BFTP: Life-long learning

A Saturday Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past. Original post, December 31, 2005

I still have a big lump in my throat after waving good-bye this morning to my daughter and her family who have spent the week with us. They are heading back to Fargo which is located exactly four and a half hours too far away from Mankato, MN.

As a last hurrah, we spent yesterday at the Minnesota Zoo, where I was left with 3-month-old grandson Miles Benjamin while the rest of the group trooped off to see some exhibits for about half an hour. While the others looked at exotic critters, I took a very close look at this baby. One of Miles's major tasks right now seems to be figuring out what these two strange things are that sometimes appear in front of his face and give him a great deal of comfort when inserted in the mouth. During the week he was with us, his hand-to-mouth accuracy rate seemed to go from about 30% to about 60%. He is learning. (At right, Miles is enjoying either the dophin show or his toes.)

With much less patience, Grandpa Doug has been trying to learn as well. While I've had the fingers-in-the-mouth thing down pat for a few years,  I'm on a steep learning curve with Moodle. Current frustration involves inserted graphic files going into the summary field instead of the contents area. Like Miles and his fingers, I will get it eventually. I hope.

What is more than a little scary is reading a posting like this one from the Thinking Out Loud blog about MoodleBug:

The Elgg gang have recently announced their collaboration with Catalyst IT to develop “seamless interaction between Moodle and Elgg”. How cool is that? I’m a big fan of both platforms, and I really think there’s a huge strategic advantage for both in this, since there’s currently both resurgence of interest in Open Source learning platforms and the political imperative for institutions to start considering their e-portfolio options.Catalyst IT is already a Moodle Partner, and hopefully the iron-clad FOSS credentials of the team behind them - NZOSVLE, will calm the Open Source communities concerns about previously small Elgg team. 

I have almost NO idea what this means or if it should be important to me.

I only hope I can demonstrate half of Miles's perseverance, optimism, and patience when it comes to learning.