A bag of undergrad papers going to recyclingSomeone said something about a thing that happened in the early 2000s today. I looked at my computer and saw ‘2022’ and wondered where that 20 years went… apropos of nothing . The pandemic has really messed with my sense of time though. Things like ‘last year’ or ‘last spring’ require some serious cognitive processing to put in context.  And in keeping with the time warp theme, this picture is my undergrad in papers. I kept all my graded work for a really long time. I finally let it go. It was fun to revisit this pivotal time in my life and read the comments, and remember just how much work I put in. I completed my BA in 2003 – the early 2000s. Hmmm.

As for now, this week I have been working different hours and days to deal with some family stuff. I spent some time reading over training plans from a meeting I missed and orienting myself to that. I got back into my WordPress pages for teach anywhere and did some edits and created some graphics. I decided to use Fireworks to put images and text together for things that require several steps that comprise several screens. It made things a lot simpler than trying to insert images inline.  I’ve identified at least one place where a Camtasia video might be a better option than the existing Brightspace video and I have a couple of more complicated graphics to put together.

I started putting a little organizing into the course we will use to support the upcoming training sessions. I’m not going too far as it is not just ‘my’ course but I’ve put in a module for each session and started folders in the manage files section to match each module.  I’ve started a ‘welcome’ section as well. I think for consistency we should have an intro page for each section.

Next week I plan to work four days. My POSE program with UBC kick-off is on Tuesday.  I’m looking forward to the program and have looked around a little on the website.  It hasn’t been the best couple of weeks starting this year off but I managed to get some things done and I feel like my head is back in to what needs to be done, so that’s something.

I have been thinking a lot about the future of higher ed recently. I heard the (very small) number of students graduating in B.C. this year and can’t help but think it’s time for some creative destruction. My question for people involved in education from administrators, to support staff, to educational technologists, teaching and learning centers, instructors, students, etc. is ‘Where do you see yourself in 5 years’?