Category: VLE Software

My mother belongs to the biggest womens’ group you can imagine.  It’s well known throughout this country and probably the world and if it’s good enough for our monarch and her mother, then it’s certainly good enough for us.  There are so many different facets to this huge federation.  Mum has met an incredible range of folk and the speakers that come to entertain and hopefully educate the groups have been in the main, absolutely fascinating and interesting.   There have been one or two who could brush up on their delivery style, but generally the speakers are only paid a tiny amount for their expenses and are not really in the ‘after dinner speaker’ class.

The federation also facilitates learning – in a very big way.  They have every subject available and a ready made college for the purpose, although it’s a bit of a luxury to be residential – but probably suited to a queen!

Knowing how to learn is one of the skills in life that doesn’t necessarily come easily.  I recall when at school, I would respond best to the teacher out front who was amusing, spoke nicely and understood my dry sense of humour.  These things mattered for my self confidence.  Others in my cohort were perfectly happy just copying everything down from the board and not questionning anything teacher said or did.    Whether their learning came more easily is hard to say, but I needed more than dreary lessons.

I came alive when commercial subjects were available – I had to give up science to do typing and shorthand, but my parents figured these would stand any student in good stead throughout a lifetime of work, whereas sciences had a fairly limited appeal for normal life.  The ability to type brought great advances to me, it taught me how to appreciate all future training courses, online particularly.

One of the most useful things I learned in training courses over many years as a government worker was to get on with the task as soon as the email instruction arrived.  I was always in bother at school with homework for procrastination to the point that it was always done on the bus on the way to school – never a good idea.  This directly affected my chances of getting useable exam results and it took me a few years at real work to appreciate my methodology was rubbish.

So thereafter I have always taken training of any sort quite seriously.  Be it a first aid sampler, a customer service refresher, mandatory anti-fraud training.  I have read the instructions, read the purpose of the course and each element of each topic.  Once the point of the exercise is known, getting down to the learning is a doddle.  And often very rewarding.