"Predicting the future is easy. It's trying to figure out what's going on now that's hard" (Dressler, 2005)
Sometimes you just don’t get to your Feedly in a timely manner…so this morning, I looked back at about 8 days worth of blogs. Some great posts, but what interested me was some of the connections my mind began to make in this week-plus dive into the blogosphere. First, Lisa Lane wrote a provocative piece… Read more Connecting Some Dots
Mary Meeker is out with her annual look at the “State of the Internet”…and as always, it is fascinating. Internet Trends 2017 Report from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Mary has been doing this since 2002, but I first became aware of the annual report back in 2011. I have since incorporated it into my… Read more Internet Trends
In my ILD831 class for Creighton University this week, my 12 students will be looking at digital tools. Using Jane Hart’s C4LPT Top 200 list as a starting point, they self-selected the following tools to explore and analyze from a leadership perspective (number indicates rank on the Top 200 list): Audacity (28) Canva (57) Clarify… Read more Other Tools to Consider
I am still buzzing from all the ideas percolating from SLOAN International Conference on Online Learning, but today my buzz was from two totally unrelated (and yet totally related) blog posts from my PLN. At the conference, there were many of us who cautioned people to not fixate on the latest digital tools, because the… Read more Call Me Hammerhand
Mary Meeker, a venture capitalist with Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, recently presented at Stanford University on web trends. Her presentation contains eighty-eight slides full of interesting and thought-provoking information. Her message is that the evolving web forces us to re-imagine everything. For those of us in faculty development, it is suggestive of changes that… Read more Re-Imagination of Everything
The Fall semester wrapped up mid-December with my departure for two weeks to visit family in New England, so I never really had the opportunity to reflect on my first use of blogging as a mode for instruction and class communication. Three grandkids have a way of prioritizing your time! Now that I have returned… Read more Is Networked Learning Doomed in Virginia K-12?
At a meeting this week, my colleague Mary Secret was discussing her online classes. Mary has been an active member of our Online Advisory Committee and teaches both online and face-to-face in our Masters of Social Work program. She had done research in assessing online classes, and she suggested that it would be good if… Read more Voices of the Students
My colleagues at the Center for Teaching Excellence, Jeff Nugent and Zach Goodell, have been co-teaching a graduate course this semester here at VCU. Teaching, Learning and Technology in Higher Education (GRAD-602) is designed to provide students in the Preparing Future Faculty Program with an introduction to contemporary instructional practices and exploration of relevant issues… Read more Next Generation Faculty
I just finished reading Curtis J. Bonk’s new book, The World is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education. In the spirit of full disclosure, I will tell you that Wiley, the publisher, emailed me after I reviewed Dan Willingham’s book in a previous post and asked if they could send me Bonk’s book for… Read more Faculty Development in An Open World
Yesterday was the final day of Blackboard World 2009. It was an enjoyable conference. I met some interesting colleagues who are all grappling with best ways to teach online. It was great seeing old friends from Georgia Virtual Technical College. Twitter as a backchannel was going strong, and I added quite a few new contacts… Read more Final Day of BbWorld09