ABOUT LIFELONG LEARNING

This website is mostly about our experiences and ideas about lifelong learning.

We believe that people learn in may ways. As well as learning through formal education and taking courses, people learn by working, reading, travelling, socializing, practicing skills, thinking about things and, yes, playing.

Since we retired from fulltime paid work we have tried to learn:

  • How to be a retired person . This is actually quite a big challenge. So many things change when you stop working for money. You need to reinvent yourself once again. What a great opportunity!

  • How to make a website . We bought some books, borrowed some books from the public library, and "just did it."

  • How to refurbish the house and rebuild the garden . We used to do those things - now we can keep working on DIY projects on Monday and Tuesday and .... It sometimes seems DIY will never end!

  • How to be fitter than we have been for years by walking, ice skating, swimming, cross country skiing, and boating. We signed up for lessons at our local Recreation Centre and became part of a new friendly, superfit seniors group. We just did it.



  • How to try to make sense of our "place in the cosmos." We know we are made of dust from ancient stars. We also know hominids have lived on earth for 4.4 million years. There's so much else to think about!

  • How to speak Spanish (un poco). We signed up for lessons at Vancouver Island University, bought some dvd programs, and practiced a lot.

  • How to travel by boat, trailer and on tours.

  • How to appreciate classical music, understand calculus, learn about chaos theory and complexity theory, learn more about nutrition. We bought some Teaching Company dvds and watch a course almost every day. We love this stuff!

  • How to teach an online course. We found a university that hired us to teach part-time. Teaching is one of the best ways of learning!

  • How to keep up on what other seniors are doing.Ruth Dempsey's Aging Horizons . recommended by Mike's former Malaspina University College colleague, Carolyn Bowles. The Learning Lives Project in which Ivor Goodman plays a major role.

  • Penny also began to learn how to paint again.

  • And we are still interested in understanding our family history .