Subject: Permaculture Training Online?

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1996 07:47:50 -0400

Do You Want Permaculture Programs On Line?

We've been answering many questions about permaculture and related topics
online, and we have become interested to learn if people would like a formal
offering. Please email us if you would consider participating in the
following.

1)  A permaculture correspondence course with an email classroom.  We have
had very little interest in the correspondence course we have offered for
well over a decade.  Partially this is because, besides making an information
sheet available, we never marketed it.  Because it a correspondence course
requires teaching one person on a custom basis, the price for the print
correspondence course is much higher than one that many people attend in
person.  By enrolling a number of people at once, and conducting lessons and
class discussion by email, we could enable people to take a certificate
permaculture design course of high quality for rather less than the
correspondence course. Moreover, it would be a simple matter to enable some
people to monitor the course (not for certification) at a lower fee.  The
course would mix email instructions with print media for maximum
effectiveness.  It would probably extend over a period of months to enable
people to participate without displacing their regular life activities.  Each
certificate student would prepare and submit a permaculture design for a real
place as a final exam.

2)  Permaculture design workshops can be scheduled according to the above
model.  Because students will be physically isolated, they will work on
individual designs, instead of in teams.  However, possibly teams set up to
toss around each others designs, rather like what is done in writers
workshops.

3)  A permaculture clinic could be set up.  In the clinic, we would help
people with specific problems, with various members contributing suggestions
and critiques.

4)  Advanced seminars for working permaculture teachers and designers.

The main limitation to all these approaches to permaculture training is that
we will not all walk the same site together, so we will not get the site
interpretation info.  Possibly that could be overcome by conducting a weekend
workshop on a design site and building longer design training and
instructions around that shared experience.  We will discuss that option with
people who say that they are interested.  

A second limitation is that we see no practical means to include our very
effective slide presentations. These are for sale as slide/script packages,
but there are too expensive for most people to use for their personal
education.

Please let us know if you are interested and share any other ideas or
feedback about these concepts, which are subject to improvement as ideas come
in.

For Mother Earth, Dan Hemenway, Yankee Permaculture Publications (since
1982), Elfin Permaculture workshops, lectures, Permaculture Design Courses,
consulting and permaculture designs (since 1981), and The Forest Ecosystem
Food Network.  [email-masked]  Copyright, Dan & Cynthia Hemenway, P.O.
Box 2052, Ocala FL 34478-2052 USA

If it's not in our food chain, we're not thinking.