2020 Week 02

I got back into skating at the Oval over lunch, after missing almost a month. I need to get more active and am really feeling the lack of cardio since I stopped riding my bike every day. Now that we’re heading into a week of forecasts approaching -30˚C, I need to keep doing this so I have some level of physical activity.

Skating at the Olympic Oval over lunch

⚙️ Work

• Met with IT Partners to discuss the status of Pearson / Willo Labs textbook integration into D2L. It’s available to be added to courses now, but we need to work with our instructors who request it rather than starting with requests from the vendor…¹
• Started pre-planning a pilot project with our Department of Chemistry, to help them create courses in D2L much earlier than is currently possible. Lots of potential issues in data entry and quality, and supporting people in the department to do the course creation rather than relying on our team to do it in one big batch.
• D2L Connect online conference
• I received the official certificate for completing ULead, after submitting make-up work before the holiday break.
• ████████████ █ ███ ██████████ ███ █ ████ ███████
• I realized I had… a lot… of vacation time and personal leave days accumulated². I needed to put a plan together to burn some of that off, so I’ll be taking Fridays off until the end of June (unless something urgent comes up). I can’t just take a bunch of weeks off, and Fridays are really the only day I can take off without impacting regularly scheduled things.
• Things are about to get a lot more expensive for students @UCalgary. Also, I’m still a student myself. Awesome.

🤔 PhD

• Bojer, Bodil. (2019). UNLOCKING LEARNING SPACES - an examination of the relationship between the design of learning spaces and pedagogical practices. - PhD thesis from Rune Fjord Studio & The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation. This is a big document, with lots of really great stuff. It’ll take some time to give it a proper read, but I’m thinking of something similar to this for my dissertation (on a different-but-related topic).

📚 Reading

• Digital Detox week 1: Edtech and Equity Issues - a wonderful, rich, deep, thoughtful article.
• Work-Based Learning (John Baker in Forbes)
• Ethics and Data Privacy – TRU Digital Detox 2020

🧺 Other

blog stuff

• I started using MacDown to edit the markdown content for this site. Really liking the 2-panel live preview of the content, and it groks Jekyll/Hugo frontmatter sections, too.
• I reorganized bits of my website, moving the old week-in-review posts into the new /reflections section, and renaming the pretentious-sounding “PhDNotes” section back to just “Notes” (and combined some stuff - “Notes” was originally for my MSc work, and I had created “PhDNotes” to keep things separate, but that’s kind of silly, so into the smusher they go. It’s all one thing.). Notes are currently included in the main feed and homepage, but there is a separate feed as well. I had set /reflections to be included on the homepage and main rss feed, but realized that would drown out everything else so it’s back in a separate feed and off the homepage.
• I figured out how to have all sections of this website included in the site’s main RSS feed, without having to display them all on the homepage. I want to avoid forcing homepage display because /reflections week-in-review posts will overwhelm everything else. But, I want everything in the feed so it’s easy for anyone to follow along without making them jump through hoops to subscribe to separate section feeds. Who would bother to do that? I don’t think I would…
• I’m an A-Lister (thanks for the nudge to test my website security, Jim!)

misc stuff

• Life under the ice - Antarctica is full of life, if you know where to look. An interesting website design for finding/viewing videos of living critters.
• Downlink - almost-live satellite images as desktop wallpaper. Crazy.
• Brag Document template - a structured document to help document key activities/accomplishments throughout the year, which can help with reflection and planning and review.
• Peak Map (via Kottke) - this peak map of Alberta is pretty great. Banff and the Bow Valley, right through to my house:
• McGill University - Spotlight on Spaces: The Education building’s creative arts lab offers new opportunities for teaching and learning - a really nice showcase of a learning space.
• I get to migrate a bunch of old-but-still-needed notes from OneNote to Notes. There’s no direct export/import migration tool, and the only way looks like a round trip through OneNote for Windows to export to Evernote, export an archive from Evernote, and import that into Notes. Sounds like fun. But I’m finding Notes so much more useful/productive/reliable than OneNote, so it will be worth it.
• How to read big, difficult books… (via BoingBoing) Man, do I need this. My reading comprehension has gone pffffffffft over the last year…
• BetterMe.ca - Heather Ross, talking about her experiences in managing depression, and what works for her.
• This fantastic draft of a Code of Conduct for OpenETC. Great modeling of writing it in the open to solicit feedback from the entire community.

🗓️ Focus for next week

• University Copyright Committee meeting
• Continue planning for the elearn.ucalgary.ca project
• Schedule the next Learning Technologies Advisory Committee Processes Working Group meeting, and plan what we’ll need to work on during that session
• Continue pre-planning for the Chemistry pilot to create F2020 and W2021 courses earlier, to provide instructors more time for course preparation over the summer
• Schedule the January 1:1 meetings with my direct reports
• Work on the plan for sustainable developement/maintenance/support for Curriculum Links
• Give an in-class demo for a class in the TI, to show them how the collaboration carts and Solstice stuff works
• Learning Spaces and Digital Pedagogies Badge project reviews
• Experiential Learning Platform core team meeting
• Annual medical thing. routine, but overdue.
• ███████ ████ to ███ ████████ for ████ and ███████ ██████████ ████ to ████ ███ a █████ ██████
• TI Managers meeting
• HR stuff - involved with the hiring process for a new position
• D2L TAM weekly call
• TI Learning Spaces gathering - an informal community gathering, with all instructors who are teaching in the TI invited to share what they’re doing/learning/planning and to help support each other in adapting courses
• Finding time in there somewhere to continue work on key documents I’m preparing

Good lord. I’m exhausted just looking at that list. And that’s compressed into 4 days, as I’m having to take Fridays off to burn off a backlog of vacation time…