Sunday, April 30, 2006
April 30 - Ohio
Friday was spent in Statesboro at Georgia Southern University. A bit of a taste of the real South - predominance of blacks in the students, and a cat-fish sandwich for lunch. Met with a bunch of staff at the Centre of Excellence in teaching. Ludy Goodson had been very thoughtful in organising a full day of meetings for me, including half an hour with their vice-Provost, responsible for acadmic affairs. A good conversation with her.
Was invited at attend the first half of a presentation by an Apple representative on podcasting and iTunesU. The bit I saw was more about the latter, which I probably found more interesting since it was the bit I knew less about. The CET is undertaking a series of workshops and retreats to expand on current pedagogies. Sounds like much the same challenges as everywhere - getting lecturers to focus on learning outcomes and student expectations before designing activities that are appropriate.
After finishing at Statesboro, I drove back up to Atlanta - about a 3.5 hour drive. Stayed just south of the airport and made the mistake of not finding a gas station to refill the car before returning it to Avis. They charge about double the standard price for filling it. At that stage I had no choice since the nearest was about 5 miles away - ouch! Ah well, just have to roll with it.
Saturday morning saw me back at the airport, a flight to Chicago - what an immense airport O'Hare is, looked like about 3 parallel huge airfields - then transfer to a 40-minute flight to Indianapolis. From Indy it was just a slog on the freeway (I70) across into Ohio, and Zanesville was as far as I got before giving in for the night. One thing I've noticed is that the road-kill is much bigger here. Much of it is unrecognisable (strangely), but I have seen deer and racoons. The deer in particular must make quite a mess of a car as well.
An excellent night's sleep finally, so feel quite refreshed for the drive across to Washington DC. Will deviate from the I70 later in the day to come at Washington from the West, so I can stay in Fairfax.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Day 4 - April 27
Athens - Georgia. A beautiful city, where the University seems to completely dominate the environment. Apparently the campus occupies something like 33,000 acres - that's an acre per student. Haven't had a chance to snap the camera yet, but I don't think any pictures I could take would do justice to the size of the place.
Spent yesterday (Wednesday I think) in Atlanta, visiting with the head office of the USA part of Concord, talking about the content management system we are about to implement. A very worthwhile day, giving me lots of ideas about what we are getting ourselves into. A complex package that will require lots of planning and support to get best value from.
Driving to their office in Duluth was pretty daunting - right through the middle of downtown Atlanta, but luckily I had very good directions, and managed to stay on the right freeway all the way through. Then headed over to Athens later in the day. Met with Tom in an 'Outback Steakhouse' - a restaurant chain with an 'authentic' Aussie theme. Well, authentic enough to make the chain very successful in America.
I am now at the University of Georgia, in the Education Department with Tom, and about to go over and meet with his colleagues at the Centre for Teaching and Learning. I am due to give a presentation to a lunchtime meeting on my Fllinnz project - so I hope that is well received and generates some discussion.
Evening -
The morning at UGA was another very worthwhile session. Firstly Tom walked me around a bit of the campus, which is huge. The football stadium seats 94,000, and there is also a huge basketball stadium, tennis arena, baseball, etc etc. And that's not starting on the academic facilities. Apparently the campus is 33,000 acres!!! - a large part of the town.
Then a presentation by one of the Education faculty on a portfolio product they call EMMA (which is an acronym for something). It looks like a great tool for marking-up text - I was shown examples from some Shakespeare studies. Allows comments and revisions on the document, and keeps an archive of all versions as they are created. This has had the effect, not originally a motivation, of making plagiarism very difiicult to pass off undetected. For them the major aspect they focus on is the process of writing, not so much the final product. They've built this using mostly standard features of Open Office. I'd like to follow this idea up further.
The session at midday was with Tom and about 8 - 10 of his PhD students. Many of them are interested in the use of ePortfolios in various ways. Some good discussion - they seemed genuinely interested, and many asked for my card for further communication. We'll see whether there is any.
Have now driven down to Statesboro with a slight detour through the rather lovely old town of Madison. Am staying the night in a Howard Johnstone's, which has free broadband Internat access, so that's a bonus. Tomorrow I meet with Ludy Goodson at Georgia Southern University.
Athens - Georgia. A beautiful city, where the University seems to completely dominate the environment. Apparently the campus occupies something like 33,000 acres - that's an acre per student. Haven't had a chance to snap the camera yet, but I don't think any pictures I could take would do justice to the size of the place.
Spent yesterday (Wednesday I think) in Atlanta, visiting with the head office of the USA part of Concord, talking about the content management system we are about to implement. A very worthwhile day, giving me lots of ideas about what we are getting ourselves into. A complex package that will require lots of planning and support to get best value from.
Driving to their office in Duluth was pretty daunting - right through the middle of downtown Atlanta, but luckily I had very good directions, and managed to stay on the right freeway all the way through. Then headed over to Athens later in the day. Met with Tom in an 'Outback Steakhouse' - a restaurant chain with an 'authentic' Aussie theme. Well, authentic enough to make the chain very successful in America.
I am now at the University of Georgia, in the Education Department with Tom, and about to go over and meet with his colleagues at the Centre for Teaching and Learning. I am due to give a presentation to a lunchtime meeting on my Fllinnz project - so I hope that is well received and generates some discussion.
Evening -
The morning at UGA was another very worthwhile session. Firstly Tom walked me around a bit of the campus, which is huge. The football stadium seats 94,000, and there is also a huge basketball stadium, tennis arena, baseball, etc etc. And that's not starting on the academic facilities. Apparently the campus is 33,000 acres!!! - a large part of the town.
Then a presentation by one of the Education faculty on a portfolio product they call EMMA (which is an acronym for something). It looks like a great tool for marking-up text - I was shown examples from some Shakespeare studies. Allows comments and revisions on the document, and keeps an archive of all versions as they are created. This has had the effect, not originally a motivation, of making plagiarism very difiicult to pass off undetected. For them the major aspect they focus on is the process of writing, not so much the final product. They've built this using mostly standard features of Open Office. I'd like to follow this idea up further.
The session at midday was with Tom and about 8 - 10 of his PhD students. Many of them are interested in the use of ePortfolios in various ways. Some good discussion - they seemed genuinely interested, and many asked for my card for further communication. We'll see whether there is any.
Have now driven down to Statesboro with a slight detour through the rather lovely old town of Madison. Am staying the night in a Howard Johnstone's, which has free broadband Internat access, so that's a bonus. Tomorrow I meet with Ludy Goodson at Georgia Southern University.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Day 2 - April 25
Spent the morning out at Paradise Valley Community College - again, thanks to Alan's chauffeuring. Met with Jennifer Strickland, a young woman who attempts to support the whole academic development at her campus. We shared views on a number of issues, including emergent technologies, staff development, levels of support and resourcing, etc.
The Paradise Valley CC also uses the Maricopa ePort developed by Audree Thurman, and jennifer showed me a number of examples of both staff and student pages. The impression I got was that she is finding it difficult and somewhat frustrating getting staff to make the pedagogic shift to see ePortfolios as more than an online showcase. Perhaps one of the more early adopters is the teacher education programme. Since it is a requirement for all teacher ed graduates to have a portfolio to present to potential emplyers, an electronic version seems like a natural shift.
Am off this afternoon to the airport for my flight to Atlanta (via Denver), and another (I think) 3 hour shift in time zone. Don't expect that to be too difficult. Then tomorrow morning I pick up my first rental car and straight into the driving. Am a bit daunted about my first prospect being to drive from the airport through downtown Atlanta to find Duluth, on the northern side of the city.
Spent the morning out at Paradise Valley Community College - again, thanks to Alan's chauffeuring. Met with Jennifer Strickland, a young woman who attempts to support the whole academic development at her campus. We shared views on a number of issues, including emergent technologies, staff development, levels of support and resourcing, etc.
The Paradise Valley CC also uses the Maricopa ePort developed by Audree Thurman, and jennifer showed me a number of examples of both staff and student pages. The impression I got was that she is finding it difficult and somewhat frustrating getting staff to make the pedagogic shift to see ePortfolios as more than an online showcase. Perhaps one of the more early adopters is the teacher education programme. Since it is a requirement for all teacher ed graduates to have a portfolio to present to potential emplyers, an electronic version seems like a natural shift.
Am off this afternoon to the airport for my flight to Atlanta (via Denver), and another (I think) 3 hour shift in time zone. Don't expect that to be too difficult. Then tomorrow morning I pick up my first rental car and straight into the driving. Am a bit daunted about my first prospect being to drive from the airport through downtown Atlanta to find Duluth, on the northern side of the city.
Monday, April 24, 2006
Day 1 - Monday April 24
Two Sundays in a row was rather weird - left at 4pm Sunday, had an overnight flight and arrived in LA at 9am Sunday. A reasonable flight, but never enough sleep for me - maybe three hours. Alan persuaded me to cancel my rental car so he could drive all over the place. I feel a bit of a fraud, as I'm putting off the moment of truth when I have to start driving myself and navigating through cities. That feeling only lasted a few minutes as I let him drive me all day though my jetlag haze.
These were two classes of students I talked with - one in a Physics class designing and building model fly-wheel cars, and the other a graphics design class. Both are using the locall-built Maricopa ePort tool, which seems to be very versatile and widely-adopted at the various campuses.
Of course there has also been the opportunity to call at one of Alan's favourite lunch spots, though unfortunately the bar-b-q wings weren't quite ready yet. The other picture is the truck that called to unblock their shower. I thought maybe it was just for people on a lonely weekend with some time on their hands.
Two Sundays in a row was rather weird - left at 4pm Sunday, had an overnight flight and arrived in LA at 9am Sunday. A reasonable flight, but never enough sleep for me - maybe three hours. Alan persuaded me to cancel my rental car so he could drive all over the place. I feel a bit of a fraud, as I'm putting off the moment of truth when I have to start driving myself and navigating through cities. That feeling only lasted a few minutes as I let him drive me all day though my jetlag haze.
These were two classes of students I talked with - one in a Physics class designing and building model fly-wheel cars, and the other a graphics design class. Both are using the locall-built Maricopa ePort tool, which seems to be very versatile and widely-adopted at the various campuses.
Of course there has also been the opportunity to call at one of Alan's favourite lunch spots, though unfortunately the bar-b-q wings weren't quite ready yet. The other picture is the truck that called to unblock their shower. I thought maybe it was just for people on a lonely weekend with some time on their hands.
