Work
- We met with some of the folks in Campus Planning, to coordinate our summer research/documentation projects. I think we'll have a really interesting and useful description of how instructors and students use (and would like to use) our learning spaces.
- Met with our D2L account team, and we decided to stop using the LOR tool within D2L. We've tried to get adoption for the tool for almost 2 years now, and haven't had success. It's time to stop licensing that tool. We're also objectively examining several of the other extra tools licensed in our environment, and may opt out of some more by the end of summer. These are taxpayer dollars, and we need to make sure we're using what we pay for, and getting the most value out of each dollar spent on these tools.
- We had a retirement party for our awesome-and-irreplaceable program administrator, who is leaving the university at the end of the month. We're all going to miss MJ terribly, but are also pretty excited for her to be able to move on to the next set of adventures.
- More prep for our upcoming D2L Fusion sessions. Hopefully, we'll be able to share some of our experiences and tips in adopting a new LMS and migrating an entire campus. Also, we'll be able to showcase the Student Signup Manager tool in the developer lab.
- I was preparing for our D2L Fusion presentation and realized I lost a bunch of files from my dropbox folder. Thankfully, I had Time Machine backup on my home computer was able to go back to last year to recover the files I've been living with for the last two years. This file was going to be the background/context of our presentation, and I only had one print copy left and couldn't find the electronic copy. Yikes. PSA: Back your stuff up, even if it's in The Cloud.
On Campus
- Cumming School of Medicine: Cards - Endlessly Replayable Patient Cards - Interesting medical clinical patient scenario generator produced by our faculty of medicine.
- Haboun Bair: The Impact of Reflection and Where to Store the Pieces? - on a learner-centric eportfolio to document learning and reflections
- David Hedley: MoleScope skin cancer app developed for smartphones in Vancouver
- My niece graduated with a BA in Sociology. I went to her convocation - the first time I'd been to one as an attendee, not wearing the goofy gown and hat. It was surprisingly interesting. So good, seeing the university community come together to celebrate.
Read
Edtech awesomeness
- Tony Bates
- Harold Jarche
- Audrey Watters: Learning Networks, Not Teaching Machines
- Tim Klapdor: Thoughts on Learning Experience (LX) Design
- adminuser: Flipping the Model: The Campus API
- Clint Lalonde: What Pressbooks EDU means for BCcampus and Pressbooks Textbooks
- Heather Ross: Ten Years of Blogging – My Journey
- David Wiley
- Agency and Opportunities for Future Educational Technologies
- Reclaim Hosting - I can't agree more strongly. Reclaim Hosting - good web hosting, or Best Web Hosting Ever?
- Nathan Jurgenson
- Daniel Christian: Learning Spaces: The importance of having standards
- Jim Groom: The Un-education of a Technologist: From EDUPUNK to ds106
- Laura Gibbs: DML 2015: Day One... WOW!!!
- Jeffrey McClurken: Teaching, Technology, Innovation Faculty Fellows
- Mary Burgess: Blowing up the LMS
- Erin Fields and Kate Chandler: Call for Open Badges Pilot Project Applications
Other edtech-relatednesses
- Campus Technology
- Inside Higher Ed
- Steven Mintz: Teaching vs. Learning
- Joshua Kim: On Choosing to Create a Limited Digital Footprint
- Eric Stoller: When Digital Identity Begins
- Anne Quito: The internet has been giving us bad résumé design advice
- Berlin Fang: How to Avoid Being a Helicopter Professor
- Reddit goes crazy because trolling and hate aren't encouraged.
Reddit made me sad this week. Trolls trolling loudly because they think it's OK to shame people because of their weight. Free speech means you won't get arrested for saying something - it does not mean that you're allowed or encouraged or supported for spouting hate on a website that you don't own.- Megan Geuss: reddit users' response to CEO banning harassing subreddits is more harassment -
- Randall Munroe: xkcd: Free Speech - as always, there's an XKCD for that, including explaining free speech.
- Magna: Teaching Professor Technology Conference | Magna Publications
- Scientific American: The Power of Introverts: A Manifesto for Quiet Brilliance - Scientific American
- Raphaël Vinot: On ethics in information technology
Miscellanea
- Mark Drechsler: Seven life lessons I've learned from riding mountain bikes
- Granite Bay Software: Timelapse remote capture software and tools
- Leo Mirani: The cheapest way to use your iPhone when you're traveling abroad
- TE Edwards: German Hardware Hacker Creates Kinect-Based Portable 3D Scanner
Other
This was the first Week in Review powered by a script that automatically pulls faved RSS items and saved bookmarks from the last week and generates a markdown list to start the post. Didn't wind up saving much (any?) time, but made the process much less painful. Will have to keep working on the script - some ideas for making it more useful.
Heading to Orlando next week for InfoComm 2015, then D2L Fusion 2015. Looking forward to trying out some of the gear we're going to be putting into the new Taylor Institute building at InfoComm, and seeing the team present at Fusion. 10 days in Orlando may be a little much, though.
I managed to get out for what would have normally been an easy bike ride to Cochrane and back. I wound up kind of overdoing it, and was limping for a couple days afterwards. That's not a good sign. Still, good to get back on the bike for an actual ride.