Quotation series: Knowles and organizations

This passage refers to Malcolm Knowles’ views on organizations and their roles (or effects) on adult learning:

“As if by some law of reciprocity, … organization provides an environment for adult education. In the spirit of Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium Is the Message, the quality of learning that takes place in an organization is affected by the kind of organization it is. This is to say that an organization is not simply an instrumentality for providing organized learning activities to adults; it also provides an environment that either facilitates or inhibits learning.”

• Knowles, M. S. (1980). The Modern Practice of Adult Education: From Pedagogy to Andragogy. Englewood Cliffs: Cambridge. Pg. 66.

Quotation series: Instruction II

Another great quote on instruction:

"Just as concepts and theory serve to connect the facts of observation and experiment in the conventional disciplines of knowledge, so the great dramatic themes and metaphors provide a basis for organizing one’s sense of man, for seeing what is persistent in his history and his condition, for introducing some unity into the scatter of our knowledge as it relates to ourselves."

• Bruner, J. S. (1966). Toward a Theory of Instruction. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Pg. 163.

Quotation series: Instruction

This is just a nice quote I found and wanted to share with others:

"Discovering how to make something comprehensible to the young is only a continuation of making something comprehensible to ourselves in the first place—that understanding and aiding others to understand are both of a piece."

• Bruner, J. S. (1966). Toward a Theory of Instruction. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Pg. 38.

Mortality and the Web

Strange thing… I had a colleague where I work, a friend. We didn’t hang out or anything like that. It was more professional, but at the same time, he knew how to reach people and bring out their good side. He believed in my work, he supported what I did. He opened good doors for me, and he was there when I needed. A friend. This friend was diagnosed this past semester with a form of cancer. After a few months in the hospital, a transplant, and some complications, he passed away…

What called my attention, and made things more “real,” was that he (and later his wife) maintained regular updates on a web site (CarePages). This commercial site was created exactly with this intention: to keep family and friends up-to-date with the development of someone’s health conditions. My friend and his wife have been very consistent in documenting the progress of the situation.

With the age of social networking sites, this site fits very well. After you register on the site, and add yourself as a friend of the person, you start receiving email messages every time a new entry is posted. Then you just need to go to the person’s page to check the entry. So far, so good; other websites and blogs do the same. What has been strange for me is that once you add yourself and start following the posts and people’s replies to them, you become part of the community (not anything new for a social networking site). You celebrate the victories with everybody, and with everybody you feel the pain of the losses. I didn’t know my friend’s wife, but as she kept his story alive through her words, we felt like we too were part of the story. It is almost like following chapters of a book, or a soap opera on TV. The difference is that you know those people on the other side are real. You know the main “character.” The events are happening in real time. You can’t cheat and read somewhere online the synopsis of the next episode. You follow the story as it happens; you live it as it happens. You are fighting along the characters… You become a character of someone’s story.

Keeping track of the development of some news events is a common practice. Keeping track of the developments of someone we know is not strange either. But following my friend’s updates on this site gave me a different feeling. Although I could not do much for his recovery, I felt like an active participant, and that my presence, even as an extra, has been important for his story.

Once I read that by reading a book, a tale, the story of the characters is passed down and through that we keep them alive; we make them immortals. Maybe that was the feeling I’ve had. Maybe the characters of this story are now immortals. But, by being a member of this community, doesn’t it make me a character too?… How much of it is still real?… The web now is making me question our own mortality…

Back on my own road

Have you ever been in a situation in which you gave yourself so much to others, that you put your personal goals and needs on the back burner, that you ended up losing the path that you so carefully chose and built for yourself? That has happened to me. I hear many people saying that I am a good person. A person who is intelligent, nice, polite, and always thinking about others. Well, it did reach a point that I strayed away from my original path for others. Life gave me many experiences that I had not initially planned, or even wanted, but I've learned so much with each one of them. The question that keeps haunting me is how to go back to the main road, to my path, and leave all of those who need my assistance or support?

It’s interesting. I said those who “need” my assistance or support. How do I know they need me? Maybe they don’t and I am the one who keeps this illusion that others need me. Maybe I want to be needed. Perhaps this gives me some excuse not to follow the path I chose. Helping others became my excuse not to help myself or complete those tasks that I, and only I, must complete.

I am an instructor. Throughout the years, I had to learn that after classes are finished, after the end of the semester, my job is over for a particular group of students. During the semester, there is too so much I can do. At the same time, I want to be there for each person until I see the “aha!” moment, until I see a smile. The same thing happens in my personal life as well. I want to be there for others, even when others are capable of solving their problems by themselves. This eagerness to help others has been consuming a lot of me, and my personal goals are still at the same distance from when I last saw them…

It is time to help myself. It is time to go back to that road that brought me here in the first place. The question actually is not how to get there, but how to stay there. This post is just a motivating piece for me. I helped so many. Now, I am ready to help myself. I am not saying no to others'. I’m just saying: not now; this is my time. I deserve it; I need it. As others say: I am a good person. It’s now time for me to be good to me too…

Windows Live Writer and Blogger

This is my first attempt using Windows Live Writer. I’m checking its connection with my blog at Blogger. For now, I assume it works well with Windows Live Spaces (why wouldn’t?), but I’ll test this later. So, right now I’m just typing some text to see what will happen.

I'm back!

After two years of silence, I am back to my blog. Not that I have a lot to say, but I needed at least to give a sign of life. I'll think about more things to say, but for now it's enough to say that I'm still building my universe...