Holy. 20 years. 2 decades. That’s how long I’ve been blogging, how long this humble website has been around. The first (surviving) post was published on May 2, 2002, shortly after we found out that we were going to be adding a person to our family. That person is now 19 and in post-secondary education. That’s mind-boggling in ways that makes a couple decades of blogging seem a little less impressive.
I just popped into TI 110 (Studio A) in the Taylor Institute, to try out the fancy new auto-tracking camera and to see how it works with YuJa on the podium computer. The auto-tracking thingy uses computer vision to detect the “teacher” or “presenter” in the room, and doesn’t need a tracking device to be worn (like the previous camera did). Which is great, as long as the computer vision stuff can figure out where you are, and as long as it doesn’t get confused by multiple people (or images that look like people) in a room 1.
This issue looks like a banger. 5 articles that directly relate to my dissertation. Perfect timing.
Game Studies - Issue 2202, 2022
Ida Katherine Hammeleff Jørgensen, Espen Aarseth. (2022). “Game Analysis Reloaded.” Game Studies 22, no. 2 (April 2022). http://gamestudies.org/2202/articles/gap_editorial_jorgensen_aarseth.
Sonia Fizek. (2022). “Through the Ludic Glass: Making Sense of Video Games as Algorithmic Spectacles.” Game Studies 22, no. 2 (April 2022). http://gamestudies.org/2202/articles/gap_fizek.
Michał Kłosiński. (2022). “How to Interpret Digital Games? A Hermeneutic Guide in Ten Points, With References and Bibliography.” Game Studies 22, no. 2 (April 2022). http://gamestudies.org/2202/articles/gap_klosinski.
I’ve been part of several initiatives on campus over the last year, looking at how we provide and support learning technologies as a university. Several themes have consistently emerged across all of these.
Universities tend to focus on the first point. Let’s develop standards and ensure that all learning spaces meet them. Which is great, as long as the standards are current and as long as sustainable funding is available to ensure all learning spaces are continually updated to implement these standards.
The Learning Technologies and Design Team in the TI just produced this outstanding resource (with design by our Comms team), with strategies for engaging remote and face-to-face students. Top tier work by the entire team, and some really great collaboration as well, with instructional designers and learning technologists and graphic designers coming together to create highly compelling and useful resources. Best team ever.
I was part of an online panel session “You get what you assess: Competency-based education in the digital era.” at EDUCAUSE 2021 this morning (or afternoon, depending on where people were). I talked about how we use competencies and learning outcomes at an institutional level, and some of the opportunities and challenges we’ve seen. It wasn’t a scripted presentation bit, but they turned on the Zoom auto-transcribe feature so I grabbed the transcript for my portion. There was a bunch of Q&A that had some great bits as well, but I couldn’t grab that part of the transcript before the meeting went poof. Also, holy smokes is the spoken word different from what I would have written in text. Yikes. Anyway… Here’s my part, for posterity.
I’m going to pause these weekly things for awhile. I need to focus on writing the dissertation, and I’m finding these posts keep me kind of stuck in retrospective mode. Time to let go of that and power through actually writing the dissertation.
I’ve scheduled the last of the interviews for my design study project for next week. Then, to switch gears into analysis and writing. And eventually, eventually, some day, finishing this damned dissertation.
We kicked off the first meeting of the Learning Technologies Advisory Committee. Lots of great discussions with the amazing interdisciplinary group of people from across the university. I’ve got pages of notes to go through to pull out themes for this year’s meetings.
I’ve been invited to be on a panel at EDUCAUSE at the end of the month. It’s an industry-led session, so, yeah, but I’m curious to see where the panel discussion goes. It’s not a manel, at least…
This was over 20 years ago, and there’s no trace of any of this left so I figured I should write something before I forget it, too. This was before photos of everything. Before infinite digital archives. Another era.
Back in 1999, I was part of a team at an elearning company called Discoverware, building a multimedia platform to train people how to use various software applications.
One of the few traces of the company that remain in 2021, is a brief mention on Wikipedia’s History of virtual learning environments in the 1990s:
I was fortunate to attend a virtual screening and panel discussion of The Unforgotten, as part of the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation.
Dr. Reg Crowshoe, sharing his history and the importance of building relatives together:
Meetings, including a great LTDT meeting (I thought so, anyway), where I shared my background and sketched out some of the strategic things the team will be working on this year.
We had a bit of a hiccup with UCalgaryBlogs, where it looked like Akismet wouldn’t be available due to licensing costs. I briefly turned it off for a bit to test out an alternative approach, and got emails from users complaining about the flood of spam. Thankfully, Akismet granted us access as a non-profit edu institution, and we’re protected from spammers again. It’s apparently blocking about 150,000 spam comments per month. Every month. And any brief interruption in anti-spam countermeasures results in a flood of garbage getting published.
The Learning Technologies & Design Team was awarded a 2021 University of Calgary U Make a Difference Award for their work supporting instructors through the COVID Pivot™
This was the first full week in the new role, and it was pretty great. What an honour, working with this team.
2 interviews down, 3 to go. 2 of those on Monday. Progress!
Natasha Kenny: Decision-Making through the Lens of Conscious Leadership