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Upcoming Lectures
Sunday evening, November 2, 2008
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Friday, November 28, 2008 (full day seminar) 22 October, 2008Dear students and colleagues, I hope this finds you all well, continuing to progress with your own life’s goals. I am writing from home in Australia after what now seems a long absence from the website updates. It is not that there has been a lack of activities to report, yet being suspended in the middle of long projects has left me often feeling that reporting is premature. I have continued exploring many different aspects of adult learning and achievement. There is much to talk about now. First a bit of a catch up followed by some events that might interest you. Although I did write in March ‘07 before heading off for my first motorcycle adventure in Turkey, I have to go back to August ‘05 for this update. Only now can I connect the dots between the work events that began at that time, culminating in some startling new levels clarity about adult learning. In August ‘05 I completed my project work with the Parelli Horsemanship organisation and was free to pursue any project that took my imagination. One of the persistent cultural ideas that forever troubled me was the belief that children learn faster and better than do adults. I began to engage in new learning activities with my mind firmly set on comparing the strategies, methods and experience of learning in childhood to that of the adult. I launched myself head first into learning adventures in which I had no prior experience and that were considered to be best done when one was young. Activities that if an adult should attempt will almost always be met with skepticism and limitations attributed to the factor of age. I headed to Italy to explore the nature of learning a 2nd language. In between I attended several motorcycling courses and then took those skills on some very big Steffi adventures. Since returning home I've entered the world of Latin Dance. I have uncovered more layers of the mythology that limit what adults will choose to do, that affect how teachers approach adult students, and most importantly that affect how an adult interprets their experience, specifically as a learner, and in general life as an adult. I have also teased out distinct advantages of learning as an adult enabling far faster and more efficient results than those seen in childhood. What can we realistically expect of ourselves as we get older? Now I am wanting to talk about those discoveries. What’s happening next? Most significantly is that I feel refreshed and am ready to begin teaching again. I began with a lecture on the findings of this new work last week with a fun group of adults in Raymond Terrace north of Newcastle. I will be lecturing next in Braidwood, NSW (an hour from Canberra and Gouldburn on the Kings Hwy) on Sunday evening, November 2nd. Attached is a pdf file with details. Following that I will be in Sydney to lecture in two special events sponsored by Allan Parker of Peak Performance. On November 27th, I will share the stage with 3 other top International speakers. One of those is Marvin Oka with whom I arrived in Australia in 1987 and was the co-creator of the Discover Camp for teens. On the following day, November 28th, I will conduct a full one day seminar on adult learning managing information overload including all the new insights gathered over these past 3 years of research. For information about these events please visit: www.peakpd.com/workshops_exceptional_event.html I will also present at the NSAA (National Speakers Assoc) conference in March ‘09 and other special industry events. As I have news and dates about other events I will contact you via email. I would very much like to catch up again with those of you I haven’t seen in recent years. Online news My online courses continue to run with participants from around the world. Both my own courses, such as, the Labyrinth and those courses we designed for clients continue to be used with near 100% completion rates and outstanding learning results. Since the completion of the Intercontinental Hotels program I have not been involved in a new project. But I am still very interested in helping to apply my online teaching methods of suitable programs. Corporations and schools only need make contact to learn more. The final Labyrinth program of '08 will start on November 17th (enrolment deadline November 13th, AEST). If you’ve yet to do this course you can learn more at www.stephanieburns.com. In closing Again, apologies for my absence. I am always available via email and through the Visitor’s Book at the website. I thoroughly enjoy your emails and our continued contact. I will place this email on my personal news page. I have set aside time in early December to write a more detailed story about my adventures and will post photos on that page at that time. Being back home and settled in to write and prepare for new teaching events I imagine it will be much easier to stay in touch. Best regards, Stef
Dr. Stephanie Burns
THE WEBSITE AND ONLINE COURSES It will soon be 7 years since the stephanieburns.com website went live. The night of the Opening Ceremony for the 2000 Olympic Games was the date to be exact. It was still another year before I did the first events in an attempt to construct a viable online learning method and 3 years before I began producing programs for other clients. I asked Pam Potter to gather together for this email a few statistics. And, remember, of those who start we still have 98% completion of every course. Brisbane City Council has now run 136 courses with somewhere on the order of 3400 participants. These courses cover Career Management, Corporate Orientation, Recruitment and Selection, Change Management, Project Management, Self-Marketing and Getting Organised. The Recruitment and Selection program alone has had 401 participants since 2004. Brisbane City Council is now on-selling the use of these popular courses to other organisations. You can find out more about this by writing to Pam at pam@stephanieburns.com Sinclair Knight Merz’s course on Environmental Health and Safety, a compliance course, has now had 4,523 participants and completions. And, most interesting about this course is that it is “self-facilitated” by the participants from start to finish. The Labyrinth has been a bit harder to count only because I manage it!! Best assessment from Shane (webmaster) and Pam (manager) is that we’ve now conducted 69 courses with somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1500 participants. The next program begins in May and is nearly subscribed. You can always find out the next dates at the website by following the “online courses” link. Beyond this we have run The Great Ride, Storyteller, Driving the Bus, The Writer’s Table, the Commonwealth Bank Internet Literacy Program, a program for the NAB, Via Voice and others. Shane’s estimate is that we are closing in on 11,000 students in all. AND, likely the biggest one is still on the way. This will be the Total Quality Management course for the employees of Intercontinental Hotels with over 3,700 hotels worldwide. Pam Potter is spending a week in Phuket, Thailand to capture the current face-to-face course, with IHG personnel, and will then begin the writing of the program.
On the website the visitor’s book continues to grow and I really appreciate the acknowledgements. I very much appreciate those entries that help others to see how the work is being used to produce results in every area of work and life.
I asked, and Pam Potter has provided, an update on her son Baxter’s progress using the Move Closer strategies (from the book) in his frightening process of learning to swim. It is a great piece that might lead many of you in new and creative ways to use the books’ contents. In the Articles section of the site you will find Pam’s newest article. If you’ve not seen Part 1 of the article written 18 months ago, you might like to read that first. VISITOR'S BOOK If you haven't already dropped in a note please visit and I very much like to hear from everyone who is using the site. It has so many different meanings for different people. It helps me to plan for new features and appropriate updates when I get information about the careers and aspirations of those visiting. Do make an entry. NOTIFICATION LIST Add my name to the notify email list Everyone added to my notify list will receive email notification on the day the new status report is issued. These reports provide a full update on new features and projects related to this site.
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