Linda Hartley

Originally from Scotland, I’ve lived in lots of places in the UK and now live in London with my partner Andy Roberts. I teach in further education a couple of days a week, write for some blogs, write articles for various on and off line publications. I’m interested in informal learning and the use of web based services. I write a bit of fiction sometimes too.

I just kind of fell out of ‘work’ and into doing bits and bobs of other things that sometimes bring in money. I’d not had much of a career as such. Long ago I trained as a teacher, read Illich in my final year and never completed! Ran away to work in an adventure playground, convinced that children learned better away from formal structures.

Then I was a (not very good!) corporate & then an academic wife for a long time. I’m kind of old, female people sometimes still did that then I’ve spent most of my life doing low paid work, childcare, then child-minding, then being a paid teaching assistant in a school.

The school was good, they tried hard for the kids. I learned not all schools were like the ones I trained in long ago.

A few years later I did a workplace based, online, experimental degree in Learning, Technology & Research with something called Ultraversity. It’s a real UK degree but it was done 100% online. It was the brainchild of Prof Stephen Heppell and at first it was truly innovative. Lots of first person action research, lots of reflection, lots of informal learning, lots of blogs, wikis etc.It still exists but sadly now it has mostly been swallowed up by Anglia Ruskin University and it’s much less innovative.

What else? I like macs not pcs, love to travel, take lots of photos, write a bit of fiction and very occasionally poetry. Anyhoo – that’s me. Scraping a living, doing all sorts of bits and still believing pretty much what I did when I was 19, all those years ago.