Work
- extremely short work week, due to travel for Open Ed etc…
- Open Education 2014 was pretty amazing. The conference has changed pretty drastically over the years as it’s gotten bigger. That’s a good thing - but the vibe has definitely shifted from a fringe/evangelist gathering to a full-on Real Conference. Still lots of butts-in-seats, but lots of amazing stories and projects being shared.
- Reclaim Your Domain: UMW Hackathon - including some early work on a documentary project to capture the current edtech scene and frame it in ways other than the standard Silicon Valley VC Solutioneering narrative. More to come on that soon…
- visiting the amazing new Digital Convergence Center at UMW - an inspiring facility, but it’s the team here that makes it so amazing. Can’t wait to see what kinds of stuff they do together. Lots of interesting ideas that might be repurposed into a new Institute for Teaching and Learning cough
- Speaking of which, the crane was removed from the Taylor Institute construction site. Progress! Still a year away, but we’re getting closer…
It’s going to take a long, long time for me to work through all of my notes, photos, videos, etc… from this week. Wow.
Read
- Let’s Encrypt - a project to provide free SSL for everyone to use on their servers. Awesome. This will be extremely important. It’s much too hard to set that up now.
- 10 ways to encourage course evaluation participation
- How to fold the world’s best paper airplane . Haven’t tried it yet, but dang.
- Izzy wrote a post about our D2L migration timeline. I keep forgetting just how quick it was. Wow.
- Clint Lalonde wrote a post about efficacy of OER
- David Wiley is still thinking about open education infrastructure
- Verena Roberts wrote about Meaningful Learning in a Digital Age - not just reproducing old activities/assessments/interactions in digital form.
- Tony Bates - Why MOOCs are only part of the answer for higher education
Travel
- Washington DC, for Open Ed. Highlights include a touristy walk through the National Mall to visit a couple of museums. My mind was blown in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.
- Fredericksburg VA, for Reclaim Hackathon.
- dang. there is a lot of history here. and it’s surreal to see things that have always just been movie sets to me before…
Other
- I’m definitely getting old. er. Or at least feeling it. Travel and conference and hackathon and social and travel. Exhausting.