Virtual Canuck

My friend Rory McGreal and I are very fortunate to have been invited to by the Estonian E-Learning Development Centre (oh to have a funded, national e-learning group and strategy!!) to present at the 8th annual Estonian E-learning conference in Tartu starting tomorrow.  Yesterday morning we spent the day gawking at the wonderful ‘old town’ here in Tallinn. Although Rory kept grousing about the Disneyfication of Europe’s old cities, we were pretty impressed.

Tallinn, Estonia old town

The town was settled by European immigrants in the 12-14 century. It has the highest town wall (complete with towers) that I have seen and the center is chalked full of very old houses, Inns, churches and the current Estonian houses of Parliament. Of course all of this beauty comes with a zillion tourist and handicraft shops, outdoor booths and restaurants.  The season is just beginning as there is still dirty snow piled up on the corners (reminds me of home). (more…)

Maybe I’m just a work-aholic, but I had trouble engaging in total relaxation over the holidays. I did manage to read a few novels, do some skiing, visiting with friends and relatives and even slept in for an extra hour most days  (not quite as easy a task for us old farts, as in younger days!!).  But I also made time to finish a book chapter, read my email daily, assigned a few article reviews and did just a bit of net surfing and blog reading. Sort of what I refer to as a “balanced holiday”.

However, some people – and I count my good wife Susan in this crowd, contend that I need to get away from it all on holidays and make sure that everything I do,  can’t possibly be construed as ‘work’. I guess that is one the benefits/challenges of an academic (and increasingly other professional) lifestyle- not being able to clearly separate work from pleasure – home from office.

In a related if more omminous context, I overheard the conversations of my daughter (now finishing her PhD) and a friend who is a research assistant at a major Canadian university. They were talking about the lifelstyle of the researching/faculty members who they work with. Each noted that the pressure to get grants, publish, teach, research, advice, and deliberate on committees didn’t leave  time for anything else – non essentials such as family, community, church or sports. They both were wondering if the sacrifices demanded from the “never enough” world of academia are made up for by the freedom of time and place shifting that most academics (and especially those of us who teach online) enjoy. I guess I’ve gotten used to the fact that I never have enough time to read everything I should read, or play with every Web 2.0 tool that I find interesting, or even visit f2f or online with friends and colleagues whose company I know I would enjoy and learn from. But I’m a practiced multi-tasker and capable of getting done what absolutely must get done – until holidays come!!  Then time and anxiety about its effective use grows…..

This month our University came out with a new early retirement incentive, but gosh, years of holidays seems like a long time! I guess then I will develop my next career (after I decide what it is). Oh well, I guess I’ll muse on  Thoreau’s comment below and keep in touch with my inner ant!

“It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?“ – Henry David Thoreau

Hope you had a ‘relaxing’ holiday.

Glen Groulx’s question about edu-blogging are inspiring a little Labour Day reflection on my own blogging. Glenn is a prolific and quite exception scholar of educational blogging and it is pleasure to respond to his questions, in small response of the many valuable posts he has distributed on educational blogging.

I started my first blog after returning from a conference in Australia where I presented some ideas on the pivotal role of social networking in distance education (see Social Networking: Distance Education’s Killer App). It became apparent that there was only so much academic pontificating one could do, without actually experiencing social networking. So I was ready to take the plunge. In 2005 edu-blogging was still relatively new, with mostly only innovators/early adopters participating. Still, I remember at the time thinking I was a bit late to the party, but time rolls on. (more…)

While winding our way home (2800 kms) from the Madison Distance Learning and Teaching Conference and our annual holiday at Sue’s Father’s cabin in Blind River Ontario, we had a few adventures, that I wanted to share in the following post.

We left Madison Wisc. enroute to Sioux Falls, South Dakota and began to notice an increasing number of motorcycles on the freeway. Suddenly it twigged and a check on the map showed we were heading straight for Sturgis SD. For those not aware, Sturgis is the town most centrally located in the continental USA and home of the world’s largest motorcycle rally. A check on the net showed the annual event was starting the day we were to arrive!  This 70^th anniversary rally, was hoping to attract over 700,000 motorcycles attendees!  The event features rallys, contests, concerts (Bob Dylan appearing this year) sales, tattoos, tours and everything else related to motorcycles! By the time we were within 100 miles, the motorcycles outnumbered 4 wheeled vehicles and probably 50% of the cars and trucks were towing trailers, many with the now familiar Harley Davidson winged decal plastered on the side. (more…)

For those non Canadians reading this, a hat trick results in hockey (and I learn from Wikipedia, in other sports) when one scores three goals in one game. Well, the academic game lasts considerably longer than three periods, but I was both delighted and surprised to score a hat trick this week.

The week started with a call from Chere Gibson (emeritus professor from Univ. of Wisconsin) saying that I was to be awarded the “Wedemeyer Award for Excellence in Distance Education Practice. This award will be presented to the practitioner(s) who most exemplifies excellence in practice in distance education in North America”. The award will be presented at the 26th annual Distance Teaching and Learning conference in Madison, Wisconsin.

The next day, after insuring my head hadn’t swelled beyond the size of my bike helmet, I pedaled to work to receive an email from Canadian Network for Innovation in Education president Ray Whitley, that I was to be presented with the CNIE annual award for leadership at thr CNIE conference in St John this May. International awards are very nice, but recognized by one’s peers at home is especially gratifying.

The final goal was notification that myself and Bruno Poellhuber from the University of Montreal had won a Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities  Research Grant for $140,000 over 3 years to study social networking interventions in self-paced distance education programming. Now the amount of this grant may not seem much (especially when spread between 3 institutions over three years,) but those knowledgeable about Canadian funding for ed tech research programs know that we are in an extreme political drought and that any funds for research is rain from heaven!! Actually Bruno and I failed in our first two tries at this competition, the second time because reviewers found that we had not not provided justification for conducting this research in French and English – can you believe we live in Canada??

Anyways, weeks like this come very infrequently in academic, and I hope you will forgive the self promotional flavour of this post.

Terry

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 I had taken a trip to Ontario and attended Mariposa and Killilou Festivals and came home with the idea to expand our annual community solstice picnics, to a folk festival. Thus was born the North Country Fair, and I served as the coordinator for the first five years.

The Fair has moved to 5 different sites over the years, but has finally arrived “home” at a wonderful and HUGE site on the Driftpile River. Farsighted individuals now running the Fair were smart enough to invest in the purchase of 9 quarter sections (1,440 acres or 583 hectares). The site is easily large enough for the Fair and serves as a large eco-reserve of Northern Alberta pasture, riverbed and boreal forest. (more…)

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 conferencing for large scale implementations. I first met Robin at the Guelph CMC conferences in the late 80′s. I was always impressed at the way she could handle grumpy academics in large groups or small, with knowledgeable responses, creative suggestions and much grace. Robin co-edited Mindweave, one of the very first books on Computer Mediated Communications and went on to author books and articles on globalisation, social networking, learning objects, e-portfolios and more. In 1993 Robin helped me organize and evaluate the first ‘virtual’ conference ever held online.

Her humor, strength and good nature lives on in the memories of those around the world fortunate enough to call her a friend. Her wisdom lives in the many articles and books she has published. Nonethelsss she is missed.

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 favorites and a few of his new works.  He reminisced that it had been 15 years since he was last on a stage in Vancouver – “just a kid of 60 with a dream”.

If you get a chance to see him on other stops on the tour – don’t miss him and his great band.

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 when we visited Concord Mass yesterday. The guide books suggest that the site is overrun with tourists in the summer, but though hardly a solitary experience, we were pleased to be able to experience the site with only a few more people than Thoreau’s solitary view from 1854.

Of course I forgot the camera, but managed to squeeze off a few flicks with the iphone and present them here in iphotos default slideshow format.

We were a bit surprised that Thoreau didn’t locate his cabin overlooking the lack- but perhaps he enjoyed the zen like view of the lake peaking through the pine and oak trees from its location. The origional site was not unearthed until the 1940′s (as seen in the photo with Susan. The cabin was moved when he left and rebuilt near the parking lot for tourist viewing much later. However one of the oldest friends who had visited the site, attempted to relocate the site and a tradition evolved from the late 19th century to place a rock their in memory of Thoreau’s impact on individual lifes. The quite impressive pile of stone’s lies about 20 feet from the actual site and is a fitting memorial to impact of a great thinker, author and humanitarian.

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 St Bernard dog or two as well. Unfortunately, I wasn’t prepared with my camera, so the opportunity to capture a shot and share it with the ELGG community evaded me! But  ELGG exists!

As an aside, we see online trumping the real world as I looked for a photo of Elgg Switzerland in Flickr and found 1476 tagged photos, but after looking at the first 20 screens full of thumbnails, I saw many pictures of elgg screenshots, elgg gatherings and Ben and Dave, but alas no REAL Elgg photos – so you just have to take my word for it that it exists!! Maybe the real world Elggians better get a photo up before they are eclipsed by the online world!

Terry