A life time of learning

I have given up paid work but, as a lifelong learner, I am not retired. There is still a strong element of ‘teacher teach yourself’. But I am presently enlisting the support of others via the recent phenomena that are Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC).

The Big History Project is stunning in terms of its subject matter – everything from the Big Bang onwards. Its underlying curriculum development and materials production processes are also impressive. The key shaker and mover is the Australian historian David Christian and the project is enthusiastically supported by Bill Gates.

There are ten units covering eight thresholds which are located on a timeline. You can dip in at places that interest you or work your way from beginning to end. There is built in support for school teachers to include the package in their overall teaching programme. It is a multimedia extravaganza with external links for those who want to dig deeper. I am in the process of working through from beginning to end. It is gob smacking.

I am also signed up to an Introduction to Psychology course organized by San Jose State University and made available through Udacity.com. There are sixteen lessons presented by three attractive instructors - Susan Snycerski, Greg Feist, and Lauren Castellano. They make slick use of video and ongoing mini quizzes which between them capture and hold my attention. The content is not as gob smacking as Big History but the package provides a free, user-friendly and fairly comprehensive Introduction to Psychology delivered from the USA to my home in Portsoy.

And then there is teacher teach yourself. This includes the old fashioned reading of cutting edge articles and books and converting some of the ideas to one-pagers. But there is also the new-fashion of listening to or watching radical thinkers on audio or video files and even of tracking them in real time via their websites, blogs, and social networks – particularly Twitter.

My present interests lie in improving the consilience of my thoughts and feelings about my thoughts and feelings. Mental stuff is conceptually mapped in different ways by different people.

My particular interest is in mapping Buddhist thinking on to neuroscience informed by the new approaches to psychology – behavioural, positive, and evolutionary. (Note – the Introduction to Psychology course (see above) does not tackle positive and evolutionary psychology – they are not yet mainstream.)

The concept of ‘neo-Buddhism’ appeared during the sangha meeting yesterday. Thich Nhat Hahn has been exchanging ideas with neuroscientists and there is consilience about how the brain works: particularly the potentially liberating notion of neural plasticity.

The only constant thing is change!