very nice

I’m with you on this Shannon, the community is most important, but they have a symbiotic relationship. Neither works without the other. A community without the support of a classroom would still work, but it also is not easy for someone to come back and expand their knowledge about a particular part. For example I teach CAD system and the classroom zone fundamental for people to come back and watch Technical movies again and again. The classroom doesn’t work without the community. The classroom is static in many cases, where the community is dynamic. The way it works for me is that a conversation can be had in the community but then it pointed to the classroom for more detailed and technical information. The classroom also provides a structure for people to refresh their knowledge or to search for their answers. I have tried posting long answers in the community, but I think it works better if I answer the question with a short movie.

Hi, I'm Jonathon Pickup. I'm married to my childhood sweetheart and we have four children. Two boys and two girls. Most of them have left home but one is still here! I'm trained as an architect and I've practice architecture in New Zealand and in the UK. In the late 1980s I travel to the UK and I worked there for about 8 1/2 years working on some really cool projects. I returned to New Zealand in late 1990s and set up my training company teaching this CAD program called Vectorworks. I've been teaching this program for over 30 years now and it's been good because every year when it develops I have to learn just a little bit more rather than having to learn everything from the beginning. Outside work, most of my work is outside work! But really I started my business as a hobby so I really enjoy doing it. I did get a full-time job at a local Polytechnic teaching the diploma architectural technology, and I looked for other hobbies but I came back to my teaching and my website because to me there are fun hobby that returns money. Outside work I love riding my motorbike. It's called a scooter but it's fast enough to go on the highway, easily achieving 70 miles an hour. Every year three of us go on an extended holiday where we will ride for three or four days staying in camping grounds and just having fun being on our motorbikes together. I'm not sure what is surprising about me because I don't think I do anything that surprising. I think my clients might say that I'm approachable, that I'm humble, but you have to ask them because to me I'm just me. I started teaching a kid program because I really wanted to help people to understand and how to use it. When I was teaching at the local Polytechnic, I wanted to help the students understand not just architecture but also how to behave in the world. I'm thinking about starting a community focused on digital literacy because I saw so many of the students struggle with really basic computer stuff. Of course they also also struggled with trigonometry, but I'm not sure I want to teach too much of that.

@Shannon Boyer I'm in Napier, I should be on the Map! I taught at Eastern Institute of Technology and now I’m marking assessments for the Open Polytechnic of NZ. I do like living in NZ. The motor bike rides take us on as many back roads as we can find.