New Horizons for Learning: Observation Deck, October 1998

From the Observation Deck

The last day of September was still Indian Summer here in Seattle. On October 1, autumn suddenly appeared accompanied by gray skies, cold winds, and light rain. I was off to an Island in Puget Sound for a retreat with a small group of people who will meet once each season to share ideas, discuss, reflect, and plan. We met in a hundred year-old, remodeled farm house surrounded by a hundred acres of forest and meadows, and there we began by contemplating Fall. I clustered some thoughts, and wrote:

As colors brighten, trees let go

And leaves fall

Leaving limbs to go dormant,

But not losing life.

New forms are taking shape--

The leaves had to fall

To let that happen.

New life comes from that letting go

Opening new possibilities for spring.

All of us involved in education think of fall as the beginning of a new year, and we arrive at our places of teaching and learning filled with new possibilities for our students. Even though I am no longer in a classroom, I still carry that feeling. We continue to add new possibilities in our virtual Building that we hope will be useful resources for you - and we're not going to wait until spring for them to take shape.

The most exciting addition is our new ExpandHorizons space for on-line courses, conferences, seminars, and dialogue.

I will be on-line the first week of every month beginning in November with a new topic to discuss with anyone who would like to participate. We continually receive questions which our participants throughout this country and others seem anxious to discuss, as we hear from you via e-mail. We will focus our discussions around one of these topics each time as we experiment with processes very different from the "chat room" format. You will also have opportunities to take part in on-line courses either as a registered student or freely accessing the course materials. And there will be a variety of ways to interact and dialogue with nationally recognized experts in different fields of learning.

We will continue to publish our Journal, but it will be issued on a quarterly basis. This is the first issue in the new format.

It's autumn. Happy New Year!

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