Free
Yes, the course is free! You read that right. Not only free, but created by a renowned Permaculture Teacher, Andrew Millison and with the resources and support of Oregon State University. What does that mean? And why is that important? Let’s first talk about the concept of free. Sounds good, right? But we are living in a day and age where I feel that we, as a society, are deeply divided in our approach to life.
- There are those who only give value to anything if it was very expensive. If that is you, free doesn’t sound good. Well, you would be missing out, but go right ahead and take and pay for one of the many excellent courses offered throughout the world, including by Oregon State University.
- There are those who have taken advantage of a free offer only to find that they didn’t get much besides a massive sales pitch. This is not the case with this course.
- There are those who believe in sharing knowledge and creating open source platforms to expand and promote the exploration of a given topic. They believe that the development of an idea and finding solutions to any given problem is expedited by tapping into many brilliant minds. This is one of the benefits of this course.
- Finally, there are those who believe that providing excellent learning resources free to the general public has many positive effects. Universities all over the world have started to offer MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) to provide University level education to anyone with no regard to prior education, financial status or location in the world – as long as there is Internet access. Of course, one of the hopes is to find future full time students, but another hope is to enrich the lives of all participants. This course falls squarely into this category.
After taking the course, this student applied her knowledge
A 10/10/100 challenge project. Reuse and transform.
Permaculture
What is Permaculture and why should I learn it? Good question. A question which might yield different answers depending who you ask. Some will say it is Permanent Agriculture, others that it is a design system which can be applied to any situation. Some will say that it is a life style choice based on guiding ethics and principals, others that it is to be in tune with nature. Permaculture, in my opinion, is really all of that. Bill Mollison, the co-founder of Permaculture just passed away and I really like one headline in the news describing Bill’s lifework:
“A Revolution disguised as Organic Gardening.”
A project for the community
Another community project
The Course
The Free Online Permaculture Course offered is an Introduction, not the standard 72 hour certificate course. But don’t be fooled. The 16 hour worth of presentations are packed and covering all the aspects of a typical course, from learning about the ethics to recognizing patterns, from understanding design principals to the particular needs of different climates. That is pretty good
Using cardboard as a weed barrier
for investing just 4 hours a week for 4 weeks. However, if you really want to get a extensive understanding of this topic, Andrew provides many links and resources. There are assignments to deepen the learning, quizzes to check the understanding of the material and if all is completed, a certificate of completion.
Now is a good time to click this link and sign up for this free course.
All pictures throughout the post are by students of the last course who took the 10/10/100 challenge issued via a Facebook group. The screenshots are provided by Andrew Millison.
We just published a podcast with Andrew Millison regarding the upcoming free Permaculture course. Have a listen here:
http://184.154.247.208/~sustajo7/961-2/
For more information, listen to our podcast introducing the first course here.
And a previous blog post.
