Lifelong Learning in a knowledge economy

Instrument making and lifelong passion

March 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Three short documentaries on instrument making and repair were posted over the last few months on Vimeo and YouTube.

La Mer de Pianos introduces Marc Manceaux, the owner of a piano repair workshop in Paris who specialises in sourcing or making spare parts for new, old or antique pianos.  Although he works in a specialised niche where business is getting quieter every year, Marc Manceaux exudes a lifelong passion for his trade which he equates to a form of freedom (“I hope I can continue to be free, staying here as a free man until the end”).


La Mer de Pianos from Films & Things on Vimeo.


Sam Zygmuntowicz is a violin maker based in Brooklyn, New York and has been working with violins since he was thirteen.  While his main objective is to craft beautiful instruments, part of his job also consists in making adjustments over time to the instruments he made in partnership with musicians since violins are “dynamic objects” and “almost become like a living thing”.
The Music Makers explores the skills of four traditional instrument makers all based in County Mayo on the west coast of Ireland, namely uilleann pipe maker John Butler, mandolin and guitar maker Brian Lofthouse,  violin maker Graham Wright and bow maker Gary Leahy.  What emerges here too is not only the skills and creativity involved but also the close relationship with the musicians playing those instruments.



In one of his recent TED talks, Sir Ken Robinson spoke eloquently about the importance of passion:

I meet all kinds of people who don’t enjoy what they do.  They simply go through their lives getting on with it.  They get no great pleasure from what they do.  They endure it rather than enjoy it and wait for the weekend.  But I also meet people who love what they do and couldn’t imagine doing anything else.  If you said to them, “Don’t do this anymore,” they’d wonder what you were talking about.  Because it isn’t what they do, it’s who they are. They say, “But this is me, you know.  It would be foolish for me to abandon this, because it speaks to my most authentic self.”
[…]
It’s about passion, and what excites our spirit and our energy.  And if you’re doing the thing that you love to do, that you’re good at, time takes a different course entirely.  […] if you’re doing something you love, an hour feels like five minutes. If you’re doing something that doesn’t resonate with your spirit, five minutes feels like an hour.

These three short documentaries illustrate this perfectly.
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Learning computer and internet skills through reverse mentoring

November 28, 2011 by Leave a Comment

While trying to resolve a minor technical issue recently, I was surprised to find a partial resolution to my issue on WikiAnswers which concluded with these words: "For other models, ask a teenager to show you. Most of them are technologically fluent." In the field of information technologies, the Digital Natives have the answers... Broadly speaking, in terms of demographics, a strong distinction already exists between what various authors have described as Generation X, Generation Y and Generation Z (or Digital Natives) resulting in a substantial digital divide when it comes to usage and fluency with information technologies. In an effort to bridge that gap, Get Your Folks Online was launched last week by Google Ireland in partnership with Age Action Ireland.  The website features a selection of short courses for beginners and "improvers" that are broken down into small manageable chunks (Using the computer, introduction to the Internet, e-mail, TV and video, … [Continue reading]

Filed Under: Lifelong Learning, Skills, Technology

Readability and Hypertext Fatigue

October 18, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Readability implies "a quality of writing (print or handwriting) that can be easily read" according to the definition. Readability is also the name of a web and mobile application that was mentioned in the OL Daily earlier this month and which I find fascinating.  What it does is very simple: it de-clutters a web page from colour (and optionally picture), from flashing ads and banners, sidebars, badges, feeds, messages, hyper-links and basically from any elements that will "distract" the reader.  It strips the structure of the page back to a single column of pure content, like a .pdf document with very large font or like a(n) (e-)book page. The application  can also convert hyper-links to ... footnotes or send selected articles to an Amazon Kindle. CC Vermont Historical Society - Flickr Is this not a sign that web design has come full circle and that a lot of the "newly" designed web pages I come across today tends to simulate and reproduce the paper-based book … [Continue reading]

Filed Under: Technology, Tools Tagged With: ,

Learning from the Extremes: a case for social entrepreneurship

June 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment

This very interesting white paper was published by Cisco in late 2010.  Authored by Charles Leadbeater and Annika Wong, Learning from the Extremes makes the case for social entrepreneurship as an opportunity for bringing disruptive innovation in the field of education.  The paper is articulated around the following education innovation grid and looks at all the opportunities for change in a global context: Education Innovation Grid - Source: Learning from the Extremes p.4   A quick look at the demographics in the developing world shows an explosion of the urban population, especially in informal settlements and slums on the edges of emerging mega cities.  Is a mass schooling model inherited from a western tradition the only answer to the educational needs of a growing young and impoverished population?  Traditionally, experts tend to look at Finland as a shining example of a successful educational system within the OECD countries, but can this model be successfully … [Continue reading]

Filed Under: Education, Entrepreneurship, Lifelong Learning Tagged With:

Learning and creativity

May 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment

In the last few weeks or so, two links highlighted in the OLDaily have stood out for me as wonderful and fresh outlooks on learning and creativity and how both processes are intrinsically linked together.  The first one is a blog post by Austin Kleon, author of Newspaper Blackout , writer and blogger.  How to steal like an artist (and 9 other things nobody told me) could read like another bland list of 10 tips on creative writing, it is however an excellent reflective piece on the creative process at work.  While it is well worth going through the full post, here’s a highlight of the main points: Nothing is original, everything is a mash up or a remix of previous ideas. “We are shaped and fashioned by what we love” Goethe. The best way to collect ideas is to read, read, read. Start making stuff. Write the book you want to read. Use your hands, a pen and a paper; writing is a physical process. Put your stuff on the internet and share your passions. When you … [Continue reading]

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