Gaia Radio Attendance
A compilation of all the Gaia Radio calls I have attended during my pre-capstone year.
how mastery of our own creative practice is at the center of sustainability
Healing the planet by finding our roots: wild food gathering, restoration, rewilding, group dynamics.
Getting Ready to Fundraise
Completion date: 4 Mar 2014
Ways to live without the dependency of money: wild foraging, dumpster diving, creating natural medicines, etc.
A presentation on videoscribing as documentation
In conjunction with living without money
Ways to ask for support
Presentations and Calls
Content Calls Attended:
Learning & Change: how mastery of our own creative practice is at the center of sustainability 11/13/13
Transition Series 1 2/11/14
Transition Series 4 3/4/14
Learning Videoscribing 5/12/14
AGC Calls attended:
Intercultural Rewilding 12/13/13
Living Without Money 4/23/14
Living in Harmony with Money
Identifying Distress and Receiving Support 7/28/14
My M-o-Y was in June with Meredith Kirby and Virginia Menstell, you can view my presentation visual here. (Currently waiting for Audio link) The presentation was on Wild Edibles, in specific, dandelions. I talked about making a jam out of the petals, and spoke separately on the creations of other edible items that could be made. This interested some of my associates and they had asked for me to send them recipes. Wild Edibles will hopefully be a topic that I cover during my capstone year as I have a strong desire to focus on Urban Ecology for the year.
My E-o-Y presentation was held in mid-September. The presentation was also an overview of my pre-capstone year, similar to what has been presented in the content of this Learning Review output. I used this presentation as an opportunity to invite a lot of my local peers/allies and some of the connections that I have made from gaia to hear and visualize some of the work I have been doing throughout the year.
You can view the presentation here via prezi.
Content Workshop
Midwest Renewable Energy Fair
Earlier this summer (June 2014) I attended and volunteered at the 25th Annual Energy Fair at the Wisconsin Renewable Energy Association for 3 days. I attended many conferences/workshops during those 3 days. Some of the workshops I attended were: Aquaponics, Teaching Children to Live Sustainably: A waldorf inspired approach, Plastic Bag Upcycling, Community Gardens with Permaculture Design, Community of Relationships, as well as a few others. I felt like all the workshops I attended addressed something I have spoke of in my OP's throughout the year. I was also able to gain a lot of people/organizations to network with in the future of my development and I also gained a lot of resources and tools by attending this event.
This is an even that has gone on for 25 years so far, and counting. Although this was my first year attending. On their website it stated that this year there were:
*Over 13,000 Attendees
*227 Exhibit Booths
*318 Presentations
*315 Volunteers
It will be happening again in June (2015). I have decided to make it one of my goals to propose a workshop idea and be a workshop facilitator for the 2015 year. I have to still decide on the content that I would like to teach.
Here is a link to the pdf where you can review some of the courses/workshops that were offered during the 2014 Energy Fair.
Learning Support Budget
Peer Connections
I thought starting the year with a group of people that also had to attend calls together for 6 months would forage more connections than it did. I feel like this is in part of my doings by not reaching out enough, or, not reaching out in the right way(s). I say this simply because I feel like I did reach out, a lot, and hardly gained much in return. This has since become a skill that I want to focus my attention on, I call it: 'The Art of Questioning'.
It wasn't until more of the end of my pre-capstone year that I started to gain some connections within the gaia community. For one, I was able to utilize the community forum for feedback and support on my survey. I also was able to reach out and find support for skill-flex advisors, and my learning support budget. I hope to develop these connections a little bit more as my time with gaia continues.
Through my peer connections I have been able to trade recipes, think and listens, and mahara tips/tricks. I have found numerous sources of inspiration within the gaia community that has significantly helped me write my outputs and to push myself when it comes to designing and the format of my content.
I feel very grateful of the environment that gaia is based on. I do however wish there was more focus on guild buddies, or a formal bond between 2 or 3 associates that is made during orientation that one can check in with every so often. I would have found that development to be very resourceful as I don't always feel like my request for support is being honored or picked up by anyone even though I am putting the space out there for people to respond.
Skill-flex Sessions
French Tutor with Charles T. (a gaia associate)
Jennifer English had helped tremendously in the collaboration of finding beneficial skill-flex buddies, she introduced Charles and I via e-mail in which began our correspondence. I have already had one successful session with Charles thus far. We were able to go over some of the basic greetings, numbers, and colors during our first hour long session via skype. It was decided that we will begin using a practice book for further sessions in which I will go over a few chapters, and send him what I went over then we will discuss how it went. He will also then test my pronunciation of my learned content. I am looking forward to our further connections as we have already set up another date we will be getting together.
Mahara skill development with Ava Klinger
One of my goals for the year was to gain more fluidity with the mahara software. We will be having an hour long skillflex session to go over presentation, and layout designs, in order to have a more effective output that catches the eye! Ava and I have yet to connect with our crazy summer schedules ending, and fall schedules beginning. We have however set a date and have planned to have our meeting mid-September. I look forward to sharing and incorporating what was actually learned after the session has taken place.
Common themes Uncovered
Personal boundaries: when to say no and yes. I wanted Non violent communication to be present at work and home. Surrounding myself with people that are communicative in these ways was a desire. I dedicated my first output packet in this direction and it helped me realize that I needed to work on this at home and at work, not just one or the other. Which created a huge interest in self-reflection and noting when I want to say no but I don't. I found myself asking, "what have been the contributing factors to me saying yes, when I really want to say no?"
Urban ecology came up in conversations and project ideas frequently throughout the year to friends, family and allies. I want this to be a bigger focus in my capstone year the more that I think about it. I have numerous ideas that I want to incorporate into my capstone year work! In conversations I have talked about aquaponics, rain gardens, window farming, chickens in the city, and gardening.
I have known for quite sometime now that community is a passion of mine whether I am building it, thriving in it or supporting it. There is so much that could be done and I felt like I thought about community a lot throughout the whole year, but my projects didn't dictate this as much I had hoped when I first started. It did come to my attention that I wanted even more dedication/focus on community building.
Designing my own methodology for output development rather than following a pre-made one. I usually adapted mine from the ideas of other design methods. I talked about my design methods over the year in my tab 2 page after my project reviews. I thought it was neat to push my edge as designing was not my strong suit when I first started with Gaia U. It's great to realize that I have really been making an effort to support my design methods and follow through on them, to the point where I can generate a specific design methodology for each output. I hope to continue with this.
Journal Entry Questions
What went well?
This whole year has gone exceptionally well for me. I have stayed on task with my school work and I am wrapping my pre-capstone year up right where I thought I would be. On top of being timely, I have also been able to pay a great amount of attention towards my development as a whole but more particularly my personal and professional development. I have learned new skills, taken opportunities to push my edges, and learn to receive/give constructive criticism.
What was challenging?
The most challenging thing that I faced was receiving feedback. It was hard at first because I felt like I put a lot of time and energy into my work that no one else saw, so naturally I am going to be very proud of my work and feel accomplished. I definitely had people close to me who knew what I went through to generate my piece of work take some time and make edits as well as utilize the peer reviews in Gaia. Through this experience I learned the skill of receiving and giving of constructive criticism and I am very grateful for it, even though it started off as a rocky experience.
What would I do differently next time?
Next time I would like to focus my attention to the connections that are within Gaia University. I would like to adapt more peer connections/collaborations into my Capstone year work. Which is something that I felt I lacked during this years cycle. During one of my gaia radio calls that specifically talked about receiving support I felt like I was able to express my thoughts and anxieties to others that were supportive and willingly listening. This made me realize that it could have been approached sooner in my cycle and I probably would have established a few solid peer connections- which is what I would like to do next time.
What are my next steps?
I am going to focus on harvesting peer connections and finding ways to collaborate with others in the Gaia community, as well as outside of the community. I want to continue on being timely with my school work while honing in on my personal needs as well. I am also going to create a brainstorm or mindmap of all the potential ideas and directions I would like to go for my Capstone Year.
Overall Outcome
I valued writing this OP for many reasons. First, it was a huge reinforcer for my organization skills. I say this because I was able to use mahara as a database where I could look back on my previous goals and project ideas and compare. I felt like this made the process of reflection a lot easier by having a baseline to start from. I also really enjoyed my design method this time and it felt like it could be an example for other associates in the future who are going to be completing their learning review. Next, the process has been exciting to rekindle old ideas and review some of my ideas that I had maybe forgotten about over the past few busy months with work. Overall, this process has definitely created a space for me to learn more about my patterns, and I am appreciative of the space and time to do such a reflection.
INTO THE FUTURE
Coming soon to your computer... in my Capstone year LIPD!