drinking straws and yarn.? :-)? :-)??
In India, I saw people build scaffolding of bamboo and twine, many stories high.? One building had modern pipe-and-boards scaffolding on one face, and bamboo on the side next to it.
Sandra
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Re: About Teaching and Learning #1
Keelia, I've learned from your list about trash pumps and cyanobacteria.
Trash pumps don't pump trash, and cyanobacteria are not the color cyan (which I know from printer inks—four-color separation, and dot-matrix printers both).
"Trash pumps?are designed to?pump?large amounts of water that contains hard and soft solids such as mud, leaves, twigs, sand, and sludge. Most devices are portable, heavy-duty centrifugal?pumps?that feature deeper impeller vanes and larger discharge openings than other?pumps"
I LOVE the internet.
Trash pumps are as to water pumps as shop vacs are to vacuum cleaners (I think—correct me if that's wrong.
And the code for that in logical notation might be trash pump : water pump :: shop vac : vacuum cleaner
I learned that notation in school but not FROM school.? I remember it from standardized tests, and I took more of those than most people, not knowing it wasn't normal.? Turns out our school was part of somebody's study, for a few years, and from about 4th grade to 9th, we were tested every year, where as others in our state who weren't in our part of that test study were only tested in twice in that time.? Anyway, one section of the long battery of tests we had was analogies of all sorts—numbers, words, physical forms.? I LOVED THOSE—shapes, and puzzly-looking widgets.
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Nice list, Keelia.? Things I can't do.
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Sandra
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Re: About Teaching and Learning #1
Sarah, I love the added " useful and pleasant, and I have used in the past week:"
Someone on facebook put up a question about things we learned in school that we had never used since. I thought a while, and there's nothing. I thought of saying "clarinet," but that applied very directly to recorder, which I played seriously during the Renaissance music craze of the 1970's. :-) I've done Telemann, in performance, full speed. :-) I've played with a harpsichord and a real viol da gamba. COOL! And those were in a university class, but I couldn't have gotten into that class if I wasn't already reading music and playing recorder well, which I did on my own, as an extension of other music I knew.
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Connections! And one thing leading to another, in that case. But there are other things I've learned as an adult that had little to do with anything else. Maybe, though, the older I get, cooking is like home repair or painting, in a way—generailzations come along. Principles. There are tools, and methods, and timing, and some physics, and some engineering, and some logic about planning ahead not to make a mess—cleaning up as I go, for safety, and for efficiency, and aesthetics.
Sandra
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Re: About Teaching and Learning #1
On Thu, Jun 25, 2020 at 12:22 AM, belinda dutch wrote:
Does ‘outside of school’ mean outside sll formal learning? Shoujd we count things we learned on courses/from teachers we volunteered for or paid for? Or are we asking what we learned ourselves without formal ‘learning’ structures?
I was thinking without formal instruction.
There are three people I have credited with having taught me guitar, recorder, and calligraphy—all learned long before I was a mom.? Every one of my proclaimed "teachers" goes all flustery when I say it, insisting they didn't teach me.??
But each one showed me something that got me over the hump of being mystified.? One session with each, and seeing how they held the... hand to fingerpick, the recorder to balance it when all the holes were open, the pen's angle to the paper, and how far into the ink to dip—those and maybe another couple of pointers, and then I went home and DID IT, and got better gradually, picking up tricks by watching others, asking questions, reading up, practicing.
None was a person I paid to keep at me methodically until they declared that I knew the skill. :-)
So "zero instruction" doesn't need to be a cut-off, but paying for a full course of instruction, that's probably too far.??
The benefit is in the thinking about it, though.? No one will be disqualified from participation for a "bad answer."? :-)
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Sandra
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Re: About Teaching and Learning #1
So, in no particular order
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I learnt to garden, from basic maintenance like mowing and hedge trimming, to pruning, planting, weeding, and so on
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How to strip and repaint wooden window frames. That was a fun summer holiday!
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Knitting, sewing, cross stitch and tapestry
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Loads of camp craft - equipment, lighting and cooking on an open fire, and most usefully, how to build a washing up station from bamboo and string!
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This was all from age 12 to 18 ish.?
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In my twenties, to live on my own. That felt a long one
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Recently, I’ve been working on budgeting and meal planning. Not in a rigid way, in a way to make life smoother and easier for me and everyone.
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And very recently, as I’m sure we all have, I’ve become pretty good at operating zoom!
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Re: About Teaching and Learning #1
--List five things you learned after the age of twelve that you learned totally outside of school.--
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Wow, so many interesting things have happened to and around me, that it can be hard to pin down specifics, but here are a few things:
?How to plant trees - (for paper companies, dad is a tree-planting contractor),? late teens
?How to catch babies - (apprentice midwife for 2+ years), late teens
?How to work all stations in a small restaurant, front and back of house - (dishwasher, line cook, head waitress, bartender; at various establishments), early twenties
?How to proofread - (3+ years at a small town newspaper), early forties
?How to sell something that doesn't exist until it is sold - (ad salesman, small town newspaper), early forties
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Partial disclaimer - I never went to public school, unless you count the couple of weeks at the last one-room schoolhouse in West Virginia when I was 5, and grades 4-8 were at a private school (3-10 students) in the self-supporting religious community that we lived in until I was 14.?
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Re: About Teaching and Learning #1
>>List five things you learned after the age of twelve that you learned totally outside of school.>>
1- How to cook (in my teens) 2 - learning all I needed to settle and integrate into a new country and completely new culture(20's) 3 - Social etiquette and how it varies from culture to culture 4 - Managing personal finances 5 - How to be a mum
Rachael
On Thu, 25 Jun 2020 at 2:47, Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote: I have something to help stir up ideas here.? It's a questionnaire I made for a talk I gave in Albuquerque in 1997.? It was passed out as people came into the room, and we didn't talk about it specifically, but just answering the questions takes a person one giant step closer to not needing to think so much about learning.??
There's a great irony, from that day, and that is that I said (in nervousness, I hope, or habit) that "Kirby taught himself to read."? DOH!? So I stepped everyone back a couple of baby steps.? Still, the giant step...
The full set of seven question is at this link, but if you want to, just answer one by one as I bring them here.? Either way might be fun.? If you want to print a couple out and go through it with a husband or grown kid or friend...??
First question:
List five things you learned after the age of twelve that you learned totally outside of school.
(If you can't think of five, list what you can think of. I'll come back tomorrow and share my own list.)
Sandra
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Re: About Teaching and Learning #1
== List
five things you learned after the age of twelve that you learned totally outside of school.==
Honestly - pretty much everything! But - specifically:
- Knit
(about 12 or 13)
- How
to make different kinds of coffee with an industrial coffee machine (in my 20's)
- How
to cook (in my 20's)
- How
to convert lbs to kg's (in my late teens), and various other/currency conversions (more useful when all European countries had their own currency, not just Euro!)
- How
to use a chainsaw (in my late 40's)
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
I have something to help stir up ideas here.? It's a questionnaire I made for a talk I gave in Albuquerque in 1997.? It was passed out as people came into the room, and we didn't talk about it specifically, but just answering the questions takes a person
one giant step closer to not needing to think so much about learning.??
There's a great irony, from that day, and that is that I said (in nervousness, I hope, or habit) that "Kirby taught himself to read."? DOH!? So I stepped everyone back a couple of baby steps.? Still, the giant step...
The full set of seven question is at this link, but if you want to, just answer one by one as I bring them here.? Either way might be fun.? If you want to print a couple out and go through it with a husband or grown kid or friend...??
First question:
List five things you learned after the age of twelve that you learned totally outside of school.
(If you can't think of five, list what you can think of. I'll come back tomorrow and share my own list.)
Sandra
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Re: About Teaching and Learning #1
I learned to play clarinet out of school - didn't have a teacher until I was fairly advanced, playing grade 8 music. And then only five or six lessons. My mother and I dug out foundations and built a shed, which over thirty years later is still standing and dry inside. That involved a lot of learning. I learned to take apart and repair instruments, replacing broken springs and pads on flutes and clarinets and restoring an accordion. I learned to knit and crochet. To do Scottish country dancing, and Morris dancing. I learned how to rewire a kitchen, and replace the water pump on the hot water system,?and the battery on a car. Among many other things.
Bernadette.
On Thu, 25 Jun 2020 at 02:47, Sandra Dodd < Sandra@...> wrote:
First question:
List five things you learned after the age of twelve that you learned totally outside of school.
(If you can't think of five, list what you can think of. I'll come back tomorrow and share my own list.)
Sandra
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Re: About Teaching and Learning #1
1. Age 23ish - many things about wildfire, running a chain saw, and how to prime a gasoline powered trash pump. Knowing how to prime a pump manually has transferred and come in handy a lot.
2. Age 25ish - how to captain a paddle raft through white water.
3. Age 25ish - how to back a trailer.
4. Age 29ish - how to use quickbooks and how basic accounting and inventory management works.?
5. Age 38ish - many things about cyanobacteria and how to control it.?
I'm sure I learned plenty in my teens but the important stuff (to me) has been so integrated into my life it is hard to pin point things.
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Re: About Teaching and Learning #1
It’s harder to think of things I learned in school past the age 12 that are still useful.
But here’s some things that I’m certain I didn’t know anything about before 12, didn’t learn from any of my schooling, know a functional amount of now, are useful and pleasant, and I have used in the past week:
1. Crochet
2. Dog care/ownership
3. Operating small machines (like a leaf blower)
4. Facebook
5. Yoga/meditation
Sarah Peshek
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Re: About Teaching and Learning #1
Interesting, too, was that I did go to University for Visual Arts but after I got my degree I began a personal mission to unlearn much of my training because?I found it got in the way of what?I hoped to express and how I wanted to express it.? I rejected being "an Artist" for a long time because I associated it with the institution of Art (with a capital "A") and that wasn't who I was or wanted to be.? I still made art, but I stumbled around what I called it and what I called myself for doing it.? It took me years (decades, maybe) to embrace calling myself an artist to others when they asked what I do, but I needed to re-learn what that meant for me, and learn to be comfortable with however that might conflict with what others thought of Art and Artists.? I don't regret going to school for art.? I learned a lot.? A lot of what I did learn was what I *didn't* want to do, which is valuable and, ironically, helped me understand what Ethan *did* want to do when he said that he didn't want to go to school.? :-)? ? Karen James? ??
On Thu, Jun 25, 2020 at 1:02 PM Karen James < semajrak@...> wrote: As a kid, outside of school, I learned to ride a bike, identify insects (not always by name), identify trees (again, not always by name), identify wildflowers (which led me to learn that the "official" Ontario flower is a white trillium and I shouldn't be picking them and bringing them home to my mom!), discover that tadpoles were baby toads (brought a bunch home and kept them in a barbie pool to my mother's dismay), learned how houses were built (I used to climb in the houses being constructed in our ever-growing subdivision), ice skate (on the ponds around our house; also learned the importance of thick enough ice and how to know when it was thick enough to skate on), build things with handheld power tools (I used my dad's and I built myself a barbie house), make all kinds of things from puppets to doll furniture out of things we had around the house, mow grass in patterns in our yard that I could enjoy from the second story windows of our house (that was so fun!).? That's more than five.? I could probably list more.? :-)
Many of those things I learned without school are directly related to what I do and what I'm interested in today.? Later, when I became a little older,?because?I was pretty confident in my abilities to make things without formal instruction, I learned picture framing well enough to fake it until I? could make it in an actual job(s) that?I really enjoyed and did until I became pregnant with Ethan and we moved to the US.
Karen James
??
Interesting!
Does ‘outside of school’ mean outside sll formal learning? Shoujd we count things we learned on courses/from teachers we volunteered for or paid for? Or are we asking what we learned ourselves without formal ‘learning’ structures?
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Re: About Teaching and Learning #1
As a kid, outside of school, I learned to ride a bike, identify insects (not always by name), identify trees (again, not always by name), identify wildflowers (which led me to learn that the "official" Ontario flower is a white trillium and I shouldn't be picking them and bringing them home to my mom!), discover that tadpoles were baby toads (brought a bunch home and kept them in a barbie pool to my mother's dismay), learned how houses were built (I used to climb in the houses being constructed in our ever-growing subdivision), ice skate (on the ponds around our house; also learned the importance of thick enough ice and how to know when it was thick enough to skate on), build things with handheld power tools (I used my dad's and I built myself a barbie house), make all kinds of things from puppets to doll furniture out of things we had around the house, mow grass in patterns in our yard that I could enjoy from the second story windows of our house (that was so fun!).? That's more than five.? I could probably list more.? :-)
Many of those things I learned without school are directly related to what I do and what I'm interested in today.? Later, when I became a little older,?because?I was pretty confident in my abilities to make things without formal instruction, I learned picture framing well enough to fake it until I? could make it in an actual job(s) that?I really enjoyed and did until I became pregnant with Ethan and we moved to the US.
Karen James
??
Interesting!
Does ‘outside of school’ mean outside sll formal learning? Shoujd we count things we learned on courses/from teachers we volunteered for or paid for? Or are we asking what we learned ourselves without formal ‘learning’ structures?
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Re: About Teaching and Learning #1
Interesting!
Does ‘outside of school’ mean outside sll formal learning? Shoujd we count things we learned on courses/from teachers we volunteered for or paid for? Or are we asking what we learned ourselves without formal ‘learning’ structures?
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Re: Learn Nothing Day 2020
We've failed at learning nothing every year so far. But if you fail, try, try, try again.
Usually it's hard because it's my sister's birthday, but this year we won't be seeing her AND it won't be for an interesting reason like her doing mediaeval concerts in towns we've never visited so there won't be photos of new places to see.?
Bernadette.
On Thu, 25 Jun 2020 at 02:40, Sandra Dodd < Sandra@...> wrote: In a month, July 24, it's Learn Nothing Day.? I thought it would be the 12th one, but Holly and I double checked.? There have already been 12.? This will be #13.? UNLUCKY?
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About Teaching and Learning #1
I have something to help stir up ideas here.? It's a questionnaire I made for a talk I gave in Albuquerque in 1997.? It was passed out as people came into the room, and we didn't talk about it specifically, but just answering the questions takes a person one giant step closer to not needing to think so much about learning.??
There's a great irony, from that day, and that is that I said (in nervousness, I hope, or habit) that "Kirby taught himself to read."? DOH!? So I stepped everyone back a couple of baby steps.? Still, the giant step...
The full set of seven question is at this link, but if you want to, just answer one by one as I bring them here.? Either way might be fun.? If you want to print a couple out and go through it with a husband or grown kid or friend...??
First question:
List five things you learned after the age of twelve that you learned totally outside of school.
(If you can't think of five, list what you can think of. I'll come back tomorrow and share my own list.)
Sandra
?
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In a month, July 24, it's Learn Nothing Day.? I thought it would be the 12th one, but Holly and I double checked.? There have already been 12.? This will be #13.? UNLUCKY?
Maybe!
But unlucky might mean that for the first time, it might actually work well.? Perhaps a pandemic can hamper learning.? Let's see!? Let's be scientific about it.? If you've failed before it wasn't #13, and there was no globe-trotting virus trying to keep you from learning.
Learn normally (or extra much) from now until July 24, and then put the brakes on it.? Stop, for one day.??
Good plan.
I have a group for discussion, commentary, art, jokes, on facebook, about it.
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Sandra
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Some news!
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Addition and clean-up on page about what can happen if parents pressure children: Reminder of an obscure page on politics (might be a good season, if you're reading this in Spring 2020) It's about problems for children, if parental focus is elsewhere. Clean up, additions of photos and links, to Late-Night Learning Comments (several people's stories) SOMETHING(s) ELSE: In the past several months, my website has been moved, my photobucket photos have been moved to that new host site, the archives of some older discussions were moved there (all of that thanks to the generous and tireless work of Vlad Gurdiga), and Always Learning moved from yahoogroups? to groups.io—you don't need to be a member to look around in there. In the next few months will be the 12th?, and the 10th Anniversary of? Because of all the moving and changes, I'm working every day, either some or for hours, to restore, update, shore up and solidify the images and links in and among those resources. If you find glitches, missing images, bad links, typos, I would appreciate knowing. Thanks for reading!
photo (a link) by Chelsea Thurman Artisan
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A fumble lost me a long post.? Summary; the old one was better :-)
I don't have a podcast, nor does this group.
Pam Laricchia has one, 60-90 minutes, usually, and is up to #227:
Amy Childs did a finite set of 50 (ended up being 52, and one place says 56; that's a mystery to me).
Here's the list, and the description of each (links to the left there work).
Also, though without the cool intro, they are at Apple podcasts and at Owltail:
Some of the recordings there might be cut off, but they're all pretty short anyway—15-20 minutes.I
On my site, recordings of presentations and interviews:
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Boredom (a study, you can sign up)
I think this is still open for people to join. :-)
In this podcast is are several articles about scientific studies that were benefitted by stay-at-home conditions—whale sounds in Glacier Bay, air pollution in India, and boredom studies? ?Maybe other things, but it's the boredom section that caused me to sit up and think of all of you. :-)
My mid-kid (mid-adult-offspring) Marty let me know about the podcast 99% Invisible. It started off being about architecture, and opened toward city planning, and slid over toward design in general.? So this is about designing studies.
The idea that boredom was an emotion was new to me, when someone said so in an unschooling discussion in the 1990s. It made sense.? Before that, boredom had seemed to be treated as a moral failing, as ingratitude come to life, or something, and adults would belittle kids or make them do housework or yardwork.??
People who are looking at boredom from a scientific point of view (as much as early studies can, maybe) are looking partly at linguistics—what is it called in other languages?? I always love linguistic comparisons.
And a researcher has offered to let people sign up to report how they're dealing with boredom so I thought it might be fun for some unschooling families, to at least think about it and look at a study, whether or not they go so far as to participate fully.
This is episode #401.
After I listened to those Marty most recommended to me, I went back and listened from #1, so I'm all caught up.
The first thing I wrote on boredom was in 1998, for Home Education Magazine
There is a French translation:
And an index page, to further collections:
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Sandra
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Sandra Dodd
Karen James
belinda dutch