by Anthony Eldridge-Rogers in

HOLD THE BIGGER PICTURE

Anthony We all get focused on those small important things in our lives. We become focused and attached to behaviours and things that we have decided are either important and that feel compelling, or that are in some way addictive. We can get stuck in our thinking and beliefs, our attitudes and emotions. How easy it seems for us to start believing that the world that we see close-up around us is the only world there is. How much do we expand our view beyond the current crisis? Why is

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by Anthony Eldridge-Rogers in

SELF DIRECTED LEARNING & LIVING

What does it mean to be self directed? Most people consider that they are self directed. They will believe they make decisions freely for themselves and their families and that they are autonomous in their lives to a large extent. This confidence in the idea of being self directed extends to beliefs. Most of us argue that our beliefs are our beliefs because we chose them. It seems that way I know but it is not hard to understand that we are highly influenced by family background and social conditioning.

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by Lehla Eldridge in

You don’t need to go to school to be a self made millionaire

This morning my husband shows me the Instagram account of a self made Italian millionairess who has made her fortune via Instagram. She just takes pictures of herself, in various outfits, looking sometimes like a model and sometimes quite normal. She has done this for years and now gets paid by fashion houses to promote their fashions. I assume that is how she has made her millions. My knee jerk judgmental response was that she is narcissistic. But that would be missing the point. She is clever. She has made

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by Lehla Eldridge in

Are These Self Directed Learners Changing Learning as we know it?

There are some mornings where I wake up with another large family of five in our kitchen. Behind the bright sparky face of our son’s Minecraft buddy, I see this family waking up. They are in South Africa and we are in Italy. Slippers, pyjamas and all. I see breakfast being had and I can hear the teaspoons stirring in cups and I wonder if they drink tea or coffee…This feels a bit like community, even though it is bizarrely though a screen. I listen to the way my son

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by Lehla Eldridge in

Project based learning and Self-directed learning. Learning through what life is offering you…

 This is a story about when our children were younger and learning out of the box. 'Step away from the desks, grab your ideas children and fly beyond what you ever imagined could be possible.' By the fluke of the universe, the way magic works and sheer luck, if is there such a thing... we have landed a wonderful ‘Workaway’ person who is a script writer and a film maker. This week the kids decided to work on projects. One of our daughters ran with one of the ideas and has decided to

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by Lehla Eldridge in

A Sonnet to Minecraft

I love the way you have been so thoughtful and that the music that twinkles in the background when you are present is actually very soothing to my adult ear. The way you guide my child through the land of the unknown, how you let him be the king of his world. That he can say no to the walkers with white eyes and not let the creepers creep and that in peaceful mode I know that no one will get him. I love the way that your square sun rises as

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by Lehla Eldridge in

Are you a competitive homeschooling/unschooling parent?

 We as of yet have no self-sustaining organic garden, our kids don’t know quite how to fashion wooden spoons out of a tree nor how to stick then roast an organically farmed pig. They are not musical geniuses that we know of, yet, and they have not started their own companies at the age of eight, which they are now floating on the stock market. These are not our kids, our kids may end up doing all those things who knows but right now, they don’t. Now this is such

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