I think I answered this question in Florence. Probably.
However, it is a little more complex than this for me. It is to do with focus or lack of it. A blog does need some sort of focus, and this is what I’ve lacked over the past months.
I work at a small institution which is merging with a local University. My trajectory has been very unclear. Now I am heading into the University of Canterbury’s UCTL: Centre for Teaching and Learning – into a new section. I won’t mention it’s title. My role remains the same in name and basically the same in description. But as to how this works out, we have a lot to decide and find out. So where I am going institution wise and department is sorted. But not my location, my actual work and a whole range of other questions. These will need to be worked out.
So I think I’m back after my break from this blog.
In this time I have spent two periods of several weeks lately considering a career change as I wondered if the complexity here was getting too much for me. I bumped into Colin Bell, the High School teacher from the 60′s who really turned me onto teaching and remained a role model for me when I was in the classroom. He has remained current and vibrant all this time later. I nearly went out to his school last term to do some “guest spots” to see if I still had any teaching left in me. I’ve been strugglng with NCEA physics recently in the vicarious involvement with my son at year 11. One other option had turned up that I toyed with as well.
Helping run the unconference open space event at the College last term with the ::FLNW:: travellng roadshow also helped shape my eventual response. As well as three weeks in Italy.
What will I focus on? That’s a good question, and will emerge.
- Prmarly community. The online worlds they can live in. And learning.
- Then there is the LMS, PLE, CMS, VLE world, particularly open source, partiularly Interact. But it will also include WebCT. And I have done a little staff development this year at Lincoln using Moodle.
- This spills over to Web 2.0, and the course TT701: Teaching meets technology. Trying to make this work with a real group of students, who generaly know a lot more tha me in at least one significant area.
- Some stories may emerge here in the Staff Professional development field as this is part of my future, and I am currently up to WebCT workshop number 25 at Canterbury. This leads on to my interest in unconferences. Clickers. Interactive whiteboards. Podcasting/audio files for lecturers.