How do I get it started in here?

An adult's education journey...

October 2021

I have just signed up for the Provincial Instructor's Diploma Program through Vancouver Community College in order to learn and obtain certification to 'teach adults'. Although I have been teaching / leading adults and creating programs throughout my career, I have no official certificate and so it seems like a good thing to 'up my game' so to speak. 

My first course, Foundations of Adult Education delivered online,  is taking me quite some time to get up and running. Which is actually great - because now I will have first hand experience of technical and other difficulties when trying to get up to speed as an adult learner.  I am feeling the pains and frustrations of starting a new learning journey, and the climb feels rather steep at the moment.  

Because I was recently laid off  due to COVID,  I had to give my 'work' computer and phone back, locate new (used) ones, and set them up. Little did I know that I would hit what feels like my 'maximum technology frustration thresh-hold', as I persevere through setting up my new technology, retrace steps back to my online accounts, try to remember passwords, forget passwords, make up new passwords, only to forget somehow, and then have to do it all again. I call it a 'negative feedback loop' and if I ever thought I was somewhat tech savvy - I don't anymore. Being released from a post-secondary institution meant having to say good-bye to institutional supports. 

What's a gal to do without formal tech support anymore? 

Hope for the best, I guess. In fact I just had to re-set the password on this blog account, which I'm pretty sure I did last week, only to find that none of my blog was saved, which brought me to my next learning challenge: learning online doesn't work if you can't get online. (I'll get back to this in a moment).

I did manage to find an old blog of mine that I created for my consulting business, Community Concepts, located here: http://communityconceptsconsulting.blogspot.com/   I used to like to blog, especially about lectures and workshops I attended. But today the main thing I am learning is that I can't seem to link my old blog to my new blog!

And so the question is ... to blog or not to blog? Or rather, which blog should I use to resume my blogging? I guess this one, the new one, wins out. 

Now back to a point mentioned above: learning online doesn't work if you can't get online. 

This blog is also meant to be an auto-biography of sorts and so one of the interesting things about me is that I have been building an off-the-grid cabin on the Island of Lasqueti, which is an off-the-grid island as well (as in there is no BC Hydro electrical grid on the island). Thankfully though there is an on-island created and maintained off-the-grid internet system that runs off solar power, batteries and radio signals that works... a lot of the time. Except in high wind storms such as we had last week when I was there. 

Trying to access course materials, the online textbook and blog about it all proved, well, pretty much impossible. This fact gave me a lot of sympathy for learners who live in rural remote situations and can't get online, with fast speeds. In fact I'm pretty sure I might give up if I had no other option given that all the course assignments etc. are on Moodle which can only be accessed by logging into VCC. 

Okay - blog one complete - albeit 10 days late for my first assignment.