Hilgartner Open Learning

Kinnear Centre - Banff Centre I enjoyed the Leadership Academy at Banff but I am glad to be back among colleagues and friends at Bow Valley College.  I am even more glad to be back with my family.  I have come back with a renewed passion for the work I do and I would like the opportunity to share with you this renewed passion in hopes that you too may feel inspired.  Over the next few weeks, I will share some interesting ideas I gleaned from the Academy in building an informal leadership academy of our own.  I do so because I believe we are all leaders and the need for us to lead in what we do has never been greater. At Banff, I certainly was fortunate to look out some beautiful windows at the most extraordinary landscape in the universe.  Yet, the most revealing window I looked through was my own shared view of the world.  The Leadership Academy quickly started off with an awareness exercise, the Johari Window, as a precursor to thinking about leader...

At the end of day 4 of the Leadership Academy, I find myself thoughtful, tired, challenged and inspired.  We looked at effective team development yesterday and strategic planning and I find myself trying to sort this all out. As for what I have learned, as program or service leaders, we read and actively discussed how clearly defined role in meetings or work groups are essential.  We watched a segment of the movie "12 Angry Men" and made observations of how the jury, which became dysfunctional, was made functional again through the facilitation by one juror who forced the group to discuss and put aside agendas and personal feelings.  Next, members of the group performed a role play of a department meeting regarding student issues, the audience unaware that each had been assigned a dysfunctional role.  Two of the role players dominated the discussion.  A couple were interrupted or ignored.  The facilitator did a good job at reining the meeting in towards...

I just finished the first session of the Leadership Academy held at the Banff Centre.  I saw an elk, navigated through a high speed bike race and found my way inside the Kinnear Centre for Creativity and Innovation. Certainly, you could not find a more beautiful place in the world, with the fresh air, the looming mountains and the rolling river.  An excellent place to relax and think. And the participants, from Alberta, British Columbia and even Indiannapolis, are friendly and eager to share.  Everyone has checked their agendas and issues at the door, so people are free to speak.  Over the half of the group is from SAIT, and many of them were meeting their colleagues for the first time. The focus of the academy will be to tap the current experiences and knowledge from this group to be "transformative" through this "learner-centred approach".  They have already us fill out three surveys and an learning styles inventory.  They have had us moving about t...

This year's Anytime Online goals have leadership at their core. Leadership is an appropriate goal for our team, because we are ready.  We already lead in so many ways, from instructor presence, subject-matter expertise to course development.  We have been working hard to move down the track and over the hill to improve our courses and reach our students.  We have learned enough about how, we have set the pace, and we have become the example for the college and the province.  We need to solidify this achievement.  We need our accomplishments to last, not for us, but for our students, for adult upgrading in this college and province, so that we do not get lost: so that as a important service we are not diminished. So what does it mean to lead? As a supervisor for Anytime Online, I have been ruminating about what it does and doesn't mean.  I say leadership but what does that mean beyond vague associations.  Tom Wilkinson (left) I turn to peopl...

Curriculum and online - I cannot think of two terms more purposefully vague. What does curriculum include? Better question - what does it not include? Tests, unit plans, texts, videos, assignments, and lessons. But doesn't it also include the outcomes, declared or hidden. Could not the classroom event or the online chat be a learning activity that would fall under far reaching tendrils of the massive curriculum umbrella? How does one manage curriculum? I am not wholly sure, at given moments. (If you have an idea, please let me know.) Do you choose a model or does it choose you? Oh, yes, there are models. In fact, there are categories of models, and as many books and online articles as there are models. In the end, does it manage itself, like some unwieldy beast, with the students and teacher locked arm-in-arm, armed only with their curiosity and fool-hardiness. And then, there is online - the second half of my job. I coordinate an online learning program, even though I...

Greetings from beautiful San Diego. Yes, it is possible to learn and have fun, just as it is possible to learn from fun and have fun while learning. I know it's hard to believe. I count myself among the long-time doubters. However, I have experienced it here at the mLearnCon conference here in San Diego. San Diego is beautiful, clean, warm and friendly. Maria, my wife and best friend, came down with me and we had a romantic night, visiting Sea World, listening to a reggae band (yes mon, we were on island time, mon), and drinking strawberry daiquiries by the hotel outdoor pool under the palm trees. Sadly, she has gone home but we had one of the most splendid nights together. In short, San Diego is surreal. Certainly, it has been a week for firsts. This is the first time I have ever been abroad, and the first that I have ever been at a conference on this scale. But the biggest first would have to be the earthquake tremor. I can scratch that one of my bucket list. Oh...

The sessions are intensive. The ground they cover is formidable. The people I have met come from all kinds of backgrounds: from Canadian Military to CIA to publisher reps to LMS vendors. For the afternoon sessions, I am so tired I go back to my room for a 10 minute power nap during breaks so that I don't fall apart. Of course, to remedy the situation, I eat some seafood, float in the pool, and bake in the sauna. In the end all is well. At the end of all this hard work, some things about mobile learning and how it would apply to us back at Bow Valley College has become clear. There are so many devices out there that building native apps for each of these devices would be exhaustive, even using cross-platform kits: secy but exhaustive. If we are to build apps, they should be web apps. These web apps can be created using current web technologies, such as dreamweaver which comes with spry and html 5 extensions. Google has tapped into this idea and has moved all of its mobi...

Yesterday was the College-Wide Meeting day and finished with presentations on Excellence and Innovation, with the effective use of technology at the centre.  Andy Benoit, from the Teaching and Learning Centre, came to talk with me about all of the free and simple technologies, like gmail and google sites, that the Upgrading Online program uses.  Our shared enthusiasm for how these products promote learning and teaching moments left me inspired about the college moving forward.  Equally, the Upgrading Online team was asked to present about the program's innovative use of such free and open tech and about last year's virtual conference using Adobe Connect we hosted.  I felt proud to hear the interest and was moved by the conversations that went on with college colleagues about these technologies.   As I write this blog, I have just returned from the Teaching and Learning Centre's Annual Luncheon for coordinators and I remain amazed by the various initiatives a...