#fleng4study

[learner-stories]

Michael, 67 and a half, is a semi-retired architect and aspiring storyteller from Ireland. Here he shares his thoughts on learning, stories of his career, hobbies and challenges and his passion for storytelling.

“In 1854 John Henry Newman defined a "School of Universal Learning" a description which implies the assemblage of strangers from all parts in one spot; - from all parts; else, how will you find professors and students for every department of knowledge? It is a school of knowledge of every kind, consisting of teachers and learners from every quarter. A place for the communication and circulation of thought, through a wide extent of country.

This I read when I was 16 and I have always remembered it. When I discovered FutureLearn, maybe serendipity, synchronicity and syllogism kicked in (albeit 50 or so years afterwards)  

My career has taken me to work in offices in London and Dublin, for architects and development companies, for community groups, poverty alleviators, government departments, and after establishing an office in my own right, includes projects in housing, retail, mixed-use developments and a training centre for the Probation Service here in Ireland. 

My YouTube channel now has about 100, or so, of my videos include street performers, stained glass, country shows, visited countries. All taken on my trusty Samsung WB 250 F and edited in windows live movie maker. In 2012 also, I joined TripAdvisor and they tell me recently I've had 60,000 plus readers, TripAdvisor is a great reminder of some of the places I've travelled to, but I missed recording other places I visited earlier both on my own and with my family.

I have 'lectured’ in Hong Kong, Ireland and the UK, written off two cars when I first started driving and survived a TIA in Chicago in 2009 thanks to the exceptional expertise of the staff of Northwestern Memorial Hospital. I have said ’never again’ on completion of my PADI diving certification in Malta, and I do not need to skydive or bungee jump.

I am very proud of our five children, (and three grandchildren) and the success they are making of their lives, and have great admiration for the care and dedication of their mother in bringing them into the world and looking after them (still).

I was born into Roman Catholicism, had ethics as subject in school, but I have always admired individuals who have arrived in some sort of a logical process at their religious convictions such as Newman and Chesterton, Irish Catholicism and mine is a bit of a curate's egg I have always followed a CPD path, and my current aspirations include publishing at least one book, making a longer film and support the pro-life cause here on its critical path to mid next year. I like the works of Teilhard de Chardin, Marshal McLuhan, Deepak Chopra and George Bernard Shaw, and I like his dictums:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him...The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself, therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.

So back to Newman. I end as I began; - a University is a place of concourse, whether students come from every quarter for every kind of knowledge. It is the place to which a thousand schools make contributions; in which the intellect may safely range and speculate, sure to find its equal in some antagonist activity, and its judge in the tribunal of truth. It is a place where an inquiry is pushed forward, and discoveries verified and perfected, and rashness rendered innocuous, and error exposed, by the collision of mind with mind, and knowledge with knowledge.'

Sounds very like FutureLearn to me and that's why, anytime I get the chance, I seek to complete a Futurelearn course. It is a most extraordinary facility, so well suited to the needs of our times (and times to come), it is a model, I think of where third level education will be for many, RPL is important, RFL is the way of the future

It would have been magic to have access to a facility like FutureLearn when I was younger.”