I am rolling into the third month at my new job. In most ways this job is a return to my roots, building a learning design team, developing curriculum maps, design documents, blueprints and storyboards. We discuss what needs to be learned and how best to present it. I talk about the use of data […]
Incommensurability of place
“What we are… is the long process of education of the will rather than the intellect… A well educated community, that is one with a disciplined intelligence, will be ready to take part in the new forum without serious disturbance.” ~ Robert Falconer, President of the University of Toronto in 1920 (as cited in McKillop) […]
The dance… Here to there (or there to here?)
We had a workshop called Creativity in the Open a little over a week ago, though it feels like it happened in a different lifetime. After the workshop there was a retirement party for our Irwin Devries. At that party, about 10-15 people from the workshop performed an interpretive dance. At the end of the […]
When it’s time to say good-bye
I’m getting ready to say good-bye to a work team (again). As I think about leaving, I stumbled across something I wrote a while back. Posting it here as a reminder to myself that some changes should hurt. And as a reminder to be thankful that this time I’m leaving great team intact; they will […]
What might help?
I’m thinking about these voices of protest who are enabled to be incredibly effective because of the scale and reach, on the exact same platform that enables all the harm it enables. I’ve been busy lately so I haven’t been on Twitter, or anywhere else, much. So when I popped in some time today and […]
Privilege, risk and cartwheels
I’m stalling. I need to clean the garage today, but instead I’m writing. It have been an eventful couple of weeks. I was screened out of a series of jobs where I live, because, from what I can tell, it is too risky to hire someone who is not doing the exact same job, right […]
Pushing vulnerable students to pursue for-profit options
I was almost ready to call it a night when I saw a tweet in which Tressie McMillan Cottom linked to the article: Plagued by scandal, for-profit colleges target single mothers Yup. As a single mom, having access to online, distance, high quality *public* higher education was the difference between me working a (or more […]
Curating Digital Voices in the Margins
The following is a paper written for my doctoral program. I thought about trying to clean it up and publish it somewhere, but not sure where to submit it for consideration (suggestions welcome). In the meantime, I thought I’d share it here. _______________________________________ In open online spaces, we are not equally fragile. It is everyone’s […]
Creativity at a Distance
We are in the midst of planning an event at TRU for October 23 & 24, 2017 called Creativity in the Open. I’ve described it as: Two days of sharing ideas about openness and creativity and their place in education in a fun and informal atmosphere. We are very lucky to have Laura Ritchie, Rajiv […]
What do ‘open’ and ‘closed’ mean in an ugly world?
I accidentally found myself exploring the ideas of ‘open’ and ‘closed’ this evening. Perhaps I should apologize for the ramble… (Note: This post includes the topics of child abuse and images of that abuse.) As a quiet weekend after what feels like months of running, I had some time to do some catching up in […]
