I am sitting in the Indianapolis Airport. I am on my way to the Philippines for the first time. Tried to get here a couple hours early to catch an earlier flight to Atlanta but they cannot change my flight. Ug. Got economy comfort for most of the floght except from Altanta or Narita, Japan. That will be a long haul cramped up like a sardine.
As per usual on such flights, I will have the fun and lovely experience of grading papers from my R546 class on instructional strategies. This is a Saturday class from 8 am to 1 pm that I teach each spring for 8 weeks. Yesterday, we met twice in order for me to go. Super ug! But we made it through. I had the Indiana Teacher of the Year, Stacy McCormack, present during the 2nd session, She is a real dynamo. And she is a role model for my students as she illustrates how creativity + hard work can land you a trip to the White House and a photo-op with President Obama. Stacy teaches chemistry and physics, both of which are critical areas targeted by the federal governnment. No textbooks or boring lectures for Stacy. Nope, she believes in highly active and interactive lab experiences.
Anyway, as I said, I am heading to a conference in the Philippines. You can always get my current (and previous news and travels off my homepage. I will give a plenary talk on Thursday at 1st International Conference on Open and Distance Learning. The theme is creating spaces and opportunities. They expect about 300 people. Color PDFs of my talks (including a 3-part masterclass on Wednesday) as well as my plenary session are posted to my archived talks in TrainingShare.com. You will also find my new paper on Extreme Learning there. I wrote this in a day...think it came out ok (stole much from a recent NSF grant proposal; actually from sections that we had to delete due to page length limitations). Extreme Learning is my new research focus (see team and mission and such).
Please send me a note if you will be in Manila for the conference this week Wednesday to Friday. It shoud be great.
I will also do talks at 2 universities south of Manila (Feb 21 and Feb 28). I'll be back on the 29th. Color PDFs of my 8 talks can be found at my archived talks in TrainingShare.com as well. I will speak at the University of Batangas . After it, I will get a couple of days at Boracay Beach. Boracay beach is ranked top 10 in the world). My speaking will end at the University of the Philippines Open University on Tuesday February 28th. And then I fly back on the 29th.
My friend Dr. Melinda (Mel) Bandalaria from the UPOU is arranging it all. Sweet. She is so great. Back in 2008, she was among a group of about a dozen people who helped me run a symposium on e-learning in Asia at the E-Learn conference. Those presentations later became articles in a special issue of the International Journal of E-Learning and then a print-on-demand book with AACE. It will be fanstic to catch up with Mel and meet many new friends in the Philippines. I know my friend Dr. Kumiko Aoki from the Open U of Japan will be there as I just got an email from her.
I will update this blog from the Philippines. When I return, I will attend the annual IST conference in my department at IU March 2nd and then the SITE conference in Austin, Texas March 6-8th (see our special back-to-back symposium in Austin on emerging learning technologies that Mimi Lee from the U of Houston and I are arranging there). Finally, I will keynote a conference for Indiana Wesleyan on March 9-10 in Indianapolis. Wow.
Time to board for Atlanta.Labels: Boracay Beach, e-learning, extreme learning, Manila, open and distance learning, Philippines |
Thanks for your nice speech , "Technology-Enhanced Teaching:From Tinkering to Tottering to Totally Extreme Learning" at ICODEL 2012 Manila.
Rasika Nandana
The Open University of Sri Lanka