Year: 2010

George Siemens and I are putting the final touches on a doctoral and faculty seminar that TEKRI (at Athabasca University) is sponsoring here in Edmonton at the end of June. The seminar features presentations by Athabasca faculty – including George,  Kinshuk, Jon Dron, Dragan Gasevic, myself and special guests Allison Littlejohn Stephen Downes and others. The seminar runs for five days (June 21-25) and features social excursions around Edmonton each evening. For details see the seminar site at https://tekri.athabascau.ca/dr_seminar/ or the seminar poster at Doctoral Seminar poster

The seminar is designed for graduate students and faculty interested in an indepth look at social networking research in education from ed tech and information science perspectives. There is still room and time to register, so please consider coming to Edmonton- it actually is a beautiful city and the solstice summer evenings are wonderful. Also I would be grateful if you would forward or post the poster to colleagues!

Thanks

Terry

I just returned from 10 great days in New Zealand, knocking off a couple of keynotes (Distance Education Assoc of New Zealand and Moodlemoot) and two very fine visits and talks at Massey and Otago universites). Like most visitors I was impressed by the scenery, hospitality, friendliness and strange pronunciations (I couldn’t get used to being called Teary).

A highlight was learning about  Ako Aotearoa (Maori for teaching/learning in New Zealand) the National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence.

I encourage all readers to spend a few minutes on the Ako Aotearoa web site where you will be rewarded with a host of features, resources and ideas including:

Resources: These include reports listed by topic and by discipline. Many of these were commissioned by Ako Aotearoa and written by New Zealand authors. I found the recent Taking The Lead: Strategic Management for e-Learning of particular interest and value for all of us trying to get our heads around the business of e-learning in educational institutions.

Projects: Funding for small scale research and development projects is critical to stimulate innovators and early adopters to explore and define effective use of new technologies and pedagogies. This area also lists calls for and results of small-medium sized ($10-100,00) research projects.

Communities Though the e-learning forum doesn’t seem overly active, the opportunity to ask questions, voice concerns and other ways communicate with colleagues in the development of a network of practice is critically important for real change.

Awards Ako funds National Excellence in Tertiary teaching award competition with individual awards up to $30,000 (OK, they are New Zealand dollars but still….)

Regional Hub Activities Though by Canadian standards, New Zealand is a small country, they still recognize regional differences and thus support staff and activities in three regional hub cities.

Maori teaching Hub Maori language, culture and opportunities permeate New Zealand popular and institutional culture in much more visible and profound ways than we see First Nations influence in Canada. This is reflected in a set of resources for teachers from Maori background.

Good Practice E-Book. Ako funds post-secondary faculty members $3,000 each to compose 2,000 word good practice chapters on a host of topics relevant to teaching and learning in tertiary education. The results are a very impressive e-book with 30 chapters online  and still growing.

As you will see after a few fruitful moments on this website, New Zealand is doing a great job of supporting the development of high quality teaching and learning in tertiary education. By contrast in Canada we have no National support for teaching and learning at any level and none of the provinces come close to matching the resources and services available in New Zealand. Ako Aotearoa’s 2008 Annual report lists a budget of $4,729,000 (approx. $3.2 million Canadian) for all of the services noted above. One can contrast this with the ill fated Canada Council on Learning (CCL) which was allocated $85 million (though I understand they even failed to spend it all! ) before loosing further support from the Conservative government. Admittedly, CCL’s mandate was much broader than tertiary education, but there accomplishments, as measured by New Zealand standards were much less.

I only hope we can learn from New Zealand and manage to devise a strategy, rather than the current tragedy, to leverage the ingenuity, technology and resources of Canadian higher edcuation system to not just compete but really lead globally in the critical function of lifelong learning for the 21st Century.

I’m sitting at the Wellington Airport 3/4 through the visit and 4 keynote speeches on a whirlwind trip to New Zealand. In the lounge copy of Australia’s New Scientist magazine (Vol 206 no 2757)  I am reading a fascinating article about brain activity when engaged in prayer. Now first I should say that I don’t think many listeners to my talks are engaged in deep prayer (unless in hope that the end of the speech comes quickly) but the article identified parts of the subjects’ brains (using MNR technology) that are associated with skepticism, seem to shut down when they listened to the prayers of what they  believed were spoken by esteemed “healers”. The effect did not appear when the subjects were told that the prayers were being spoken by non believers or ordinary (non healing) Christians. It seems that people’s expectations of profound insight allowed their normal sense of critical appraisal to be shut down.

Now why I mention this is that the introductions to myself and my work before these speeches are often very flattering (and occasionally slightly embarrassing) in their complementary content. I know that the truth is often the first victim, when you are introduced by a friend, but I realize now, that perhaps some of the kind words I received after these talks, arise because peoples critical thinking capacity is reduced by the fervor of the expectation set by the introduction.

All of which leads me to advise readers to remember that all truth is relative and contextual and to be advised to not take anything for absolute truth from snake oil salesmen, Goldman Sachs executives, preachers, or distance education keynote speakers – it may just be your brain shutting down!