We start another year full of wonderful work in the service of the Seeds of Change
ExpandAMOs Re-launched!
During 2012 we widened our course offer, adding a new section of courses which we are calling "Holistic Development" as we now have two sets of courses which deal with "interior design" skills, as we know that designing well this aspect is vitally important to do, at the same time that we change the world around us, whether in small or large ways.
ExpandAMOs evolved from our own Integral Permaculture students during 2011. We loved the experience, two of the first year's participants are going to help facilitate this second year, we re-designed some parts in accord with their proposals and help...
... and now the expansion consists of 4 courses (one in each season) that can be done in a modular way, or all together, during a whole year, its purpose being forming a "Mastermind group" to support us as social activists and Permaculture designers.
(this course is offered free during 2013 for bilingual students who are able to do the translation work of the class materials from Spanish into English)
Lots of Creativity
One of the most intense satisfactions of running these on-line courses is to see the individual & very creative work of the students bud & blossom little by little, in their design portfolios.
This is something that is simply not possible to produce on the necessarily shorter presential courses we used to run a few years ago.
We now have much more teaching material available, through many hours of brilliant multimedia lectures, and we are very proud of the amazing resource of original, high-quality information that we're making available in a very mini-max* way to our beloved students!
The students speak to each other & with the tutors live whenever we wish (lots of small meetings happen by Skype whenever someone organizes a meeting or support group for something, or we have particular issues or designs to discuss), but it doesn't make sense for us to teach the same materials over & over, so it is wonderful to have the basic core theory & examples as recordings.
We find that the students take their time to hear each class, pausing & repeating the parts they are most interested in, and during this process they make notes as beautiful as these mind-maps.
We find that the students take their time to hear each class, pausing & repeating the parts they are most interested in, and during this process they make notes as beautiful as these mind-maps.
This makes it possible for us to spend the bulk of our teaching time one-on-one with each person, and one of the delightful parts of this is to see their responses to the classes & later how they put all this theory together in their real-life designs, at home.
We encourage the students to pro-actively participate in these lectures by making mind-maps as notes (the very first class includes a tutorial on mind-maps, which are a great way of working with complex ideas, through art, engaging the whole mind & hands in the process), then discuss what they understand of the material & especially we look to how they then apply the theory & examples to their own designs.
These mind-maps are from Rakel, a diploma student has been working on an ambitious design she calls Lurtopia. These is some of her beautiful mind-maps done during the class about visioning - where she started applying the teaching material to her own designs, during the class.
The e-Book
The task of putting together a comprehensive & bilingual Designers Manual for the new generation of permaculture designers, is proving to be one of the most rewarding, instructive & exciting projects we're engaged in.
Almost every day some small piece is added or expanded on, although it's not possible to keep a record of this progress, simply because it's just one of the many projects we're engaged in. We all also have quite ambitious permaculture sites in progress on the ground, as we are primarily engaged in designing the infrastructures for the transition on the ground.
We're currently ending the 4th Module (Energy & EcoTechnology) by recording the last multimedia classes of this section, as well as compiling the corresponding first draft of the e-book.
This year we will focus on the last & possibly most intensive Module 5: EcoEconomy >> see The EcoEconomy Course.
This year we will focus on the last & possibly most intensive Module 5: EcoEconomy >> see The EcoEconomy Course.
We would love to hear from occasional users of the e-book, so we can know how you're using it.
We always welcome any feedback in our Facebook Groups or by email at nodoespiral@nodoespiral.net
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