Posted in Personal on Jun 29th, 2009 4 Comments »
This is a personal note and reflection on my trip to the North Country Fair for the 31st annual solstice celebration and folk festival.
Way back in 1979 I was living “back to the land” on a farm near Joussard Alberta, on Lesser Slave Lake – about 400 km north of Edmonton. The previous summer [...]
Posted in My Work, Personal on Jun 15th, 2009 10 Comments »
I was saddened to hear this morning of the death of a good friend, fellow Canadian and colleague, Robin Mason. Robin was an influential and important figure in the development of computer conferencing for educational applications. She worked for many years at the British Open University and there she was the first to develop computer [...]
Posted in Personal on Apr 20th, 2009 2 Comments »
Just had to share an incredible experience shared with 8,000 others at Leonard Cohen’s world tour concert in Vancouver last night. The evening with poet of our generation exceeded all expectations. He was gracious, funny, generous, just a bit self deprecating and as always profound in the lyrics and the intensity of both his old [...]
Posted in Personal on Mar 28th, 2009 1 Comment »
A portion of the motivation for the 15 years I spent on a homestead farm in Northern Alberta was inspired by reading and rereading of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Pond as an undergraduate. Thus I was thrilled to take the time with Susan for a leisurely stroll around the pond on a beautiful spring afternoon [...]
Posted in Personal, educational social software on Oct 24th, 2007 7 Comments »
On the train yesterday, through the beautiful fall colored Swiss countryside, I was delightfully surprised to speed through the small town of Elgg – It is located between Zurich and St Gallen. It seems the kind of town you’d feel comfortable owning a pet Jersey cow but I image you could get by with a [...]
Posted in Distance Education, Personal on Oct 5th, 2007 8 Comments »
The presentation at the European Conference on E-Learning ECEL 2007 of Jon Dron and my paper – on Groups, Network and Collectives had some exciting moments. It was scheduled in the first slot of concurrent talks after the opening keynote. I scurried to the lecture theatre, loaded my memory stick of 50 or slides and [...]
Posted in Distance Education, Personal, educational social software on Dec 7th, 2006 No Comments »
This year’s version of Athabasca’s University Masters in Distance education course “Emerging Technologies in Distance Education” ended with our now traditional online party.
The gala event (beginning on Elluminate) began with a pop quiz from the teacher (me) presenting effusive academic translations of famous Christmas tunes (for example, Are you Experiencing Parallel Auditory input = Do [...]
Posted in Personal, Uncategorized on Jun 16th, 2006 Comments Off
From the AU News Room:
Dr. Terry Anderson’s appointment as Canada Research Chair in distance education has been renewed for five years. He was presented with the award at the Convocation ceremony on June 10.
Leslie Chivers, communications director for
MP Brian Jean, presented Dr. Terry Anderson
with the documentation to officially renew his Canada Research Chair [...]
Posted in Personal on Apr 1st, 2006 Comments Off
This is not an April Fools joke, but a true story of near calamity.
Yesterday, I was pedaling my bike along Jasper Avenue, Edmonton’s main downtown street, on my usual commute home from work. I was listening to an album of Bach Organ concertos – the ones with the big rolling bass lines, when I felt [...]
