“Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT)” became the key term to describe a temporary technology led response to campus closures. (Hodges et al., 2020). South Africans assumed this would be over in 3 weeks. The shift online was supposed to be a short-term solution for an immediate crisis. But as the pandemic stretch from weeks into months, …
Author archives: Derek
Mentorship Building
Digital Mentorship… A long, long time ago, I was a member of a listserv. My subscription to IT Forum (run by itech1.coe.uga.edu), delivered a regular digest of technology and education expertise. ITFORUM was a mailing list for anyone who was interested in instructional technology. It was place to discuss theories, research, new paradigms, and practices …
Academic Blogging
These are notes I took while listening to guest speaker Alexandra Mihai (7 July 2021) on Zoom talking about academic blogging. Hosted by Dominic Pates and Jane Secker from Learning Enhancement and Development, who schedule monthly appointments for writing, using a blogs as the chosen medium for City University of London staff. This was their …
OE4BW – 2021
A few years ago, while scrolling through Twitter, I saw a link to an application to be mentored in the Open Education for a Better World (OE4BW) programme. I’d created many online and digital resources, but my efforts were often solitary and conversations around the work were limited to individual “client” updates. Work felt insular …
OEGlobal20 Conference
Open Education Global (OEG) is a global, members based, non-profit organization, promoting supporting the development and advancing the use of open education around the world. Creative Commons, is a member of OEG and as South Africa’s CC representative on the GNC, and interested especially in developing, implementing and supporting open education in South Africa, I …
Myanmar textbook authoring
Montrose is an international development project management and consultancy company providing support to clients operating in the developing world. I’ve been working with them on a project entitled “Strengthening Pre-service Teacher Education in Myanmar” and we have been redesigning the pre-service teacher education curriculum Middle school teachers in Myanmar receive four years of pre-service training …
A brief introduction to VoiceThread & micro- teaching
VoiceThread is a cloud-based application that run in your web browser and on almost any internet connection. VoiceThread allows you to upload, share and discuss documents, presentations, images, audio files and videos into a common space for an asynchronous group conversations. Viewers can comment on VoiceThread slides using one of five powerful commenting options: microphone, …
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House keeping
Conferences, seminars, workshops, colloquia often seem to kick off with “housekeeping”. Where’s the bathrooms? Announcement of meal times. What’s the wifi password. Reminder about venue rules. Introductions of attendees. Location for the bus to take you to the social activities in the evening. This is is key orientation information, to help you to navigate an …
Fundamentals of Avocado Production
A bit of background The Fundamentals of Avocado Production is an online course that I put together for AgriColleges. The course was designed as a proof of concept of a constructivist and mobile friendly course. The course is intended for remote students (usually drawn from the agricultural sector) and takes an active approach to learning. …
Workshop 2 – Design Thinking and the LMS
I’ve put together a “Design Thinking and the LMS” Workshop to introduce you to the design thinking process. Design thinking is a human-centered approach to solving problems using the tools of design to gather inspiration, build empathy, and create your solution. The design thinking approach and its mindset can help teachers and academics to solve …