A Teacher-Educator, a visionary, and a gentleman who amplifies the common good @terguy

My dear friend Terry

I understand that you are officially retiring from Athabasca University and I am sorry I cannot be at your farewell party. I would, however, like to pass on my best wishes as well as some thoughts with regards to the impact you had upon my life and career, and through a similar lens, what impact I know you had on the lives on many students throughout your academic career.

I was your first doctoral student. We met for the first time at Athabasca in August of 2008 during the cohort weeklong residency. You had earlier written to me and proposed you and I might be a good fit for my research interests. I was over-the-moon as I knew you by reputation and the thought of having the Canada Research Chair in Distance Education as my potential dissertation supervisor was, I thought, a dream come true. In retrospect, this was a dream come true, but for many reasons at the time I did not nor could not appreciate or imagine.

In our six years together as mentor and student I was frustrated yet continuously encouraged to find the limits of my academic capacity. I was nurtured and supported in the opening of doors, the ramifications of which neither you nor I fully appreciated at the time, yet you did not blink. You continued to be excited with and for me in this journey. You were always present. You taught me about the whole idea of presence, not just through your daily academic work with students and your prolific publishing record but most of all by you being everything and more you talk about and tell us in your very public writings: You live as you speak and write. I never once felt anything other than your continual presence throughout my doctoral journey.

I saw impenetrable walls. You waited patiently for me to see these obstacles through different eyes knowing when I understood what was needed to be known, the walls would become new knowledge and understanding and would cease to be perceived barriers. You took me places (physically, intellectually, and spiritually) and introduced me to a myriad of worlds of understanding that have helped shape the ground upon which I teach, learn, and interact with others and for this I am ever grateful. I know at times I resisted your shaping and your gentle nudgings. Maybe that is just part of the journey but as I have had the time and space to revisit and re-examine my six year journey with you I feel what stands out most is your gentle, open, and unhurried approach to dealing with the challenges we all face everyday.

Your list of accomplishments is quite legendary. If I have learned anything from you it is this: we are all working together for a common purpose; our hearts and minds need to be ever open; the work we do in education is for everyone and not a select few; and, most of all, the journey is the gift. I thank you for allowing me to be part of that journey.

It has been an honour and a pleasure and I wish you a long, healthy, and happy next phase of your life, especially sharing it with your wonderful Susan.

A grand accomplishment

I made a breakthrough today on something that has been bugging me for quite some time.

What is amazing about this breakthrough is that I made it by NOT doing something.

I have a project to build a series of resources for a particular aspect of my teaching and I felt that I needed to build a philosophical rationale to explain and support the work I was doing. I spent several days building a framework and today I got to writing. As the day went on, the writing became a rant and the rant became richer and more refined, and I even rebuilt my blogging theme to allow this grand gesture to have a great spot on the screen.

I copied and pasted the title and then I copied over the post and I read it again and tweaked it and reread it and… then I stopped.

I stopped as I realized just how my great and wonderful (and powerful) words could so easily be misunderstood and could cause others to be hurt or possibly cause some to shy away from the very thing I was attempting to address. I have no idea what stopped me today or why I could see what I had not seen for the previous days but I think I have just shown myself what I attempt to show others. I so desperately wanted to speak my words out loud and have others join in and push ideas around that I failed to see that the act of getting to this point was all I needed for me to be able to move forward with my project. I do not need to publicly jab at others or to whine in a disparaging way about seemingly important issues, rather I need to quietly go about the process of building my set of resources to support others and trust that those who need and use them will benefit.

 

When I was a boy…

When I was a boy I lived in the north eastern part of France (Metz) and December the 6th was a wonderful and magical day – It was known as Petit Noël and there was a parade with St Nicholas and Père Fouettard and there were gifts and it was grand fun. This memory has always been precious.

Unfortunately 25 years ago on December 6 an event occured that will forever change how I and many see December 6 . On December 6, 1989, fourteen women were murdered at École Polytechnique in Montreal and although on this day I find that I want to remember these wonderful childhood memories I am drawn to a world that I cannot comprehend or really understand. 14 beautiful lives were taken in their prime just because they were women. How can we possibly comprehend such hate and anger?

In these past 25 years there has continued to be a litany of crime focussed solely against women. Yes there have also been crimes against different racial, religious, and ethnic groups as well as everything and anything that human kind seems to be able to dream up. Yet somehow we must find a way to stand up and speak up about all of these events in some way. Why not start with this day – December 6 – a day to remember the lives lost to violence against women but also a day to keep this event alive in our memories so that we can be cognizant of behaviours that lead us down this dark path and work to prevent the growth and development of this unfortunate behaviour.

 

Re-Understanding

I know, this is probably not a real word but I am struggling to appreciate how our understanding of our world is interpreted and re-interpreted by subsequent generations. The other day in one of my classes my students were presenting material to the class as part of a 4th year seminar and in the discussion the students built an exercise whereby the class had to determine whether an individual fit into one of a number of categories. The class question dealt with corporate leaders and whether these leaders might be seen as either: icons, scoundrels, hidden gems, or silent killers. The presenting team put forward a variety of interesting individuals as part of this game and one of them was Mahatma Ghandi. As I listened to the various conversations in the class I began to realize that Ghandi was only seen as a hero: an icon who lead his people to the promised land of freedom and independence.

I am not suggesting that Ghandi should be viewed in any particular way but I challenged my students to see Ghandi in another way and I found it interesting that my alternate presentation of Ghandi was neither challenged nor appreciated. I suggested that besides being seen as an icon, Ghandi was also seen by some as a terrorist, a radical, and was at some point in his life tried, sentenced, and jailed for sedition. The British at the time for example, did not see him as either a hero or an icon so why is he so narrowly seen as one today? I wanted my students to attempt to understand just how perspective impacts how we view the world and to understand our world with as complete a historical lens as possible. It is my belief that only then can we attempt to more clearly navigate this very complex 21st century. I realized that my sidepiece about Ghandi was not part of the larger class conversation but the very simplistic and shallow view students appeared to have about the facts in front of them caused me to be challenged by what I saw as a significant void in our general understanding about our world and a similar void in pushing the boundaries of our beliefs and acceptance of what we are being fed on a daily basis through our socio-political processes.

I have just finished reading a book titled A People’s History of the Vietnam War by Jonathan Neale. I found this book enlightening and fascinating. I can understand why the book challenges some, but what really worked for me was the author’s continued attempt to connect global/historical events and attempt to put things into some form of greater perspective. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Geo-political global events are so very interconnected in so many ways and I appreciated how the author worked to show these long-term historical, political, and economic connections. Yes the author rants and wanders off at times but as a reader you either work with it and find how the rants connect to the larger story or not. I did not find the sidepieces overly distracting probably because of my personal worldview. There are so many connections that shape every corner of the globe and we cannot see our world through a simplistic and isolated lens – we have to question everything. It has always been so and our past is littered with examples of the impact of our “I see nothing” or “it does not impact me” viewpoint. I want my students to doubt, to ask questions and to know that at times that which they face is nothing more than a façade placed in front of them for many reasons and they should be sufficiently curious to ask about the man behind the curtain. If nothing else, I hope that the strength of curiosity and willingness to doubt and to challenge will help to strengthen and build engaging and open-minded leaders.

An Olfactory Serenade

We take photographs with all sorts of gadgets and we record sounds with an equal number of devices all in the hope that we can capture some moment, some special event or time that we wish to share and make available for some future time. What we cannot really capture are smells – those olfactory moments that grab our attention in both positive and at times, challenging ways.

This evening as I sit working at my siren of hope and beacon of light I am serenaded by a sweet and beautiful scent from somewhere in my neighborhood. Probably some fresh cut item in a nearby garden. The evening air is cool yet mixed with this fragrant dance from some organic source hidden in the darkness of the evening.

The day has been rich and warm and those in the neighborhood seemed to glide in a peaceful way that comes with a quietude associated with late summer. I savour the moments and the accompanying peace.

I dies at you…

“I dies at you” — Well I suppose I could have said “kjds devtvtwrv reqfrg” or something similar and then some rube’ish soul might suggest that the latter means the same as the former, but thanks to my wonderful students from another Canadian island, I have learned that these words is real.  Yes, for example I must learn to say “stay where you’re to and I’ll come where you’re at”. Hmmm.

You see, on my island in the Pacific we have been left with the vestiges of 19th century workingman’s English as well as a twinge of some form of pretentious English that has hung on for generations even though there hasn’t been an Englishman in the family for 5 generations. Yet amazingly, 97.6% of our friends from the “1/2 hour ahead” region in Canada claim their mother tongue to be something called “Newfoundland English”. This is so very cool.

I am teaching in an online program where at the start of the program students attend a 2-week on-campus residency. This past Friday evening my students had a pub night in town and I was invited. My students are from the far reaches of this country. Some teach offshore in exciting places and some speak the Queen’s English quite different from ways I understand it. But… this is the fun part. Yes there is a version of the English language (or dialect – you pick) spoken in Canada (other than 15th century French) that is unique. Check it out – there is a Wikipedia page.

Put together 14 adults on a university campus for 2 weeks and after a long academic week it was so much fun to be a part of the dialect shenanigans. It was grand fun and I only wish I could have been able to correctly adapted to the linguistic challenges that a noisy bar and energetic young, eager students seem to embrace as though it was their second nature.

Besides learning to appreciate (and have fun) with the language it was a treat to be a part of student, after-class dynamics. The energy was electric and although I do have a vague memory of such social events in my past, it helped remind me that it is events such as these that help to bind and bond us as we head on new adventures. In education we speak often about “community” and we talk about all sorts of ways of building communities both face-to-face as well as online. There are gimmicks and strained activities forced upon our students however at the end of the day it is these wonderful social affairs that serve to help us find our place.

I see a great community of learners and although I have focused on a few who have worked hard to welcome me into their linguistic world, I am very fortunate to be a part of a wonderful community of supportive and supporting learners who are getting ready to launch into a 2-year academic journey. Lessons learned and then some.

Why Blog?

Some years ago I overheard a fellow teacher state something to the effect that metaphorically the halls of our college were the place where students can and should trip and fall so that that by the time they completed their program they would have learned what was needed to stand on their own and be successful beyond the halls and walls of the institution. This is a face-to-face college and at the time the statement resonated with me although over the years I have wondered about the “trip and fall” part of this and just what shape this might take.

I believe that the process of things is very important and I wonder if the process of blogging can be a benefit in the finding of one’s voice and the honing one’s thoughts. In other words, can blogging become a form of trial and error testing or serve as a form of trip and fall? One of my excuses for not blogging very often is the time it takes. I fuss and I rewrite and rethink my words to death and in the end there is little left to post. I rationalize and I get in my own way instead of posting my thinking (complete or otherwise) and letting it fly for others to either engage with or not. Many good ideas get shelved because of this “I’m not sure it’s good enough” attitude.

Years ago my Master’s supervisor repeatedly had to tell me to stop reading and start write. I argued that I wasn’t ready and I needed to refine my thinking further. She wisely told me that I would never be ready if I believed I needed everything refined and supposedly perfect before I wrote. I finally realized that my writing barrier was that I wanted a finished, completed and correct product the first time I wrote. Yet when I finally found that part of me that permitted me to write; my successful thesis presented itself. My supervisor could finally see my ideas and could assist me in refining my thinking. I did not see this as tripping and falling but I did begin to understand the honing process.

I believe that knowledge is socially constructed and that knowledge itself is a process that we need to share yet if we wait for everything to be perfect nothing will ever be produced. Each successfully created product just becomes another process piece and the cycle repeats itself in a process of refinement. Unless we find ways to continually share both the product and the process we prevent ourselves from learning how to stand on our own and grow in our success.

OK I get it –stop rewriting and hit post.

Remembrance Day #November11

We are encouraged to remember on this special day – November 11, Remembrance Day.

But what if we have no baseline upon which to build a remembrance? What if we have never been taught or shown the relevance or significance of this day or even how it can and should touch each and everyone of us like no other day in the year? How can we ask the world, our town, the square upon which we stand, or those in the grocery store line-up to go silent for 2 minutes at 11am on November 11 when many have no concept of the meaning of this event?

The Canadian Legion has a tag line for this day that says “Lest we forget”.  Forget what? In order to go there, to have something that we can dearly hold on to and must not forget however, we need to create a world of meaning and a world from which remembrance can be built and sustained. Only then we can keep alive the flame of remembrance and not forget the sacrifice of men and women who stepped out to help keep alive the idea and the belief we have in this special country of ours.

What is this day and this time? What does it mean beyond the dead and long forgotten soldiers of wars past? Is there something more? Is this day about us as Canadians and what we have done in the past and continue to do to preserve what we care about and believe in?

Yes there are other people and countries who take time on this day to commemorate events from long ago. But in Canada, our day is about Canadians; men and women who willingly stepped out of their daily lives to go a great distance away from their families and step into great and challenging circumstances that forever changed their lives and the lives of those left behind at home. Many did not return home and many more returned home forever damaged in spirit and body. What is there to remember? Was this not long ago? Is this just history?

Oh course it is – history was yesterday and much of it is painful and we just want to move on and return to the life of “before” and the last thing Dad or Grandpa wants to hear is “Were you in the war? – Did you kill someone? – What happened to your friends?” We must find a way to respectfully understand, and honour, and appreciate, and learn, and keep alive the spirit of those who willingly stepped up and made a difference. We must learn first, and then maybe we can remember, and then share, and teach, and help to make November 11 a living memorial for us all.

I have never been to war, I have never fired a gun at another person or dropped a bomb on a city or had to run and duck for cover because bombs were being fired at me. My father and my grandfather, on the other hand were in these circumstances and their lives were changed forever because of their wars. They lost friends and family. They came home scarred and unable to talk of their experiences. Sadly I have a dear friend a year or 2 older than I who found himself in a war not that many years ago and I can only guess at the horrors he witnessed and was helpless to prevent.

Yes there are wars and horrors happening right now in too many places around the world but this must never stop us from taking 2 minutes, one day a year at 11 am on November 11 to think about those men and women who helped to shape our country by willingly going away to places and events that most of us cannot imagine. We are who we are today because of these people (family, friends, and many others) and the various events in our history that have shaped what we have today. We owe it to our fellow Canadians current and past to learn and to never forget and to take 2 minutes once a year to show our respect for their actions, their efforts and their lives.

The following was written in the Manchester Guardian on 12 November 1919.

Know your history – recognize the dates – read it and just imagine how terribly painful yet powerful this memorial event must have been.

The First Two Minute Silence in London (11 November 1919)

The first stroke of eleven produced a magical effect.

The tram cars glided into stillness, motors ceased to cough and fume, and stopped dead, and the mighty-limbed dray horses hunched back upon their loads and stopped also, seeming to do it of their own volition.

Someone took off his hat, and with a nervous hesitancy the rest of the men bowed their heads also. Here and there an old soldier could be detected slipping unconsciously into the posture of ‘attention’. An elderly woman, not far away, wiped her eyes, and the man beside her looked white and stern. Everyone stood very still … The hush deepened. It had spread over the whole city and become so pronounced as to impress one with a sense of audibility. It was a silence which was almost pain … And the spirit of memory brooded over it all.

 

Damn it – We just don’t seem to get it! (#teachasyoulive)

I always wonder where bigotry and intolerance begins.

We are so quick to point out what is happening elsewhere in the world and/or pick on others such that we fail to see how our behaviours and actions everyday create the potential for hatred and bigotry in our world. It is too easy to poke fun at or laugh at someone else’s situation than to stop for a moment and see the implications of our language or behaviours. I recently read a Facebook comment about the use of the word “hippie” and how a young boy suggested he did not want to be seen as a hippie because he didn’t want to be seen to be lazy. His mother happily posted this and her “friends” laughed at the suggestion and continued to foster their stereotypical dislike of this class of person. It was seen to be funny and like every other jab in our society the funny acceptance of this behaviour only serves to reinforce an “Us-and-Them” approach to our world: yes, intolerance and narrow minded bigotry. One individual did ask if anyone cared to understand the meaning of the term taken from Wikipedia “Personality traits and values that hippies tend to be associated with are “altruism and mysticism, honesty, joy and nonviolence”, but I sensed that this was lost on most in the conversation.

Many in our North American society profess to have a form of spiritual or faith world that they work with and within and they use this as a public (and not so public) crutch to explain their behaviours and their worlds. What is missing in many of these conversations is a depth of understanding and a breadth of appreciation of their supposed religious/spiritual attachments and its impact on their greater world. Do we not live who we are and thus what we reflect to the world? We talk about teaching our children but this teaching too often comes in the form of a list placed on the fridge: do this and don’t do that. Why not just skip the list and live the life we too often profess only in words.

I don’t think it is funny that a little boy would suggest that he didn’t want to be like a hippie because he didn’t want to be seen to be lazy. I think it is sad that he would have such a view at his young age and I think it is sad that a parent would think that the whole conversation was worthy of placing on Facebook in the hope that friends would join in on the apparent fun of it. Come on girl – don’t ya get it! It’s not funny; it’s sad that your child would think that way and it is even sadder that you would think to make this a public conversation.

 

A teacher’s marking paradigm shift (#learningallthetime)

I just finished a weeklong marking marathon that has caused me to re-examine my marking processes: what is important and how best to assess the work of my students given the changes in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in today’s classroom. I teach face-to-face at the undergraduate level and I teach fully online at the graduate level. More and more I deal with many of my students asynchronously, using a variety of ICT’s. Regardless of my teaching medium, I am attempting to do away with hardcopy and try to make available viewable and/or downloadable softcopy documents for my students and, in return ask for softcopy documents to be handed in for all assignments. Based upon the types of work I assign, most responses come to me in the form of a Word document.

I have found that marking softcopy Word files takes longer than hardcopy but I also believe I can provide richer commentary in the process. With Word documents I use various review features such as “Track Changes” and the “Comments” feature plus I use the text highlight feature to emphasize words as I read. I use all of these features as a means of “talking” to my students during my review and marking process. I think that in many cases this is becoming the norm today. Additionally I have experimented with converting documents to PDF files and added audio comments. (Adding audio comments in Word is a real pain). This process is picky, as you need to make sure that you set the sampling rate low so that your audio files do not become too large although I have found that I can have a fair bit of audio in an assignment and still keep the file size to less than 10mb. I believe however that audio comments will remain less used as long as file size and bandwidth concerns are an issue.

Marking up Word files as described above remains my number one reliable means of addressing student work and this past week I found myself floundering. The course I had been teaching was a graduate online course and for the final assignment students were offered an opportunity to present their work in any creative way they chose as long as it covered all of the points asked for in the assignment. I had no idea what kind of a process I was to be faced with when it came time to marking. Up to this point in the course students handed in “papers” where I demanded certain academic standards such as APA formatting of the document as well as proper citing of sources and a correctly formatted reference list. I pushed them in this way with the belief that they were heading towards their thesis after my course was finished and academic writing would be something they would need to remain familiar with. Great, you might ask – so then why give an assignment where students could present their work using whatever medium they felt was appropriate? There were many reasons for this and my co-facilitator Lisa deserves much of the credit for encouraging this altered view of an assignment but suffice it to say I received an amazing array of Prezi’s, Wiki’s, Google Docs, a YouTube, an MP3 audio file, several blogs, and a few academic papers, some in Word and some as PDF’s. These ran the full gamut from rich and thick full of ideas to thin and in much need of work. But how do I mark these – how can I read, listen, and watch without having track changes and comments available to annotate and discuss and “talk” to my students in this process? Now I know that some might just shake their heads and suggest that my supposed challenge is an easy fix yet this is a big challenge for a guy who no longer had access to his tried and true method for providing feedback.

Yes I found ways to make the marking work and yes it took a lot longer than it might have if I were just marking nicely formatted Word documents; however the richness and diversity of products was amazing. The different ways my students found to articulate their thinking was a great eye-opener for me. Some students indicated that they only wanted to hand in a traditional academic paper for the practice while others felt that they could express themselves more appropriately using a medium within which they felt more comfortable. I still got to see correctly formatted reference lists and in most cases I saw (or heard) citations in support of the literature being used. I had to find a way to make side-notes as I listened or watched and I created and annotated a checklist of questions I wanted answered. I stopped worrying about word counts and began to see different ways that today’s technologies offer rich and innovative opportunities for students to express themselves. As with any assignment and with the use of any tool, some individuals have a finer hand than others and some have a keener sense of what is needed to get the job done given the parameters and the depth of their commitment. Regardless, as I have always attempted to get my students to understand – education is all about the process and process is just another word for refinement. If I intend to keep pace with the evolution of the use of technologies in education then I need to continue to allow my students to push themselves as I was witness to this past week. Maybe we can all begin to see that learning is about learning and the environments within which learning can occur, and should be supported, are for and about learning regardless of the medium. I am a learner as are my students and dissonance is not necessarily a bad thing.