It was a week that had the full range of highs and lows as a manager. We finalized the plan for a large project, with funding and timelines, and everything is go. Awesome. The posting for the Technology Integration Specialist, the person who will be largely running that project for the next 2 years, closed Friday, and the interview and hiring process should happen pretty quickly now. Things are moving along extremely quickly on that now.
A 15km ride from UofC to Deepest NW Calgary - only a couple of blocks worth of marked bicycle lanes, and a couple km of separated pathways. I used a helmet-mounted GoPro Hero 4 Silver set to shoot a 4K timelapse with frames recorded every second, played back at 30fps. Nice.
This video by Michael Wesch is fantastic. Thanks to Mike Caulfield for the link!
Empathy is a powerful thing. Big Data and analytics misses this aspect of teaching and learning.
I took a week off, but lots of important stuff happened. Surprisingly, the university doesn't stop when I leave campus. Crazy!
The Educational Development Unit's Strategic Plan was published as part of our department website. What a fantastic, inclusive process. The EDU's strategic plan is going to be the foundation of everything we do, and it will be extremely useful to have this as a public and living document. Also, the EDU Portfolio, to document what we do as a department.
Jim wrote about his thoughts on the most important advancements in educational technology. I think he’s onto something - the exact tech isn’t important. Nor are the logos on the shiny things we build and/or buy. My personal stance is that we’ve seen 2 major changes on our campus - neither of which are directly related to specific technologies.
The first shift is nothing new - it’s also not constant or consistent. It’s about individualized ownership/control/access to technologies. Some new tools are cheap enough that people grab their own copies - even gasp without asking permission, or even notifying anyone. Some tools are good enough that The University grabs a few copies and hands them out more freely for people to do stuff. I’ve seen people do things with creating online resources for their courses that was simply not possible even a few years ago - and even if technically possible, involved the need to spin up projects, find funding, management, designers, etc…. Now, an instructor can sit at her computer and create really good resources for her courses, on her own, without needing to ask permission. And students can do the same. That’s a fantastic shift.
Super busy week - got the Learning Technologies Support Program kicked off, to start the process of helping faculties hire grad students to work with instructors to design learning experiences and integrate learning technologies.
To support that program, I’m hiring a Technology Integration Specialist! We’re looking for someone to act as the community lead for the 16 Learning Technologies Coaches, and to work with folks in the Educational Development Unit and across the University to integrate technologies. The posting is active as of yesterday, and closes August 28, 2015 – to be hired ASAP after that.
Not much. Took the week off to hang out at home. Spent a bunch of time thinking about work, though. This article by Marc Hedlund was good fodder for thought - I've been struggling with feeling disconnected from "making stuff" rather than just "being a manager". I think I'm starting to find my way.
Not much. Got out for a bike ride, but just the one. Relaxed. Foot's feeling better. Progress? Oh, and we fired up the backyard fire pit a few times. Not a bad way to relax…
It was a tough week - 7 high-profile layoffs over in IT. One of them was my partner for the Blackboard-D2L migration. The project would have failed miserably without her guidance from the IT side. She'll be missed by many. Four of the layoffs were IT Partners - the team I was in for 3 years back when I did my tour of duty in IT. I know a lot of people, myself included, who were shocked by many of the names on the list.
Prepping for the big upgrade of our LMS from Desire2Learn 10.3 to D2L Brightspace 10.5. Lots of testing to do, to make sure stuff we've integrated still works. I think it'll go pretty smoothly, but there are a lot of moving pieces, and without a service owner in IT, we're having to make some decisions on the fly. Good times. On track to be upgraded on August 24, with our test server being updated in the next week so we can begin intensive testing (we've had access to it in our Test2 environment, but have had… issues… with authentication, so haven't been able to do much real testing. hoping to ramp that up this week…)
I was asked what we needed to buy for instructors to explore integrating technology into their courses. Although we have many 3D printers on campus, I wanted one set up in the Educational Development Unit so that instructors could come and experiment with it in a safe place on neutral territory. I also wanted to expose people to an emerging technology so they would be able to incorporate it into their evolving understanding of literacy and of the types of things that are now possible. Simply having a 3D printer in the Unit would help even through simple exposure and osmosis. And, once people start to try things, there would be opportunities for cross-pollination and discussion beyond the simple technology. I also wanted to try something that wasn’t just replicating what was being done elsewhere on campus - we have some absolutely fantastic Maker spaces provided by our libraries, and several departments and faculties provide labs for student project development.
We are working on finalizing the RFP for installing the audiovisual and collaboration technology in the new Taylor Institute building. That process is coming along nicely - but during this week’s meeting, IT needed to get on-site to see how the server/equipment racks in the mezzanine area would be arranged. I was able to tag along for a site visit. Wow. The interior isn’t quite finished yet, but it’s going to be an incredible space to work in. More details on that ASAP, but I took some photos like a tourist as we went through the building.
I finally had a chance to finish Neal Stephenson’s latest novel, SEVENEVES. It was deeply interesting, combining epic tales of survivalism after a natural disaster wreaks havoc on the entire planet. Definitely a good read. Highly recommended. Some thoughts below - spoiler alert - not a full-on review, but some stuff I thought about while reading the novel.
The description of the events leading up to, and through, the Hard Rain were amazing. The narrative of final goodbyes as the first Hard Rain impacts hit actually choked me up. I must be getting old. That’s the first time a novel has done that to me.