Personality and other factors in education

Tracey’s found her blogging mojo with a raft of posts (new since I last looked) including this one linking to work that identifies conscientiousness as the main secret to success in much of life. The focus on personality is in common the connections to Myers-Briggs and related ideas that Brendon and Anne have touched on. Tried one of the tests […]

On trying to be optimistic in a stupid world

It’s been an “interesting” few weeks destined to challenge the optimism of the most optimistic person – of which I’m not. Broader events in the world do appear to be the outcome of a conspiracy to rob the world of optimism. Mix in some personal woes – death of a grandparent, illness (no great problem), interruptions to routine brought on […]

The cost of being flexible and pushing the boundaries

For some time Australian universities have led an increasing mantra around increasing flexibility. An inevitable repercussion of the vast majority of students not being full-time learners, but instead having to balance family, work and study, is that study comes last. Family and work pressures lead to difficulty in meeting set deadlines for assessment, hence the call for flexibility. I’m actually […]

One process for the NGL course

One of the other participants shared her current position with NGL I’ve also found it a bit tricky to get my head around all the components I need to cover off on in my blogs for assignment 1, as there seems to be a lot of different pieces we need to address. Hoping this will become a bit clearer to […]

Ahh Mendeley and freemium tools

   by  joe.ross  I’ve been using Mendeley for a few years now. Generally fairly happy with it. Move to it from Endnote after the bad experience of using it for the PhD thesis. Have heard that more recent versions of Endnote may not be as horrible anymore, but Mendeley has me locked in a little (better the devil you now etc). […]

And more NGL catch up

I had a choice to make. Do a bit of prep of content for the next week of NGL or make more connections with what folk have been doing? I’ve decided that the later is more important and long overdue. Wonder what the participants think? Technology or Pedagogy? – EduDoggy Musette makes an interesting point about what she’d have liked […]

A bit more NGL catchup

Catching up with everyone in NGL is taking longer than I thought, mainly due to external factors. Here’s some more. Stone-age facebook It is interesting to see a reference to the “stone ages” that includes Facebook. I still remember explaining to my daughter how lame she was going to feel because she was still on MySpace and not Facebook. A […]

Reclaim, identity, and bricolage

Some thinking and reporting on some explorations of getting into the Reclaim project (movement?). — update: picking this up after a few weeks of inactivity. It seems like now or never. Just as I’m starting (somewhat unexpectedly) on a journey participating in a Masters course on Networked and Global Learning with an explicit desire to “walk the walk” (i.e. break […]

Part C of catching up on NGL

Time to continue catching up on all the interesting work of the participants of the NGL course. Design-based research Anne’s taken the challenge of finding out more about design-based research. The last assessment piece for the course requires the participants to develop a DBR proposal for how to change their own teaching through application of what they’ve learned in the […]

"Supported" versus "unsupported" ICTs in a network age

   by  john.d.mcdonald  Just heard of a PhD student exploring the question behind where teachers’ decide to use unsupported learning technologies in higher education. A topic near and dear to my heart. Not to mention I think part of the challenge that Deb faces. The question that immediately arose – mostly from the NGL course I’m currently participating in – was […]

Do not fear perfection, you'll never achieve it

   by  mikecogh  The title of this post is a quote attributed to Salvado Dali. I hadn’t heard of it before, but it appears to fit very nicely with a struggle a couple of the participants in the NETGL course are having. The desire to get everything “perfect” is getting in the way of engaging in the network. This appears somewhat […]

Catching up on the NGL participation – part B

So Part B of the NGL catch up. Main focus here will be on the 11 participants blogs I haven’t yet caught up on and a to do list to follow up on. The challenge of now knowing Tracey reflects on the challenges posed in crossing disciplines linked with the almost traditional challenge that the more open approach to NGL […]

Joining the "swarm": what a course might be?

Early this week I received an email from a student who took the course EDC3100, ICT and Pedagogy in 2013. In essence he had remembered a useful bit of information in the course study material and wanted to use it. On the plus side, he still had access to course material but because of the big flaw (the absence of […]

Strategic plans, theoretical models and just doing it

Suffering a minor malaise brought on the strategic/operational planning process currently underway at my place of work. As a process it always seems an exercise in futility and frustration, but at least the current process is significantly better than some I’ve observed. The problem is that it’s all based on a faulty assumption. That an institution can respond to an […]

Feeling left out of the conversation

In a comment on this post about the ups and downs participants are going through in the NGL course Mari shares the struggles of being offline in this type of a course. The feeling where being offline feels a bit like you’ve left the conversation and have fallen behind the evolution of where the others are up to. I’m wondering […]