Personally and professionally speaking, I am reborn as a result of finding purpose and focus with my informal learning. Interactions with my personal learning network (PLN) made me realize that my informal learning time was more relevant and authentic than what I had experienced in the classroom, or through forced professional development offerings. My interest and research in heutagogy and life-wide learning clarified two important revelations. First, I have been associated with schools and education nearly my entire life, yet I don’t recall anyone taking extended time to help me learn how to learn . Second, this graphic provided by the US Department of Education alerted me to the fact that we spend two-thirds of our life, and sometimes more, learning informally. These two revelations combined with my own recently found informal learning experiences made me take pause and ask... “OMG! If we aren’t feeding our students with the passions and the skills ...
Ruminations about lifelong learning.