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What I did (am doing) this summer

Written by terrya
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What I did (am doing) this summer

I remember with unpleasant memories the task of having to write the “What I did this summer” essay in September every year of grade school. I thought I would pre-empt the pressure by getting it out of the way in early August!

I mostly wanted to share the scene (below) that I ‘ve been staring at every morning from the deck of my Father-in-laws cabin on Allen Lake, near Blind River, Ontario.

It is a wonderful place and though Telus mobility reached my wife Susan’s cell phone out on the end of the dock, I was blissfully unable to connect to either a phone or the net for a couple of weeks. But of course, I did peddle the 8K to the local pub when I really needed an Internet fix.

In this ‘blended holiday’ I did write a forward to an upcoming Networking book Exploring the Theory, Pedagogy and Practice of Networked Learning  (sigh, not Open access), prepare for an inotroduction to the keynote of Clark Quinn at the Madison conference, read a book on educational research (way too American) and another on chaos theory BUT  spent lots of time just reading fiction  (really enjoyed Joseph Boyden’s Through Black Spruce – Athabasca’s first ‘writer in virtual residence’) swimming and visting with new and old friends – including (of course, my wife and best friend Susan).

I’m now at the annual Madison Distance Learning and Teaching conference and looking forward to meeting a colleage and ex student Terumi Mitazoe from Japan. Terumi and I have published 3 articles, a book chapter and a co-authored a book, but have yet to meet F2F. She has expanded upon my “Equivalency Theory” and is creating a site with various studies that have validated the ideas in that early 2003 work  So Friday we present together this combined work.

Then my summer ends with 6 days of sailing off the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia. tough life…..

Distance Education, My Work, Personal

One Small Step for Athabasca

Written by terrya
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I participated in an interesting meeting of the Athabasca University Academic Council (our senate equivalent) this morning and the most contentious item concerned our option for ‘challenge for credit” alternative, that is offered in most of our undergraduate programs.
By way of background, Athabasca undergrad programs are offered as continuous enrollment and mostly self study programs that follow the old correspondence model. We offer support from an individual tutor, a study guide (that roughly serves as an interpretation of the study materials), a FEW interactive options (little used) via Moodle and a course pack that typically consists of a reading package and a text or two.  Students are given 6 months (can be extended with $$$ to a year), as much access (phone and email) as they want to an assigned  tutor, tutor marked assignments and an invigilated exam. We have recently been offering ‘optional’ networking and support via our elgg based social networking system (the Athabasca Landing) but the take up by tutors, faculty and students has (to date) been modest.
Credit for challenge (as opposed to seat time or completion of course activities), is an old idea first institutionalized by the University of London in the 19th century. Read More

Distance Education, My Work, OERs, Open Scholarship,

Three Generations of Pedagogy and Elephants in the Room

Written by terrya
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Three Generations of Pedagogy and Elephants in the Room

The good folks at DERN (Australia) posted a nice summary of Jon Dron and my article from the recent Connectivist special issue of IRRODL.  They write:

“A review of the three dominant learning theories: Cognitive-Behaviourist, Social-Constructivist and Connectivist, and the pedagogies derived from them. The review is very relevant to the use of digital technologies in education using a community of inquiry analysis model beginning with a description of each learning theory and then analyses of the cognitive presence, social presence and teacher presence, and concludes with a summary of the strengths and weaknesses of each. This paper is a must read for educators interested in elearning.”

Over a beer and salty tears yesterday, (we were watching the Canucks get hammered by the Bruins), Jon and I were talking about a slide set he was preparing for a presentation to our Nursing Faculty here at Athabasca.  One of the slides shows a fourth integrative pedagogy that it refers to as holist.Read More

Distance Education, IRRODL, My Work

The Publish or Perish Book

Written by terrya
The Publish or Perish Book

Well, after surviving end of term marking, coupled with two online keynotes and a real f2F one at Canadian MoodelMoot I’ve finally found some time to skim through two books that arrived on my desk that I want to share with you.

Product DetailsThe first is The Publish or Perish Book (P 0r P) by Anne-Wil Harzing. Harzing is one my heroes because she created and released  PorP Open Access program that uses Google Scholar to evaluate journals, articles, and authors based upon the number of citations of the work, collection or journal in other scholarly works.Read More

Distance Education, IRRODL, My Work, Open Scholarship

Passing of Gary Boyd – a great scholar and friend

Written by terrya
Passing of Gary Boyd – a great scholar and friend

I was saddened today to learn of the passing of my friend Gary Boyd, Professor at Concordia University in  Montreal. Gary exemplified scholarship in education technology and came to personalize what I think are the necessary, but far too uncommon characteristics of  scholarship and application of new technologies and pedagogy to teaching and learning.

I first met Gary in 1988, when Robert Sweet and I went on a research trip to Concordia. I still remember two things about that first meeting- first the vivid introduction to scholarly mess – Gerry had mountains of texts, papers, floppy disks and conference proceedings spilling out and over his desk and the floor. Second, I also remember his big smile and very warm greeting to Robert (a past Concordia colleague) and to myself, At that time, I was about  million psychological miles from an academic vocation and life style. I was impressed by both aspects of Gary’s life.

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Distance Education, Personal

Connectivism – Special Issue of IRRODL

Written by terrya
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I’ve decided to repost the email I sent to subscribers to IRRODL, announcing this VERY special issue.  If you want to be one of the 5054 (and growing) IRRODL subscribers (its free) and get your very own email announcement of each new issue, rather than read this boring old blog, click here.

I am especially pleased with this special issue, partly because, I am becoming a connectivist evangelist, partially because this is the first full issue on Connectivsm in a peer reviewed Journal and certainly not least because Jon Dron and I have an article in it!

I usually shy away from publishing in IRRODL – too easy to be less than objective about reviewing and editing your own work!  But I took the opportunity of a hot topic, personal interest, great guest editors (who of course were ruthless in their reviews – making it a better article!!) and a brilliant co-author made this opportunity irresistible.

Here is the subscriber letter:Read More

Distance Education, IRRODL, My Work

Lisbon 2011

Written by terrya
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Wow, its back to the future for me this week. I haven’t been doing face-2-face lectures for years, but this week is campus all over again.

I was honoured to be asked to do a week long PhD seminar at the Universidade Nova de Lisbo here in Lisbon Portugal. The seminar has attracted students and staff from Nova and a few other universities and especially the Univesidade Aberta – Portugese Open University .  The seminars are being web cast and sent out via H323 video conferencing, with a twitter feed (mostly in Portugese), all of which have worked flawlessly, so nothing shabby about the technology here!.

Nova University is relatively new to online learning, with no tradition of distance education (that being the almost exclusive domain in the past to The Open University). But as everywhere, they are interested and expanding access through this technology. The lectures were fun in that was able to recycle some of my earlier powerpoints, but was able to expand and hone all of them for a new audience and to dust off some of my earlier work and thinking.  I do five sessions:

I’ve also had some great meetings with my host Patrica Fidalgo, who is a PhD student at Nova and who we met at last summer’s TEKRI doctoral seminar at Athabasca University. This very successful seminar at Nova shows the value of one PhD student making things happen in her own school. Maybe you should think about attending this year’s week long seminar on social networking at Athabasca in Edmonton???

I’ve spent a few hours seeing the city and its many historical sights, and looking forward to a day off on Saturday before hoping the flight to Estonia.

Até mais tarde!

Terry

Distance Education, My Work, Open Scholarship