Putting the pedagogic horse in front of the technology cart

Michael Sankey, Learning Futures, Griffith University This article was originally published in Chinese, as a peer reviewed article in the Journal of Distance Education in China. Citation: Sankey, M. (2020). Putting the pedagogic horse in front of the technology cart. Journal of Distance Education in China. 5, pp .46-53. DOI:10.13541/j.cnki.chinade.2020.05.006 Both the original Chinese version and an English […]

Teaching on-line in the present crisis (COVID-19): What you need to know now

The last thing our teachers and students need right now, particularly those who haven’t been using technology, is to be told to embrace all the new bells and whistles. This article first appeared in Campus Morning mail in two parts on the 15th and 16th of March 2020. See: http://bit.ly/2UiC3Gb Part 1 If institutions are […]

LMS – VLE and/or Productivity Tools

Over the last week I have posted a couple of LinkedIn posts that have generated quite a bit of interest, but because LinkedIn can be a bit of a closed shop, and thanks to a prompt from Stephen Downes I thought I should probably put these thoughts down a bit more formally. Post 1 was […]

The mythical great eel in the sky

When walking in the Mount Coot-thaBotanical Gardens in Brisbane, I just happened to catch a glimpse of the mythical great eel in the sky, emerging from the depths of the clouds. I had long heard of its existence, but never been privileged enough to see it, until this day. I just happened to look down, not realising, at […]

Discovering further horizons

I was recently challenged in my thinking when we had a guest speaker come to USQ who said (words to the effect of), we could talk about the future and plan for the future, but in reality we cannot see more than 2 years ahead with any certainty. I thought, that’s a bit depressing, what about […]

Achieving excellence: Sometimes there are a couple of ways of looking at things

Sometimes I get so engrossed in what I am doing that I am completely oblivious to what else is happening around me. On the other-hand, to get the most out of what I am doing I also have to put everything into-it, so that I can get the very best result. It would appear from popular literature that if you want to […]

What goes around comes around

The democratization of photography has gone hand-in-hand with the advent of the devices used to allow for the ubiquitous production of images that speak to an individuals’ interaction and engagement with the world around them. From the Kodak Instamatic, to the Polaroid Land Camera, to the digital point and shoot, to the iPhone (mobile device) […]

The snail of e-learning = stress less

My wife and I were sitting down, just having a wee chat and a cuppa the other day, when we noticed this snail on the outside of window. To all intents and purposes it did not seem to be moving. The more I concentrated on it the more convinced I was that it was just […]

Sometimes you need just one win

Recently my wife and I enjoyed playing some games of Yahtzee. We have done this quite a bit over the years and have also enjoyed playing it with the children when they were at home. The thing about Yahtzee is that, seemingly, it is all down to chance; that is how the dice role and […]

The joy of academic life

I have now been an academic staff member at USQ for some 12 years and have worked in Higher Education for some 23 years, so I suspect I can now reflect, to some degree, as to the virtues or otherwise of such a ‘privileged’ position. The notion that an academic is a person cloistered in […]