PDC teaching materials
As of 15 Jan 2015, all the PowerPoint presentations are now available on Google Drive. See PDC 1 page for more info about our first Permaculture Design Certificate course.
The set of PowerPoints saved in Google Drive were used during the first PDC organised by Sugarloaf Permaculture. Dylan Graves was the primary presenter and during preparation made use of notes from Cam Wilson (of http://earthintegral.com/) and some PowerPoints from Christian Shearer (of www.panyaproject.org and www.terra-genesis.com) as well as various other resources collected online over the past few years. Of course, the Designer’s Manual was used extensively as well (usually one chapter per Day). Apologies for anyone not explicitly credited - often I do not know the source myself or used Google Images and lack of time prohibited referencing every image. If your work has been used and you’d like to be credited, please let me know and I will add you here.
These PowerPoints are made freely available in good faith. This means that they are used in accordance with the 3 Permaculture ethics. If you do hold a Permaculture course, please do your best to make it affordable and offer places for people who have the desire but not the financial support. Financial limitation should not be a barrier to Permaculture Education!
If you do not intend to teach Permaculture, you are still welcome to go through the presentations and learn something new. Hopefully they will lead you to much further research and knowledge acquisition (remember to put it into use by DO-ing).
If you find these resources useful enough to feel the urge to donate money in their honour, please have a look at www.wethetrees.com and support an interesting project on there! Thank you for your love.
Style of presentations (for Permaculture presenters/teachers):
After many years of teaching secondary school, I have found delivering content to students effective using PowerPoint presentations. I applied this in the PDC so that students have a resource to refer back to later and so that the sessions would run smoothly (and no notes are printed out and given to students, old cardboard is reused for posters and the like [demonstrating ethics by example was our aim]). This presentation method allows for flexible delivery - the important content is on screen with supporting graphics and videos, but is added one point at a time. This means the presenter can add more if relevant and it is broken up with numerous student activities (indicated in purple, sometimes subtle I realise). Students do not have to take notes unless extra information is added (which often comes from other students). Of course, a whiteboard/chalkboard is useful and can be used at any point as well. If time is running short, slides can be skipped (students can go back over them in their own time) or points delivered at a faster rate. If students do miss a Day or have to arrive late, leave early, they can review the emailed presentations and catch themselves up before the next Day. Some sessions had their own presentation, others were for 2 to 4 sessions. No presentation means there was a practical session (see web link below).
Timing:
Refer to http://sugarloafpermaculture.net/permaculture-design-certificate-pdc for how sessions and Days were arranged.
Teacher tips have been added in the Notes (the box at the bottom under the slides when in editing view). Sometimes references are included there too as is extra information. Most Activities are also explained in the Notes.
Text in green in any presentation is usually near an activity and are the results of the activity (coming from the students) - sometimes added during the presentation as it happens or more often added at the end of the Day before being emailed to students.
Guest presenters:
The presentations they provided have mostly been left as they provided them. Ther permission has been given for them to be published online to the public. We were hoping for more guest presenters, but it seems people are too busy these days! They were all locals and all except two have done PDC certificates. One is an experienced organic farmer and the other was a student of the course who attended Elaine Ingham’s compost tea course during the PDC and agreed to sharing her knowledge (which she did very well). A note here: I try not to be the teacher; rather I present material and provide opportunities for learning exchange. All course attendees have much knowledge and experience to offer (often without knowing it). The times when the students taught each other, I could sit back and learn too!
Homework activities provide further opportunities for students to research and share knowledge - I tried to set high expectations early on and reiterated the point that most homework becomes a shared resource for all to make use of.
Resource use:
If you want to modify the PowerPoints to change the colour scheme, background, etc you are welcome to. When in PowerPoint, get to Master slide (click View > Slide Master), select the ‘Title and content layout’ on left hand side. In centre of screen click on objects as needed. When you click the red Close Master View button, your changes should be reflected on all the slides. The background image on right hand side can be removed/changed by clicking on PDC Template Slide Master on left hand side, then clicking on the background image. Hopefully you know how to do this or can follow these steps. If you have a different version of Office then search for Help online (keywords are still Master Slide).
(1 Feb 2015): Found this great resource about/of the Designer's Manual: