Horty Kim

Well, could someone tell me how this month is getting chewed up so quickly?Here I am looking down the barrel of monday feb 18 and my xmas break only topped up my energy levels to half full?!!What the ?I think a lot of it has had to do with the energy that a staffing review has sucked out of our department.There have been a few changes and still a few things to iron out.I have recently suffered from insomnia for the first time in my life and I have a whole new respect for people who have to manage this all the time.

On the upside our students have started their year of horticulture/arboriculture training with us on feb 11 and they seem like a great group of people.We also have the pleasure of five returning students to do their Advanced Certificate in Horticulture.

Another exciting thing I have been part of bringing to our department is a short course starting next friday called Permaculture Design.

Hmmm, I was hoping I could somehow embed that link. I must ask Leigh when he is back from holiday.Speaking of which with the busy start of the year I have not worked on the wiki much but I am sure things will even out soon maybe this will coincide with my left eye ceasing to twitch?Let’ hope.Hey I think I have nutted it out, yup ,I had to upload to slideshare first of course!

Ok so the limitation here is that you have to have bionic eyesight to read this so what you can do is click on the slideshare logo on the control panel and this will take you back to slide share where you can click on the full screen option and then you can read about all the exciting sessions that will make up this new course.Leigh and I will be enrolling as well and we will be creating a wiki page which we will add resources to as we go.We have already had two people who have seen the development page on line and have asked about the course.Here is an example of the questions being asked

Hi,

I have just run across your webpage outlining your upcoming permaculture design course. It looks great! I have a few questions:

1. Is this the complete design course? Will certification be rewarded upon completion?

2. It appears that one may participate at a distance. Is this so? Can distance learners get the certification? Is the requirement that one must be present electronically at the time of the course, or will the electronic material be available for viewing at another time? (I am in the U.S.)

I am very interested, and would love your feedback regarding the questions. Thanks so much!

Leigh responded to the query with dis

G’day Mike, I’m the developer of the course. My role has been in the admin to get this running, and now it will focus on the development of distance learning resources and services for the course. Kim is the course facilitator, which involves fielding inquiries, coordinating venues, teachers and participants, and gathering resources. Peta Hudson is the lead teacher and content expert in the course.

For efficiencies sake, we are going to use the first running to produce the resources. Video, audio, text and photo recordings of any lectures, presentations, workshops, demonstrations, readings, and what ever else we collect through the first running. These resources will be freely available to anyone with an interest in what we are doing. We also hope to maintain an online discussion forum that will give distance learners a way into the proceedings. Having you as our first distance participant will be very helpful for us as it will give us someone real to communicate with and custom design what we do as we do it.

As for the recognition for the course.. this is something we are aiming for, as well as widening the scope of the course so as to attract design professionals generally. First of all however, we feel that we need to get all our acts together (content, schedule, workshops and distance learning services) before we can start jumping through hoops to get the course recognised. I imagine that getting a distance course in permaculture design internationally recognised will involve quite a few hoops. Personally I hope that this can be achieved by about the 3rd running. All going well, this should be by this time next year.

At Otago Polytechnic (the educational institution that is hosting the course) we can use assessment processes that recognise an applicants prior learning. This can be a useful process for experienced people who are seeking certification without having to do a course. Your participation in this course would not go unrecorded, and could be used towards such a process if and when we achieve recognition for the course.

So I hope you’ll decide to participate in this first running, and help us develop it. If you do decide to follow along with us, may I suggest that you set up a way to record your efforts.. I think a blog would be an excellent way for you to document what you do with us and to use it as evidence of your learning at a later date. To start with, I’d be very interested to learn more about how you found our course, and what you think of our set up and responses so far…

Thanks again for your interest, I hope we are encouraging your participation. Catering distance learners is important to us, and it is our goal to develop a recognised course in Permaculture Design that is openly and freely available as possible.

Regards
Leigh