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Dear Gina, Mynoo and Almira,

I'm in Gaiaspace and raring to go. My focus at present is inviting people to register for our 'Practical Microfinance' course starting 29th Sept and running in 7 sessions in the City of London until 16th December. You can get full details from www.microfinancewithoutborders.com.

Best thing is that Prof Malcolm Harper and I are leading the course. He's a world expert on microfinance, very irreverent and down to earth. The people on our last course enjoyed it immensely and are now doing field work and one has got the job she really wanted in microfinance, fundraising for a charity. 

And we're making DVDs and podcasts of the course so people in microfinance around the world can share in the learning and fun.

I've got to run now so I can meet up with you tonight!

Love

Phyllis

It will not take long before the new term at our university starts.
It is going to be another 13 meetings with the students. 13 times struggle
of how to bring them some information and help them to learn something or at least
to prepare for the exam.

It is only 13 times 2 hours I can use and I am fed up wasting them the way I used to.
I do not want to help them to pass the exam. I want them to learn something.
They should be getting a degree in a year from now, but how to motivate them
to learn also something?
While reading some books about modern education, reading blogs on Internet,
I realised that I have to change my attitude towards the students.
And do what I am doing on the seminars of experience education for
teachers and students. It is to be open with your vision, offering the
vision and the goal and methods of reaching it. Doing this, part of the
responsibility of reaching the goal is transferred to the students. They should
be the actuators in this learning machine. I, as a teacher should only facilitate the action.
So the first step is motivation. Motivation for students to learn. To ask questions,
to get interested. This is what I believe I must do. So enough for the theory.

Here is my little proposal for the principles and actions I want to try out this term:

• discuss the goal of the class and agree on it together with students
• help students to make mistakes and learn from them
• make students ask questions
• work in groups on problems, forget about the frontal teaching, that is saved for the lecture, I am doing seminars
• link the work to their day-to-day life

There are methods how to do, there is a plan, a goal, so in a month we can start testing
my plan. Because there must be a way how to make a difference. I do not want to be part
of the system killing the creativity in students. I do not wish anything for the students,
 I just want to be proud of them. So let us see how shall I succeed.
This is an end of a post of one frustrated university teacher.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7538498.stm

 Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva has launched a global fund to protect the Amazon rainforest and combat climate change.

Officials will seek donations abroad and aim to raise $21bn (£11bn) by 2021. Wendy Urquhart reports.

 

I found this interesting 9 min. statement of Clay Shirky (Here comes Everybody) about what's going on in the headline's sense.

My friend Robert Seltman from Kyoto, Japan, devoted a whole section of his excellent website (with a great old-fashioned design; gives me retro-feelings) to Atheism and what it is for different people. And as a last little illustration he had the below video by Alan Watts - who was the hero of youth and young years. And what he says (put into fantastic pictures by the guys who do made South Park) is timelessly wise… worth considering.

 

Create your own music show - if you like.

This thingy here will look all over the web for the band or music you enter... and then you play :-)

Climate prosperity makes sense.

The imperative is to adapt and tranform.

Imagining that the shift is already done, we can envisage the opportunities created.

From another perspective, I met the Danish Ambassador to South Africa after his presentation at the Climate Change Summit in Joburg South Africa.

Denmark has increased growth and reduced CO2 emissions and in the process developed a wind and renewables industry that contributes 8% to GDP.

As a Climate Prosperity community, we can identify the 'dimensions' of Green Transition to Climate Prosperity and identify the solutions that are already here to be replicated and re-used.

As Climate Prosperity moves from Network to Community to System of Influence, it can develop the template for this global green transition - of businesses, cities, etc.