Along the path

Friends have asked what I want to do after I have graduated.

My most honest answer is that I want to gain all the knowledge of the world and share it with everyone without charging them.

I know this isn't a solid career plan. For one thing, my future desires include continuing to have food and shelter and going on vacations. Maybe getting into clothes that I like better.

Whatever I end up doing to support myself, that will certainly still be a hobby.

I got my BA in 1996, but of course I kept on reading and learning, taking learning very seriously. 

Over time I started noticing how information could support other information. If you knew this piece over here first, when you came across that other piece it would make more sense. My ideas were mostly about putting the pieces together in a helpful order.

Once you start learning about instructional design, that's a relatively small part of it. Then it becomes more about how learning works and what conditions suit it best. What is the essence and what is a distraction? Does the information you are providing and the way you are providing it serve the desired outcome? How do you know if you are achieving the goal?

Realistically, a lot of the job is more about working with people who know the subject; then you help them with the imparting of what they know.

This is fine, as me actually getting to know everything myself isn't really plausible. 

Yesterday I posted about how I would still blog. I could blog about things that I know about, even without creating a full learning module.

That can go beyond blogs. There are books and podcasts and Youtube videos and TikToks and all sorts of ways of getting information out there, some of it interesting and valid and some of it less so.

I have taken a lot of the big online classes through Coursera and other platforms. I had thought of putting out information in ways similar to a PowerPoint presentation. Those classes are a lot like that, except they usually have some quizzes rolled in and maybe some assignments. 

Those are usually peer-reviewed, if anything, because if you want the instructor (or the instructor's graduate assistant) to pay any attention, you need to pay, which I generally wasn't doing.

It's the assignments and tests where the learning tends to really come together. Assessments.

If you just want to give information away, people may not value it, they may not do the work, and they may not actually learn.

It doesn't have to be that way.

Many years ago my friend Rose and I took some classes through the rec center, learning how to make salsas, chutneys, and flavored oils and vinegar.

Learning about the extension service, we wanted to learn more. I ended up becoming a Master Food Preserver and she was going to become a Master Gardener, but I think she moved before she could finish that.

Before that, we put the knowledge into practice. We canned pears together and we picked raspberries and made freezer jam. I later taught a class on how to make salsa, but I seem to remember her making a batch also.

You can do things with knowledge, whether someone is checking up on you or not. 

Of course, you have to want to do so. 

There seems to be less of that around. That's a constant worry.