"Predicting the future is easy. It's trying to figure out what's going on now that's hard" (Dressler, 2005)
This week, I start teaching an 8-week course for Merrimack – ED6306 – Technology, Communication and School Improvement. One of the course objectives is for students to revise or develop a social media marketing plan for their school. And I am half-way through the Spring term at Northeastern for EDU6333 – Social Media and Beyond,… Read more Two Faces of Social Media
In a five-part series, Canadian Tony Bates looked at the overall purpose of online courses, in reaction to recent moves by the Canadian government: Ontario’s strategy to use online learning to ease pressure on high schools using online learning to reduce the cost of higher education using online education to support disadvantaged students: no online… Read more The Purpose of Online Learning
An interesting conversation developed today in my class hashtag on Twitter. One student shared Mary Ludden’s post “How to connect in a connectionless environment…”, which suggested that three key areas of focus were: Be present. Be connected. Be real. For some reason, the old book Fish! and the Fish Philosophy jumped to my mind. I… Read more On Being There
Yesterday during a web conference with faculty teaching in the Creighton University Interdisciplinary Doctorate in Leadership, we were discussing andragogy – the teaching of adults. Jeff Miller noted that one practice he used was to add Twitter to his classes. In an email later following up with me, he shared his rationale that is in… Read more Teaching and Learning with Twitter
During a brainstorming web conference with Elizabeth Mahler at Northeastern earlier this week, she noted the need to move our elearning and instructional design courses beyond simply instructional design to focus more on the user experience. Learning Experience Design (LXD) has been around for awhile, but I wonder how much attention it has garnered? Ruth… Read more Leaving a Bit of Our Heart in our Courses
I have subscribed to MIT Technology Review for almost a decade…it remains one of my best sources for what is emerging in technology. In a recent article, Bill Gates noted his ten favorite books about technology…and first on the list was Max Tegmark’s (2017) Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Apparently… Read more AI, Life 3.0, and Our Collective Future
In my Creighton University ILD-831 course on Technology and Leadership this week, my students are reflecting on what “knowledge management” means in a cloud environment. Tom Davenport, originally with Ernst and Young, defined KM in 1994 – “Knowledge Management is the process of capturing, distributing, and effectively using knowledge.” That definition has certainly evolved in… Read more Knowledge Not College Mantra
It is a few years old now, but I finally got around to reading Jim Lang’s excellent book Small Teaching: Everyday lessons from the science of learning (2016). Jim defines small teaching as “…an approach that seeks to spark positive change in higher education through small but powerful modifications to our course design and teaching… Read more The Small Teaching Approach
Last year, I joined Harold Jarche’s Coffee Club, a professional community of practice that meets via Zoom once a month – and like Vegas, what happens in the conversation stays in the conversation. So other than to say this morning’s conversation was delightful – with individuals from Canada, USA, UK and Brazil – I will… Read more Considering Tetrads
Many have been bemoaning the final loss of the Martian Opportunity Rover, which lost contact last June and was officially declared dead this past week after 15 years roving the Martian landscape. One could say that we lost Opportunity…but it really is a story of what we gained. It was designed for a three month… Read more Opportunity Lost