This post is in response to the Map Your PLN activity in the Collaborator module of Ontario Extend. I signed up for Twitter in September, 2016 but didn’t really do anything with my account for at least another year after that. It wasn’t a platform that came naturally to me, and truth told I still feel a bit fumbley and slow when I compare my Tweeting to my other online social activities. I was a late adopter, but I […]
This post is in response to the Extending Your PLN activity within the Collaborator module of Ontario Extend. I’ve got a confession to make. I can find socializing exhausting; I love being by myself. Sometimes, I think I’m a closet introvert. This is a bit problematic in my role. Actually, more than a bit. you see I’m pretty much constantly surrounded by people, from the moment I walk into work until the moment I leave. Most of my days […]
This post is in response to The Collaborative Dining Table activity included in the Collaborator module of Ontario Extend. I was asked to depict a dining table, but I have a difficult time following instructions. In this activity, I’ve been asked to choose one of the projects I worked on in the past year, and represent the key players involved in the project as if they were sitting with me at a dining table. It’s April, and snowing, and so my […]
This post is a response to the Take a Deep Dive activity in the Experimenter module of Ontario Extend. It’s hard to believe that Terry published the first patch, “Patch Zero: The Base Patch” back in February, 2017. So many awesome collaborations between my Teaching and Learning Innovation Hub and Terry, through the Educational Technology Committee and through eCampus Ontario, have happened since then. Back when I first learned about the Open Faculty Patchbook, we didn’t have a Hub yet. […]
This post is responding to the “Holy CRAAP” activity in the Curator module of Ontario Extend. I found and discussed a series of Indigenization Guides earlier in this module, and now I’m applying the CRAAP test to evaluate the efficacy of the resources. Currency: They’re current! Relevance: One of my favourite elements of these guides is that they’re customized for specific target audiences, so the relevance is quite high for a multitude of stakeholders. Accuracy: These Guides have been well […]
This post is responding to the “Find Your Fit” activity found in the Curator module of Ontario Extend. Last week was Open Education Week, and we went gangbusters with our outreach efforts, both on campus and in the community. It was exciting, and exhausting. I could write thousands of joyful words about faculty interest in and adoption of OER. I feel like last year we started a conversation about Open Education. This year it’s starting to happen. It’s fabulous. […]
This post is in response to the “Consider This” activity found in the Curator module of Ontario Extend. I’ve always tried to find interesting, thematically connected images to anchor my online course design to. For example, the top bit of my College Communications course looks like: Here’s a Basic Math course I designed for our Academic Upgrading program, which includes both a landing image and tile images to complement each topic: Needless to say, I see value in incorporating […]
My students and I just finished up a unit titled No Shortage of Controversy. We had a look at fake news, confirmation bias, and filter bubbles. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been enjoying designing the course I’m currently teaching, and this topic was one of my favourites. I found a great game called Factitious, and decided that it’d be a great kick-off to the unit. Since I crave symmetry, I knew I needed another came to close off the unit, […]
The online course I’m currently teaching is the only space I get to test out the pedagogical strategies I’m learning about in my EdD, on Twitter, and in conversation with my colleagues in an autonomous manner. It often feels like a playground, allowing theory to inform my practice (praxis). However, I’m not autonomous in this space. I’m working collaboratively with my students, and sometimes my pedagogical approach pushes them outside of their comfort zones. Not Ungrading, But Not the Norm […]
Nurturing is an integral component of my teaching philosophy, and as I’ve evolved my online teaching practice, I’ve incorporated strategies that align with this ethos. For example, I spend a lot of time in the first few weeks of the course getting to know my students. I ask them about their learning preferences, their goals, their confidence levels. I had great success anchoring my survey to the Universal Design for Learning framework this semester, and I’m still referring back to that […]
