Here I am, about a third of the way through my thesis year and I’m finally getting to the fun stuff, in that I’m actually doing research interviews as we hit the Christmas season. I’ll admit that, from the end of summer when I was really beginning to finalize my thesis proposal until now, I’ve felt disconnected from most things while doing this.
December 13th, 2009 :: education :: 2 comments
The dust-up about The Olympic Resistance Network (ORN) providing an Olympics protest workshop for a local of the British Columbia Teacher’s Federation (BCTF) began at the end of last week. I’m not big on political statements being made to children by teachers in classrooms, but I’m not sure that’s necessarily going on here.
October 19th, 2009 :: education :: 3 comments
I have to admit that I’m liking the literature review process, the more I understand the right approach. Having said that, I’ve not really done what could be classified as a real literature review yet. I did a very surface one (which could only really be called a minor literature summary) when I did my preliminary thesis proposal a couple months ago to get my topic approved …
Getting down to the right research topic and asking the right questions to address it is a pretty challenging process. About the only thing I can say for certain is that I’ll be looking at blogs at BCIT …
May 20th, 2009 :: education :: 2 comments
So, now that I know I’m going to do a thesis for the second year of my Masters degree instead of more coursework and a smaller project, I’m facing a plethora of decisions. I’ve got a very basic concept of what I want to research, but over the course of the next twelve weeks I’ll turn a basic idea into a detailed project proposal …
A couple of things I read this past week really struck a chord. It occurs to me that we really don’t seem to be teaching people how to write for the emerging world. Over the past few months I’ve been exposed to academic writing …
March 23rd, 2009 :: education :: 5 comments
The course I’ve just started this week in my MA studies is focused primarily on community-building for online learning. We’ve been posting images that suggest facilitation and community and commenting on them. The literature reading thus far has been – and I’m admittedly only about half way through it – about philosophy of education and developing reflective practice. This got me thinking about a journal post …
February 13th, 2009 :: education :: 0 comments
This is the second of two parts. Here I talk about factors driving the future of the field. As someone doing this as part of an MA program, what I’m looking for is thoughts on approach from those who may be practicing instructional designers or whose experience is grounded in more than literature review or discussions. Mine are definitely lay opinions in this area, despite my experience in other areas of web development …
February 10th, 2009 :: education :: 2 comments
At the risk of opening myself up to a little mockery, I’m going to post a recent paper I did in two parts. Part one, below, includes an introduction and factors I feel have shaped instructional design to its present state. I will post part two in the next few days. As someone doing this [...]
February 6th, 2009 :: education :: 3 comments
The MA I’m pursuing right now is an interesting beast. One thing that has been very engaging about it is that what I’m studying is actually how I’m studying too. That is to say, while the subject matter of many degrees delivered via distance has nothing to do with how they’re delivered, it’s the exact opposite in this case. The MA in Learning and Technology focuses on learning within technology mediated environments and context …
January 1st, 2009 :: education :: 5 comments
This isn’t new and doesn’t pretend to answer anything, but it’s got a solid, haunting quality and certainly gives you something to think about. Does information overload scare students today? Are too many things competing for their attention? Will their education deliver what they expect? I know what I’m doing right now can be ovewhelming [...]
October 29th, 2008 :: education, technology :: 1 comment
While the title of this post sounds gloomy and might make it appear that I don’t favour opening up the web as much as humanly possible, in truth it’s the exact opposite. However, I like to think I’m also a realist and as I read and think about the move toward more open and accessible [...]
October 28th, 2008 :: education :: 3 comments
I’d imagine most people find the benefit of Skype to be that of free long distance calls. As long as the person you’re calling is also on Skype you can save airtime or long distance charges. That’s great, but given I do very little long distance calling and use my cell mostly for family chatter, [...]
October 22nd, 2008 :: education, technology :: 5 comments
I’m getting my head around writing for graduate studies, but I don’t think I’m using citations the way I probably should be to really provide effective support for arguments I’m making. Maybe it’s my process. I just completed a paper that, while it didn’t have to be academic writing in the truest sense, still did [...]
October 3rd, 2008 :: education :: 3 comments
The answer to this question seems to be largely dependent on what you read, and it probably also depends on what you want to use open, social software for. Based on some of the mailing lists and discussion forums I read, and post-sec sites I visit, social media concepts (whether built on open source or [...]
August 26th, 2008 :: education, technology :: 7 comments
I really could not think of much but getting a good night’s sleep for a couple days after my Royal Roads residency ended last Friday. Now that I have had time to get through the rest of one of my two textbooks and finished the first of my two post-residency assignments, I can look back [...]
August 15th, 2008 :: education :: 2 comments
In my mind, there are two distinct ways of looking at what this group of great people has been through in the past two weeks. There’s the side that forces you to look at yourself, examine your own beliefs and theories and (hopefully) begin realizing some new possibilities. Then there’s the piece that RRU looks [...]
August 8th, 2008 :: education :: 4 comments
Apologies for simply quoting various places in one article, but I thought this overview from the Citizen Media Law Project was worth repeating through paraphrasing. The following are pretty obvious, but easy to forget if you start blogging regularly. While I know I should be using APA, I’ll also apologize for that and plead the [...]
As we all really begin looking at learning in the context of the web, it’s interesting to take a look at some of the research around the effectiveness of the medium. How some of this information affects you probably depends on how you feel about the web to begin with, how you’ve used it and [...]
August 6th, 2008 :: education :: 2 comments
Now that our first assignment is all done, but the short presentation later today, I wanted to reflect on team dynamics. It’s fair to say that there was a challenge or two in this first project. I don’t consider that bad, as this week has been primarily about learning about one’s self. Part of this [...]
August 1st, 2008 :: education :: 6 comments
I found what we covered today to be a pretty important thing and it’s left me struggling a bit to frame it in light of learning and working in a team environment. In our morning session with Hillary, the MBTI inventory was both reassuring and disturbing. At a surface level it wasn’t really surprising. I [...]
July 30th, 2008 :: education :: 3 comments
More aptly, this post might be called, “What I crammed into my first day and a half.” Seriously, though, it’s been a bit busy and this post will not do it justice. This is not to suggest that I’ll be posting recaps of everything I do because there is more MA focused blogging to come. [...]
July 28th, 2008 :: education :: 4 comments
A lot of my writing on this site will now chronicle the trials and tribulations of obtaining a graduate degree while working full-time, trying to maintain a marriage and family, and hopefully still getting a little exercise along the way. Something I’ve been pulling together for some time and which is finally happening, is the [...]
Came across the following via Stephen Downes, where he refers to to a response from Clive Shepherd…
June 11th, 2008 :: education, technology :: 2 comments
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