The Colesâ„¢ Notesâ„¢ version: a super-short week that felt like a super-long one.
Thanksgiving. And 45.
Thanksgiving on Monday. And I turned 45 on Tuesday, and I took the day off because why not. We had a quiet family extra-long-weekend, and spent some time out in the Elbow Falls area. Wow, did the 2013 flood ever rampage that area.
Open Education
Picked up the plane ticket. Assuming air travel is still a thing next month, I'll be in DC for Open Ed, and then Fredericksburg for the Reclaim thing on the weekend. Totally looking forward to both, and to reconnecting with the Open Ed crowd. It's been far too long.
IT Partner
Not long ago, I was in the role of IT Business Partner. I gave that up when I moved into the new role in the EDU. The IT Partners have been working on strategic planning and figuring out the best way to cover all 14 faculties and various service departments, and we have an excellent partner working with us in the Taylor Institute. Looking forward to including Michael in as much of our activities as I can.
Learning Technologies blog
In our last team meeting, we realized that we needed a place that was:
- public
- outside the UofC domains so we could maintain an arms-length distance and write freely (and leave room for positive critique of campus technologies etc…)
- group-focused
I suggested setting up a Known site. And so I did. It's still basically just "Hello World" but we will be using that site to document the stuff we do. It's intended to be a "thinking out loud" kind of thing - like how I use my blog, but without me having to give everyone accounts on my own personal blog…
Conference Planning
Planning for the 2015 University of Calgary Conference on Postsecondary Learning and Teaching is coming along nicely. Still lots to do, but the third annual event is going to be even better than the first 2.
Retreat!
We had our first EDU retreat, as part of the strategic planning process. We're working together to define our mandate/vision/strategies, and to figure out what exactly we do and how we do it. The day was a fantastic opportunity for us all to work together to start the process. Exhausting, but extremely productive. We will have a 3 Year Strategic Plan for the EDU ready by July 2015. Dotmocracies, Star Peopleâ„¢ and T-shirt designs.
