Went to the Learning Futures conference at work today. Mainly interesting and will be blogging it for the work blog, but won't bore you here.

One of the talks was of interest to anyone who's intrigued by how learning happens.

Professor Mitra talked about his "hole in the wall" experiments where he put a computer and touch pad into the wall in a slum in India to see what would happen. The initial experiment was done in 1999 and has been repeated many times since. The computer showed the alta vista search engine, and basically within a few hours of the computer being installed, a local lad of about 12 had figured out how to browse despite never having used a computer nor being able to speak/read english.

A later experiment, using the same concept, in a remote village where no-one could speak english, showed that within three months the local children had taught themselves english in order to use the computer. It's all pretty amazing!

So, with all the usual resolution posts around, I've been musing on my aims for 2008.

1) Stabilise my Health
This basically means slowing down, then finding and accepting my current limitaions. Also, to keep going with the relaxation and meditation techniques I've been trying, which help me get better quality rest.

2) Loose Weight
This wasn't going to be on the agenda until I'd stabilised, but I got a shock when I went shopping last week and found I'd gone up to a size 20. Not surprising given my inactivity and comfort eating in the last year. Carrying the extra weight around isn't going to help my general health, and I'm going for a slow, healthy eating type weight loss. As part of this I found myself signing up to the Spark website today, which seems to be a really good, free diet website that works along the lines of the Tesco diet site.

3) Spend time with, or keep in touch with, family & friends
Spending time with family should be helped by the fact that my sister and Mum are two of the victims, sorry, volunteers, who I will be using as part of my aromatherapy course. It's going to be harder to spend time with distant friends until I'm sure I can cope with weekends away, or with being hostess for a weekend... so I'll be trying to post more here instead.

4) Being Creative & Learning
This doesn't just mean comics, but Girly will be part of it. It will also be my aromatherapy course and creating new websites etc.

I've become a little obsessed with reading Zen Habits and Lifehack.org, so I'm taking some of their productivity advice and adapting it to my needs. Starting capturing all my "to do" thoughts into big To Do lists, so that they don't keep buzzing around my brain. Also, means I can pick a few things from the big list to put on my daily To Do list, and hopefully this will help me plan days that I can manage rather than trying to do too much at once.