2011 - Dadamac and Dadamacademy - asking questions and exploring answers

I tend to ask questions. When my Dad read us bed-time stories one of my favourites was about the Elephant's Child - who:

"asked questions about everything that he saw, or heard, or felt, or smelt, or touched, and all his uncles and his aunts spanked him. And still he was full of 'satiable curtiosity!" `

Like the Elephants Child I pestered my many uncles and aunts with endless questions. As an adult the Open Univeristy increased my confidence and ability to "ask questions" and find things out. In particular the systems course that I did helped me to see the value of getting the right questions.

Soon after I got involved in the things that became Dadamac one of my friends was questioning why I put so much of my own resources into what I was doing. Like me, he had been an OU student. - and that helped him to understand my explanation.  I explained that, in a way, what I was doing was similar to what I might had done if I'd done a higher degree (not a taught one. but a research one). I had got inolved in things that enabled me to explore various questions on a deep level, and I was hooked on the intellectual challenge - naturally I was putting my time and money into it - as I would have done if I was a "normal, traditional student'

Dadamac as a learning journey

Dadamac reflects my ongoing learning journey - and it is full of wheels within wheels.. I'm  a learner learning about learning, and doing so by teaching and learning, and using the Internet for much of that learning, and learning about learning (and teaching) by using the Internet... doing things in practice, reflecting on them, reading what others have written, discussing.. asking myself questions and exploring the answers. Of course I don't have any accreditation for my knowledge, but I do have a considerable digital footprint. 

Questions and practical investigations 

Dadamac's archives for 2011 point to some of the questions that interest me:

• The way the world is changing - and the implications
• What we need to know and how we can learn it
• How we can develop new knowledge together and share it effectively
• How we can collaborate and build a future that will be better than it might otherwise be
• How local-local information exchange fits into gobal prespectives - in UK, Africa and elsewhere
• How the internet impacts on information exchange, kowledge creation, collaboration, trust, and other kinds of "non-material wealth"

I've been investigating new approaches to education and training, cross-cultural collaboration, the inter-meshing of online and face-to-face social networks, changing patters of work and other emergent aspects of 21st centry life.  A trawl through the archives illustrates the themes with a special emphsis on education/learning/knowledge-creation.

January and the idea of Dadamac learners

In January I was reflecting on the ways I've been learning for the past ten years or so, thanks to the Intenet. Every description I used about learning online seemed to have different meanings to different people and thus caused confusion, so I decided to opt for a new description "Dadamac learner".- Are you a Dadamac Learner? -  That way the description could mean exactly what i wanted it to mean.

Dadmacadamy

In October I updated the post about Dadamac learners referencing how the idea had developed into the "Dadamacadamy". I wrote:

Dadamacadamy is a creative exploration of an idea - part flippant and part very serious. It permates a lot of my thinking , including the work I'm starting to do in response to the increasing number of people who find themsleves surplus to requirements in the job market, and some related "Collaboration Communities" that I want to help create.

• Dadamac meetups and collaboration communities  - http://www.dadamac.net/blog/20111007/dadamac-meetups-and-collaboration-commun...
• Dadamacadamy - Don't share an idea - show a prototype        http://www.dadamac.net/blog/20110411/dont-share-idea-show-prototype

• Dadamacadamy - dream or reality - an action research project        http://www.dadamac.net/blog/20110423/dadamacadamy-dream-or-reality-action-res...
• Dadamacadamy - introduction from www.dadamac.net        http://www.dadamac.net/dadamacadamy

"Rubbing minds" across continents to learn from each other.

Dadamacadamy is about non-formal learning. My monthly "at home on the internet" sessions called "First Thursday" are like an informal drop-in groups where people can meet and learn from each other online.