Tsolife/framework

From Travelling School of Life

This document consists still of many headword that need to be written out!

Framework

Questions answered in this document:
How does the network TsoLife look like and function?
How does the education in TsoLife look like and function?

1. Framework for organizing tsolife (formal structure): meetings, website, communication. decision making. Finanzing. Documentation (making it visible, funding, accreditation): history book etc.

2. Framework for learning (in general): action learning path, curriculum, mentor, study group, reflection meetings, diary / folder (making it visible and conscious individually), students' community, Opening Course, accreditation

3. Framework for the modules (details of learning): types of modules, daily schedule, exchange, sharing circles,...

1. Framework for tsolife network – structure and organisation

Network for exchanging skills and experiences.
From hosts to students, from students to students, from hosts to hosts, and from students to hosts. creating trust in the network.

In order to create community and trust and a functioning network:
how to get in? Always through personal contact! Essential! Only so you can pass on the spirit. Not just by writing. -> before you can come in and start changing things in the structure, you have to have had personal contact with someone who's in. Then you have to join the next possible meeting (Opening Course for students; host meeting or TSoLife orga-meeting for hosts).

Students:
Opening Course

hosts:
host meeting (orga meetings) or students visiting their place, telling them about tsolife.

Furthermore:
getting to know each other. Personal presentation on internet. Take part in meetings.

For communication and sharing:

• what's going on (visibility): history book and website.
• Toolbox passed on from students to students
• meetings (tsolife design meetings, host meetings, students meetings, big meetings,...)
• TsoLife is a living network, with real personal contact! Therefor we come together whenever possible.
• hostmeetings
• Website/wiki
• modules offered; also a tool for communication and creating trust (-> openness, personal presentations,..); tool for creating and designing tsolife, organising meetings, working on texts, etc.
• fundraising

evaluation:
evaluating and documenting what happens is important for the development of tsolife. documentation is important for the development of TsoLife and possible future accreditation. Both students and hosts please keep track of what's happening, type it into the wiki.

2. Framework for the individual learning process

Opening Course:
Students get into thinking about 'community and ecovillages', what do I want to learn, how can a gorup organize itself, what does it mean to be a student of tsolife, ...

curriculum / action learning path:
make your own curriculum. the curriculum is like a contract between you, your mentor and your learning group. you do some modules and your final project, make a documentation and out of them your folder.

mentor:
Each student has a mentor who helps to get on with the curriculum. They are in regular contact, and the student reports back how he is proceeding.

Reflection / learning group:
Each student chooses some partners (1-4) to be in regular contact in order to reflect about the learning progress and exchange ideas. this learning group helps you to focus your aim.

modules:
A module is a building blocks in the personal curriculum. Some offered by hosts, some just made by students. How long such a module is, depends on the offerings of the hosts and from the needs of the travellers. Tsolife education consits of what hosts offer, but also what students learn outside the hosts, in the group, or by themselves. There can be offered a variety of different types of modules within one learning module. Content, methods (module-type) and timetables depends on what the host can offer and what fits to their needs. see Types of modules.

TSOLife diary:
In the diary, the students keep track of their learning progress. Writing down things also requires some reflecting and helps to deepen the learning. website

3. Framework for the modules

For types of modules & daily schedule of a TSoLife activity see Types of modules. Basic ingredients of each module (=each TSoLife activity) are:

Evaluation/feedback of hosts:
After a stay at a host, there is an evaluation talk with the people that have been working with the student in order to give feedback on how they see his/her learning progress.

Feedback/critizism of other students:
Others can tell you things about yourself that you may not see yourself. It can be feedback on skills or the learning progress, or on how other perceive you. In TSoLife students are trained to give direct feedback during the day, in evening circles or during group time activities dedicated to giving feedback.

Open and honest communication/direct feedback:
some exampels??

use TsoLife history book:
There is one in every host place. It’s for letting others (who come after you) see what was going on here with TsoLife before… Someone, maybe the reporter of the day, takes care of it.

The complete picture - summary

Students take part in Opening Course where they get introduced to what the Travelling School of Life is and how it works. They become part of the learning community and get prepared for their travel and for visiting ecovillages, community projects or other kinds of hosts. Then they start travelling as 'student without learning plan' or 'student with learning plan'.

'Students without learning plan' take time to look around, get some idea of possibilities and get more integrated in the 'community' of travelling students of life.

'Students with learning plan' have a clear idea of what they want to learn. They find a mentor and a learning partner, make their curriculum and choose their modules. Then they start their 'action learning path', travelling alone or in groups, doing different modules in different places, meeting other students from time to time at hosts doing the same module. They arrange regular 'students reflecting meetings' for sharing experiences. They will notice that they do not only learn things they had planned, but also things they hadn't expected. And they will immediately use their knowledge in own practical projects and pass on what they learned to other students, in order to deepen their understanding.

Interaction of students and hosts

The 'students' of Travelling School of Life are people who are interested in creating their personal education, learning what and how they choose to learn. The contents cover a broad range of topics, many of them you cannot learn in 'traditional' educational paths (formations, university, ...). In Travelling School of Life, you learn in and from real life – learning is not seperated from the rest of life! Rather, you make yourself more and more aware of what you are actually learning all day long... things you planned to learn and things you didn't plan to learn...
The students are part of a growing 'community', which is the community of TsoLife students, spread over Europe, getting to know one another better and better, even though not everyone knows everyone personally. They meet and do things together, travel sometimes in small groups, sometimes alone, and help spreading the idea of TsoLife and passing on experiences to the always 'next generation' of newcoming students. They are developing 'traditions' and a growing box of tools for working with groups/organizing oneself as a group that they pass on to one another.

The 'hosts' of the Travelling School of Life are people and places that offer the space and conditions for students to learn- be it resources like books and internet, people with specific skills and knowledge, workshops or work places where it is possible to learn by doing.
These resources can be used by the students in exchange of 'energy' in different forms, involving as little financial costs as possible. TSoLife is about low budget learning in order to make it possible for many young people to take part. Therefore, we hope to deal with as little exchange of money as possible – before using money, we try to exchange different kinds of energy (work, help, time, skills, ...). The detailed conditions for students visiting and learning at hosts have to be agreed on between host and student(s) in each case individually. Some hosts may offer modules with a specific date, topic and group size for people to come; other may just offer the possibility for one student to come and stay for a while, taking part in the daily life of the host and learning from there. Sometimes students will have to pay for food and accomodation, and help with work in exchange for receiving workshops, or learn by helping with a specific kind of work; sometimes they may live there in exchange for work; sometimes they may pay a small amount for using material; etc. A special opportunity for a host of TSoLife is the possibility to get a lot of work done with fun by a group of TSoLife students and benefit in several ways: They can get groups of people who are relatively self-organized and can manage to do quite some work, compared to single visitors or to groups who need a lot of 'taking care of them'. The hope is (we are still trying.. with some first, good results!) that a group of students of TSoLife can visit a host, and the host only needs to take care of organizing and explaining the work. The group can take care about all their social processes themselves, solve their conflicts, make their free-time program, etc.

A student, or group of student, can visit a host that is already part of the network; or find new places through their own initiative and get them involved. Some students may prefer to travel around without a concrete plan, joining different modules organized by hosts; others may have a very clear plan of what they want to learn and explicitly look for places where they can learn exactly this.