permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

On 9/3/2011 3:15 AM, Robyn Francis wrote:
> APT is the Accredited Permaculture Training system here in Australia. In Oz
> there's a national accreditation system for vocational training and
> qualifications (e.g. Trade certificates and diplomas) We have permaculture
> qualifications and vocational training which has been going since 2003. PT
> is owned by the Australian pc community via Permaculture International Ltd.

Excellent! Great work you all have done. We need this here in the 
USA...NOW. I am glad to learn about this. Much discussion has unfolded 
in this forum about maintaining the standards that represent 
permaculture, how it is taught and who can teach it. I hope that those 
who see this as important are still working to define, document
and maintain those all important standards. You hear the questions: what 
is permaculture, what is real permaculture, how do I practice it and how 
do I know I am doing it right. A heirarchy of professionals from all 
countries could contribute content for a standards document.
This would help expand the movement. Anyone, for that matter, could 
contribute material within a peer review environment and an editorial 
committee could select from this body of information or grass roots 
knowledgebase, material to go into the final document, ultimately, a 
work in progress.

I have been very interested in this sort of thing for years, now more 
than ever. It is fascinating to create essays on various topics that 
relate to the study and practice of permaculture. In this context, 
Permaculture provides a very comfortable vehicle to use in developing 
one's ideas, methods and concepts, especially knowing that you are 
adding value to a comprehensive global knowledgebase that is shared with 
others. I regularly add material to my garden tool sourcelist and 
biointensive gardening guide in the hopes that it will be used in this way.

> The APT lower certificates (I&  II) are more suited to secondary school and
> community education, whereas the Certificates III, IV and Diploma are geared
> towards training professional permaculture practitioners in all fields of
> permaculture work.
>
> Vocational qualifications differ from university degrees in that they are
> competency-based learning with equal emphasis on practical application,
> skills and knowledge.

Here we have commercial trade schools, state-supported community 
colleges (one per county), extension education offered by universities
plus online courses.

> There's info about APT at
> http://www.permacultureaustralia.org.au/category/permaculture-australia/apt/
> There's also useful info on the Cert III, IV and Diploma programs here at
> PCA (Djanbung Gardens)
> http://permaculture.com.au/online/accredited-training/accredited-training
> Also some of our FAQs might be helpful
>
> Am most happy to discuss APT generally on this list, however when its gets
> down to nitty gritty stuff for a dedicated group and working committee to
> communicate then a means of exchange independent of a public forum is the
> appropriate way to go.

Sounds good but don't forget that you have a 930+ person audience here 
with plenty of potential for useful discussion plus folks that want to 
know about APT, many of whom may become professionally involved. It is 
super important for this to be adopted here in the USA.

Let the talk flow...here and elsewhere. Please announce any APT forum
you create here. BTW, I would recommend Google's resources since Google+ 
is now amongst us :-) Google resources include:
- GMail (email)
- Discussion Groups (Google Groups)
- Sites (Google Sites)
- Custom search engines; useful! and in ways some may not have thought 
of. Ex:
create a Thunderbird folder and fill it with carefully selected email 
messages; upload it to a website and run mhonarc or hypermail on it to 
create an indexed, sortable web archive of messages - create a number of 
these (like, especially good discussions of edge zones, raised beds, 
berming and swales, remineralization, soil biology, nutrient balancing 
for optimal plant growth, etc.)  and include just links to those 
individual webarchives in a CSE; then create multiple CSE's; add them to 
Google docs, blogs, websites. The possibilities are endless; just what 
you need to create a permaculture standards document; collaborative 
group work.
- Blog (Blogger)
- Google Docs
- Buzz
- Google+ - I am now using and developing resources in that environment. 
It is way far and beyond anything Facebook will ever accomplish, at 
least as far as the needs of content-oriented people are concerned.
- interlinking of all the above, expertly

Would anyone like a Google+ invitation? There are already a number of 
permies involved there.

LL