Ada Lovelace Day – Sarah Stewart

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, and I pledged a number of months ago to write a post about an unsung heroine in technology that I admire.

My unsung heroine is @SarahStewart or as non-geeky people might call her, Sarah Stewart.

I had been planning a bit of time to write this, and yet again I find myself at the end of the day trying to corral my thoughts into something coherent.

Sarah Stewart is absolutely awesome. I have so much admiration for this woman who until the last few months, I didn’t even know existed!

Connecting through our Personal Learning Network (PLN)

I “met” Sarah via my Twitter PLN (of course) and found her right from the start to be friendly, curious, articulate, engaging in her communication style and open and willing to share and discuss on Twitter, flickr and so forth.

Connecting with Western Australian Peers

Knowing that Sarah was a Midwife and doing some amazing things with e-Learning, students and midwifery professional practice using technology, I invited her to participate from the other side of the country in a staff development day with our School of Nursing, Midwifery & Post-Graduate Medicine at ECU (named in honour of another kick arse awesome woman before her time).

She didn’t bat an eyelid and was excited to contribute.  As a part of our planning we did some time online with Skype and Mindmeister……and what a depth of experience and innovation did I find!

Our Academic staff were engaged and asked a multitude of questions. Sarah was a total trooper as we had to turn off the video feed from Skype and she really was flying blind that day.

From A to G……and not even close to Z as yet

To give you some idea, here is a quick and dirty run down of her “tech journey” in the last decade or so (hopefully its in chronological order from my notes)

1. Career started as a nurse and then moved into midwifery
2. 
3. Moved to New Zealand with family from England mid – late 90′. When I say New Zealand, I mean remote, rural, low infrastructure of any kind, New Zealand.
4. Communicated with “home” via email and developed midwifery professional practice “LISTSERV’s”  to keep in touch with contemporary practice (it was all very cutting edge then!)
5. This community of practice created a sense of feeling much less isolated from the world and her profession in a remote area.
6. In 1999, she moved to being an educator and a university. In Sarah’s words

“I always had a passion to teach and share the benefits of experience and knowledge with young women”.

• This shift led the the completion of her Masters on midwives connecting and supporting each other through the Internet.
• These concepts were integrated into her teaching practice and she introduced the concept of networking and reflective practice to her students. Given this was the “turn of the Century” (still feels odd saying that) it was quite revolutionary practice looking back.
• She put several courses online and particularly worked with e-Learning in post-graduate programs.
• In 2007 Sarah met Leigh Blackall and discovered a world she had been seeking and trying to articulate for some considerable while.  The world of connectivism, community and collaboration.   A networked world.  Words / expressions used to describe her world include: sharing, collaboration for the greater good, non-possessiveness, e-volunteer.
• The e-volunteer concept is one in the last few years that Sarah has exemplified.  She has supported Japanese midwives with professional practice from NZ (and they in Japan); developed and run free mid-wifery session online in the middle east (including Pakistan and Afghanistan) and had such a profound impact that she was asked to work on location in this part of the world in auditing of curriculum.

…and now?

Sarah now finds herself in Brisbane, Queensland Australia working on an e-Mentoring project as her latest challenge. Her blog is an endless, continual resource of self-reflection, reflection on her industry and the professional development.  Her fingers are still in a variety of virtual pies, one of which includes building a “virtual birthing unit” in Second Life (which kind of makes even my head pop!)

I must say, she also puts herself out there with her professional e-portfolio open for the world to see. She has cast some doubt on herself with this of late, but fundamentally I believe it is a revolutionary practice and in 10 years we will look back and see her as a pioneer and wonder what all the fuss was about.

Reflections

What an amazing woman – to reach out from the other side of the planet and positively affect peoples lives so profoundly with something as simple as a computer and a keyboard.

I continually feel inspired by Sarah, even though I am in a different (albeit learning in the end) industry sector.

Inspired to continually challenge the boundaries of the accepted “norm” and striving to make a difference in the world around me and those whose paths I cross.

Thank you Sarah

Footnote: I feel I have left so much of Sarah out and her achievements as an unsung hero. Visit her blog and see just how bloody awesome she is yourself!

All images blatantly flogged from Sarah’s flickr site – silly girl put them out there! MUWHAHAHAHHA

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Why on earth am I doing this to myself again?

I am currently upgrading my old (read REALLY old) Cert IV Workplace Trainer & Assessor qualification to the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment (Cert IV TAA).

It’s been 5 years since I have had to use it, but thought since most of the team are undertaking their’s it would be a good idea.

The good stuff

We are in the final block (3 days) of 3 blocks of workshops, we have assessments coming out of our proverbial, a full workload and yet the entire process is remarkably interesting and enjoyable for the following reasons:

1) I am getting to spend some real quality time with my colleagues.  It is opening my eyes to more of their strengths, agile minds and remarkable personalities.

2) We are actually spending time discussing training and learning – at some length, depth and breadth, and learning from each other and these conversations.  I suspect that these conversations are running much deeper than most TAA courses as we are all in the industry of T&D and also we have all been exposed in some form to VET and AQTF.  This allows us to gloss past the stuff we know and get into the juicier conversations.

3) Denise (our facilitator) is a font of knowledge. Every day there is something new to learn off your peers & colleagues.

Thinking

This has come at an opportune moment. Lately I have been thinking about learning more than normal. In fact, I would go so far as to say, a lot.  Almost non-stop.

The treadmill called reality ….and yes it does bite

I think sometimes when one gets on the treadmill and is confronted with ceaseless, never ending deadlines that a T&D environment brings, you can get complacent with (not the effort per say) but the design, approach and scaffolding of the learning event.

                                                                 Source: ~wolfie~

I am questioning everything we do as a business of late (in a good way of course). From processes to lesson plans to androgogy to technology to learning styles to organisational need / fit. 

My belief is that it is a perfect time to really critically analyse every single bit of content we deliver, how we deliver it, what outcomes we want and how we evaluate it. 

Yes, yes I know!

Yes, yes I know we should be doing this all the time – but the reality of the aforementioned treadmill isn’t always so forgiving. 

Also getting in the helicopter just occasionally to look from the top down, gives an entirely new perspective.

The TAA is only magnifying my gut feeling it is time for a great big fat spring clean of content and methodology. More blended, more online, change our in class methodology, improve our objectives and desired outcomes and in particular crank up the evaluation of behavioural change in the workplace.

Yes it makes work  – but surely it will make better outcomes in the longer term?

How often do YOU critically look and review what you do? Unconscious competence = complacency,