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Creating a lifelong learning network is essential for adults who pursue continuing education as means to advance their professional career or improve their personal life. Regardless of the reason for continuing one's education, an adult's knowledge needs to continually grow. The changing nature of today's society demands the necessity for gaining new skills, new understandings, and new intellectual orientations throughout a person's life.

"This graphic, http://www.minitex.umn.edu/Communications/Director/ shows the journey of a student from pre-kindergarten through the K-12 educational system and either into the workforce or on to a higher education institution. Along the way, school, academic, and public libraries are all available to provide services to the student and parents in support of learning and information literacy. This graphic was developed after attendance at various P-20 meetings where it seemed important to show that libraries play an important role throughout the life of students and adults. Minnesota libraries collaborate in sharing services and resources. Once in the workforce, information continues to be available through the public library for lifelong learning and recreation activities. Role of Libraries Pre-K & Beyond: Lifelong Learning - http://www.minitex.umn.edu/Communications/Director/RoleLibraries.pdf

I love to learn new stuff as an adult, most likely due to a misspent youth. As an undergraduate college student, I knew where the pool tables were located. Let's just leave it at that.

Few would argue that life-long learning is a worthy goal with real benefits for our long term mental health and happiness. Engaging with new ideas, concepts and ways of doing things is the ideal strategy for a healthy mind and a disposition towards better understanding the world and challenging our entrenched beliefs.

The book 'Non Obvious' by Rohit Bhargava present an intriguing exploration of how careful observation and thought can reveal emerging trends and as the subtitle suggest 'predict the future'. For educators the ability to identify the trends which will deliver the best outcomes for our students from the noise of fads is alluring. While the talk of new technologies, of learner centric pedagogies and teaching for lifelong learning play the part of the obvious trends in education identifying the non-obvious trend is a more challenging endeavour. 

Learning to Be

Blueback is a beautiful metaphor for life and particularly of the life we live in schools. When looked at close up, with an eye on the details, the experience of school is one of passing and recurring cycles. When looked at from a distance, with an eye on the whole, there are elements of constancy, the throughlines which bring meaning to our experience and which have as their consequence the residuals of education.