Reblogged from Love's Camel:

Have moved around enough in the last ten years only to discover that however much you think you are clearing out, there is always more stuff than you think you have. The dust that has emerged is a welcome reminder of how embedded some things have become with each place I have lived (and how much more I could have cleaned). And just to digress with a little dust anecdote – there are many dusty places across the world but in Eskisehir where I once lived in Turkey, it used to be known as the dusty city and …

test

““Water always flows downward and, in time, can wear away the hardest granite. We learn that we can overcome every difficulty if we go forward with self-confidence and persistence. Like water, this form is gentle yet destructive. It teaches that man, when faced with a challenge, can overcome it by persistence and unwavering belief.” 1

Bizarrely due to some arrangements with another activity at the leisure centre, we ended up doing the grading on carpet floor. This actually helped with balance a little, because after pushing myself over last few weeks, last night, my back went and I nearly ended up not doing it. However after the last year I had reached a point where if I was going to do my grading lying on the ground I would have done. I don’t need to walk about too much for the rest of the weekend

So what is the deal – children do these kind of gradings in all kinds of leisure activities all the time, but its different when you come it to as an older adult. Its not all about belts, but this goes deep in terms of trying to overcome stuff and find a way to improve. Its weird thinking about assessment on PLENK2010, these gradings do have an outcome in the form of a tag, belt or neither if you don’t pass but its all about self-assessment. And you can train and train and mess up a grading – does it really matter? This time I felt that it did. My instructor had told me not to just practice anymore – “you don’t practice taekwondo, you live it”, so maybe a personal learning environment is not really that – but a personal living environment. But anyway.

Today, after passing, went to look at which pattern / poomsae was next and found that its Mountain pattern

Taeguek Chil Jang – Symbolizes Mountain
“A mountain is stable and cannot be moved. This form teaches us to move only when it is necessary to move – and then move rapidly – and stop suddenly and solidly, standing like a rock. It teaches commitment to notion and to immobility, for one must not waver. ” 2

My contract finishes at the NPIA this coming Thursday and it feels like I am leaving a big family behind, especially Kate – my lovely manager, e.g. at Christmas she popped in and put a tangerine on all of her team’s desks – simple but beautiful gesture.She is without doubt not just the manager I have got on best with ever but a supporter, friend and all round totally lovely lady.

Its been an interesting journey – spending a lot of time thinking that I am really not supposed to be there, but also some feeling of a job partly done. A lot of the focus of my role was encouraging NPIA and police to use tools such as blogs, wikis, online discussions and communities internally – to go and deliver presentations, have meetings and not be intimidated by lots of police in uniform.

To try and understand how they want to connect with others online and how they think it will benefit them. Due to the many changes going on right now in government, some people are moving to different offices, some leaving, some moving internally. A really nice thing was somebody writing on my work online ‘wall’ yesterday saying that he wouldn’t have been able to do this without me.

Interesting times ahead but I feel that I have a better understanding of openness and privacy since doing the job. I think it is the same for everyone regardless of their technology understanding or understanding of the online world, everyone is trying to figure it all out and those who know more about the technical details don’t really know everything about the impact unless they hear more views from everyone about their experiences. So there is a need for more sharing.

I am now following a police dog on twitter and being followed by a police horse. The police helicopters are also starting to tweet which is a reflection of wider tweeting of ‘things’ as the future of connected ‘things’ progresses.

I don’t know what I’m doing yet – not ready to make the move immediately to physiotherapy, still figuring things out – so may try and do a learning technology, collaboration or web contract in the meantime. And finish reading “What colour is your Parachute“. This blogpost is a one off – I am still moving towards being more open. I plan to resume martial arts & whatever else blogging in an opensource space in 2011.

In the meantime, expand my personal environments and networks – but gracefully rather than spikily. So here’s to stability then and more mountain thinking and doing.

• 21 days
• happy, cheerful voices on the phone
• courtesy of a bird I think, a random purple flower growing in front garden which is very similar to ones on a small bush next door
• swans and cygnets, less fluffy and white necks now but there are actually 5 – in the distance on the river
• a lovely colleague sending a funny email

Its an interesting concept to explore but it really doesn’t translate right now. Simple feedback does not a good martial artist make. Technology does not have a heart (we learnt that in Wizard of Oz). This feels more like a marketing angle for 2010 rather than a sincere attempt to explore human learning at any depth.

“If we view a teacher as a coach or a sensei, then software takes on its proper role as one of many tools available to teachers and students. With human guidance to ensure students are gaining understanding and with software tools to drill that understanding into automaticity, it is possible to structure learning so that every student can advance at his or her own pace. Individualized learning is far more efficient than when students are required to learn in lockstep, listening to the same lectures or completing the same assignments regardless of whether they have already mastered the material or are hopelessly behind. Self-paced intelligent tutors can help students learn more independently, more quickly, and more deeply.” 1

What is especially concerning is that you can have an automated sensei who can teach children or anyone who is at their most vulnerable. In martial arts, martial artists including instructors see humans at their most exposed, most vulnerable emotionally and physically. If a senior student or instructor does not act responsibly or tries but makes wrong decisions this can cause massive amounts of human harm. You cannot just put in automated adjustments – every human is different. I do not believe this can be programmed certainly by humans because throughout history we have failed to adequately describe human struggle and conflict, respect, spirit etc with our limitations of language, so we can certainly not program it – nor can a program write itself a better way of understanding how humans learn.

A sensei is not just a teacher who has accumulated belts and experience and a teacher is not necessarily a sensei.

Image courtesy of Alvimann at MorgueFile

1. Bjerede M (2010), Teachers become Senseis whilst tech learns drills, O’ Reilly Radar, available at: http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/08/computers-or-teachers—whats.html

• TENS machine. Brought it to work today. Still struggling with back – was doing better but caught in a security gate both ways on Monday which wrenched it again but not too badly. Accepting that it will get better when its meant to and there are limitations to how much can be done to improve it without letting nature take its course.
• So lovely to see bees – at the station there’s a whole lot of flowery plants that are taking back the platform and they have little bees on them at the moment
• A wave of rabbits rushing across a hillside – shortly followed by an excited but very healthy black dog and nice running owner
• Carrots – munching them
• Looking forward to evening out tonight

These are some of our taekwondo / martial arts books from last summer. We read less and less as we got more tired but it was really nice to be able to dip into odd ones at random and read short sections. Looking at this photo, I don’t even remember seeing the aikido and Wing Chun ones.

One which you can’t really see in the photo but is one of my favourites is The Dragon Mask by Trevor Leggett. Even though I don’t do judo, it seems to translate across in terms of learning. Its the kind of book which you don’t read in one sitting, but dip in and out of as and when wanted.

This is a bit from a section called Faith where he observes a technique performed really well but his teacher mentions that he should not use that in a competition because it is not a good technique that is suited to his build. However he carried on practising this technique for another three years but eventually realised that even though it had helped him learn other techniques – it hadn’t helped with that one for competitions.

“Sometimes after watching a beginner for some time carefully, I have concluded that his progress can be along such and such a path. I see clearly..these transformations and have been through these myself. But when I have told him what to do…I see a doubt coming up and because he doesn’t see much success, he seems to get worse. There is nothing more to tell him when he asks me about it. When one is inexperienced as a teacher, one gets quite worried about a pupil’s situation, his anxieties rub off on the teacher as it were.

But an older teacher realises it is useless to worry or even think about it. The thinking has been done already and a proper programme has been carefully worked out to suit this pupil. Either he will follow it or he will not”

1. Leggett T (1995), p116 Faith, The Dragon Mask and other Judo stories in the Zen tradition, Ippon Books Ltd

• catching the right train
• a ladybird landing on a page of a book I was reading which was about insects and how they form. It only sat there a few seconds, but long enough
• sun occasionally peeping through grey skies
• having enough time to get ready for a meeting that I wasn’t ready for
• technology working

peaceful early walk

sunny morning, everything more still and slow

commuters more relaxed

helpful staff, not needing too much explanation to sort things