And I would walk 12000 steps

Another training day today, at Worthing again. This morning was all a bit of a flurry as I didn’t come downstairs until about 815am and then was rallying D&S to eat breakfast and get dressed so I didn’t actually get to drink the tea I’d made before Ady came home to take me into Worthing. Parking is a nightmare, expensive and a 10 minutes walk to the library anyway for long stay so it was far easier for him to pop back home after an early meeting at work and drop me off before heading off for his next meeting.

It did mean I was nearly half an hour early for the training though, so I went into the library and had 15 minutes on the computer in there while I waited. 🙂 I did the same at lunchtime and again after the training while waiting for Ady to collect me, another fab benefit of working for the library is free internet access subscription. 🙂

The training was all very interesting, but it is still very difficult to sit in a room with one person dishing out information while you try and concentrate on taking it in and storing it in your brain, makes me wonder how on earth I coped at school with it for six hours a day five days a week! It so isn’t the right way to ‘learn’ anything is it? You need to be engaged with it, find it relevant, interesting, something you actually want to know rather than something you ‘should’ know. When I think of how easily I grasp learning something I can either see a point to, need to know for a specific reason or am passionate about compared to how diffficult it is to soak up knowledge that is just chucked at me while I try and cram it in my brain it really does cement for me how we approach Home Education with Davies and Scarlett. They are just the same – something that is the answer to a question they have asked, or information to help them achieve something they want to, or is relevant to what’s happening right now or simply will enable or empower them goes in so easily, the instant I try and ‘teach’ them something or change from what they want to know to what I think they should know they just switch off and it becomes ‘work’. I don’t recall whether I ever did post my musings about learning styles that I was thinking about a while back but it’s been very interesting to watch the different tactics to soaking up knowledge that the children have and indeed what has worked for Ady while he’s been doing studying this year too. They all have very different ways to approach the challenge using different aids to assist.

So this morning was all about Reference, Information and Enquiries and was very interesting in parts. Doing this training has made me realise how different my own personal view to library services is compared to the public as a whole. I’ve always used libraries, although I slacked off in recent years when I started buying books rather than borrowing them, but it was always almost exclusively to borrow books or find a quiet, warm, dry haven to read in. I’ve never asked an enqiry there ever I don’t think and tbh it wouldn’t have occured to me to consider the library as a place to get information other than what I could dig out of the books held there myself. But it would seem that for many people it would be a first port of call for any sort of information and whilst they are being challenged by the internet and specifically search engines like google in this information giving service role there is still a big call for it to the tune of having a positive army of staff dedicated to it throughout the library service in West Sussex. We ended the morning with a tour of Worthing library with it’s massive reference section including about 40 computers, a massive area for family history including subscribed pcs for online services in geneology, a huge area for reading the many papers and magazines they have, lending books on the ground floor and the hub of the whole operation in the basement including loads of reserves of last copies of books in the county which are all stored away for reference. Some really interesting things stashed in there on the basis they may well have historical reference value some day in the future eg. a little pocket book guide of events happening to mark the year 2000 which would have seemed out of date in 2001 but actually come 2050 might well be a really interesting historical record.

We broke for lunch and I walked into town in the sunshine. I realised recently that Scarlett is currently wearing bigger pjs than Davies – he is still in very worn age4-5 ones which are halfway up his legs and looking very tired, while she has several new sets in age 5-6 years on the basis she can get two years out of them. So on the same frugal mindset I bought him 3 pairs of age 7-8 years. They are slightly on the roomy side but pass the ‘do they fall down when you jump up and down in them?’ test so that’s good :). I’ve even been using old pjs (which are no good for ebaying) as rags for cleaning (well I don’t do the cleaning obviously, but I put the pjs in the cupboard under the sink for the person who does do the cleaning 😉 ) so I truly am doing well in the frugal housemanagement stakes ;). Then I wandered back to the library and had another 15 minutes online.

This afternoon was interesting, we were set up on pcs and given a load of cards with questions a customer might come in and ask and we had to find the answers using the online subscriptions services the library uses. Previously I would simply have googled but actually that can be very time consuming for a general enquiry (a 14 year old needs help with their RE homework about Jesus Christ, give them an overview of his life and work) and of course not necessarily accurate or credible depending on the resource you use. West Sussex subscribes to all the Brittanica online encyclopedias, the Oxford Dictionaries and loads more similar sites, all neatly catalogued into subjects and age appropriate groupings. It was really interesting and I will definitely be making use of some of it from home for when the children ask me questions as you can access it via the library website using your library ticket number. We spent about 90 minutes doing that and then came back down to the basement for training on data protection and copyright while we had coffee.

The data protection and copyright stuff was very interesting, not least because I was asking (with my own agenda in place of course 😉 ) about information sharing across council departments and how much information gets cross referenced. Currently it would only be cross referenced if someone paid their £9 and got all the details held on them collated and sent to them but there are long term future plans afoot to create a backbone of cross referenced details allocating all WSCC residents their own reference number and tying up all their details from all agencies. Apparently WSCC is a frontrunner in installing this sort of technology and no other county councils are planning it at the moment and they were quick to assure me it would be accessed only at very high levels but personally I find that quite horrifying. I’m undergoing some sort of change in my feelings and views about the law, rights and the amount we are dictated to currently, with all sorts of tendancies towards anarchy coming out in me. I’ve no idea where it will end up but its been very interesting in a few recent real life and online discussions and situations to realise my once very closely held views on things have changed quite dramatically. I managed to hide all that though as clearly it was neither the time or the place to go slating such ideas ;). The training was wrapped up earlier than expected so when I rang Ady to check where he was he was still at the office an hour or so away from me. Retrospectively I should have walked home at that point as I was over half way home when he caught me up an hour later, having gone back into the library for another half hour online but I did more than enough walking today overall, to the point that the damaged toe is rather swollen today although it’s only really hurting now with direct pressure on it rather than a constant ache.

We got home and had a very quick turnaround of getting Davies ready for Badgers, the house licked into some state of tidyness, a card written for my Granny (both children signed their names) and a present wrapped up for her. We dropped Davies at Badgers and then walked with Scarlett into town to Waitrose to get a cake and then back along the beach to collect Davies. Then we went to my Granny’s house which is just down the road from Badgers where Mum and Dad were already waiting to have 90 minutes with her tonight for her birthday tomorrow. Mum is busy doing something to do with work tomorrow and although I am not actually working (I should be, but I had enough time owing to be given the day off as I have had all the training this week and am working Saturday morning) I have lots to get done in the next couple of days. It was pleasant enough round there and the children were really well behaved and I was really proud of them :).

We came home about 830pm, I sorted the chicks out, the children took themselves off to bed and Ady cooked dinner, but we didn’t eat until 1030pm. We watched an interesting programe on BBC3 about being ginger with Little Cook Small from Big Cook Little Cook. Ady sat there amazed as I reeled off the list of names I got called at school before they listed them on the programme and although it deduced that ginger men do worse than ginger women, which I would agree with, it did open Ady’s eyes at least to the fact that being ginger is something that imediately marks you out as different from other people and effects the way you are treated and therefore the way you act. I wouldn’t say I was bullied particularly for being ginger but I was always aware I was physically different and it was something remarked on from as early as I can remember as a child. Every time I go to a hairdressers I get at least one comment on my hair colour and now in my current phase of enjoying being different I am quite happy with my hair I am still aware that it is my biggest defining physical feature and gives people an expectation of my temprament before they even know me (which I appreciate is the case with blondes and even brunettes to a point but perhaps because those hair colours are more common – and less often natural – it is diluted more). Anyway, an interesting programme.