The A229 Project

The A229 Project is the physical space that has emerged where I can anchor my learning journey.  This emergent space is referenced as "Weekend Warriors" because it will become whatever it becomes from occupying it.  It is akin to a skunkwork project or that space where for a brief moment a window opens up where an idea has a chance to be incubated.

The beam of light that flows online is what I reference as my learning journey, and over the last couple of weeks I have opened up a physical learning space that potentially will contribute greatly to my offline learning journey and whatever that emerges in an associated cross-collaboration.  The best thing about it is the continuity of making things up as they happen.

This emergent approach is still got strings of control and in a separate class that I have just begun taking called "Agile Methodologies", I have come to realize that while I may do well expressing my learning in an emergent way, I am not really agile - if anything the first two classes have shown me that I am far more mechanical and methodical than I am agile.

The class as also allowed me to determine that agile and emergent are not necessarily the same thing and in what I am learning about agile, is a totally different skill-set.  Another group I have attended workshops for brought in a professor who talked about thinking.  In that group I came to realize that I am pursuing one type of thinking but need to pay attention to two others.

The professor's name who is Jeremy led a workshop on Creativity.  What I determined from that class is that I do major in a type of thinking that most people do not engage which is metacognition, but I need to pay attention to two other forms of thinking -  which are critical thinking and creative thinking.  What I engage here to date has been reflective thinking.

REFLECTIVE THINKING

CRITICAL THINKING

CREATIVE THINKING

I learned from the creativity workshop just how challenging creative thinking is, or at least in the exercises that I was provided.  I also already recognize the challenges associated with critical thinking and these include understanding the existence of logical fallacies and being absolutely objective - this makes critical thinking challenging as getting to the depth of creative thinking.

So it is the The A229 Project is beginning to take shape in an emergent fashion and swirling around it is the serendipity of programs that I have taken on a whim rather than as a design.  A set of bizzare factors led me to to enroll on the Agile course on the Friday before the first class was due to meet.  Once we met the instructors had created a course based on agile principles.