Living a LearningLife

Adults in conversation with children will often resort to this fail-safe question to make a connection with a child. Children usually have a quick and ready answer: An astronaut! A fireman! A pilot! A teacher! And so on. They call out their favorites without restraints, without hesitation. They see it and they believe it.
Can you remember longing for the grown-up day when you would magically become who and what you dreamed to be? For some people, things turned out exactly as believed; for others a new, different, and often surprising path was followed.
Whatever your path has been to now, do you find yourself coming full circle lamenting, "I don't know what I want to be when I grow up!"? You are not alone. In my work as a coach, I hear it often. I've been in that place myself.
Read this and other posts at Donna's LearningLife expert blog, Thresholds...

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Tips and tricks for getting started on Facebook, LinkedIn, and more....

In the last couple of years, social networking Web sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter have become almost as ubiquitous an accessory as a cell phone or a computer. A sizeable proportion of Gen X and Millenials have a page (or two or three)--some estimates say nearly 90 percent of college students maintain at least one page--but what about baby boomers? Is social networking "just for kids," or are people over 40 adopting the technology as well?

A recent report from Forrester Research indicates that baby boomers are more technically savvy than might be popularly believed. According to the study, more than 60 percent of boomers are using social media like blogs, forums, podcasts, and online videos. And one-third of adult Internet users have a profile on a social networking site, up from 8 percent in 2005 (according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project).

Sometimes, it seems that everyone, from individuals still in the corporate world to retired grandparents, is going online. Heck, even nonagenarian actor and academy award winner Kirk Douglas has his own MySpace page to keep in touch with fans and family alike. (He's a Sagittarius, by the way.)

Continue reading "Navigating the world of online networking" »

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Navigating major transitions, especially in the second half of life, can be difficult, but it can also be joyful and rewarding. If we see transition as such, our journeys become positive and purposeful, offering time for review, rediscovery, retooling, and re-emergence.

Enter LearningLife's Transition Workshop series, which kicks off on October 17.

Transition Workshops are designed to help participants prepare for the next stage of life by allowing them to take a step back, rekindle their sense of purpose, make new connections, explore options, move toward meaningful "encore" work, and embrace community engagement.

These half-day workshops feature lively interaction with a community of learners, presentations from outstanding experts, and practical strategies and tools attendees can employ in their own lives.

Continue reading "Fall Transition Workshops get underway!" »

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Tours open in late August on the St. Paul campus

For as long as people have been building homes, the sun has played a role in design and architecture. Yet even today, in our ever-growing "green conscious" society, only a fraction of buildings make use of solar energy for power needs.

Now, a team of University of Minnesota students, faculty and alumni is working to make solar technology more accessible for the average Minnesota homeowner.

They are building an entirely solar-powered house that's especially designed for the Minnesota climate, and hope that Minnesotans can take away a few tips and tricks for their own homes.

Continue reading "U's ICON solar house: a model for Minnesotan "green" living" »

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Imagine an epidemic that kills more than 300,000 Americans a year. A disease that affects more than 65 percent of the population, and whose incidence among children has tripled in the last three decades. One in which the health-related complications are greater than those of poverty, smoking, and alcoholism, and indirect costs include everything from rising insurance rates and lost work hours to a bump in airfare prices.

It isn't cancer or HIV; it's obesity. And it's a problem that is so multifaceted, with so many contributing factors, that some people have likened it to the crisis in the Middle East in terms of complexity of causes and possible solutions.

"The issue of obesity in our society is one of tremendous complexity," says Dr. Allen Levine. "There is a network of complicated forces interacting, and it's difficult to say any one of them is the root 'cause.' Biology, psychology, society, the government...they all play a role. It isn't as simple as 'nature or nurture.'"

Continue reading "What's making America fat?" »

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