The Catch: Issue #9

What’s happening in technology-enabled learning this week?

Photo by Bonnie Kittle on Unsplash.

The Cutting/Trailing Edge

The jury is still out on who ‘12 Apps of Christmas’-ed better; BC’s Educational Technology Users Group (@etug), or the University of Windsor’s Office of Open Learning. Although the U of W included our Open Textbook Library, so bonus points for that! Any attempts to make it more of a heated competition on our part only lead to jovial sharing and mutual admiration between the two. Gross!

What we definitely got out of it were some great new tools to try out. If you are in a state of disbelief about the previous statement, have a look at Liberating Structures. We could tell you what it is here, but then you might not click the link and see the wonderful layout and description of the app and its uses put together by Leva Lee, @levalee.

What’re you DoOOing?

Here at Catch HQ, we spell DoOO funny, but that’s for a good reason. It refers to the practice of maintaining a Domain of One’s Own. Have a gander at the transcript for a talk Audrey Watters gave on just how important the topic is to her. Sometimes, when educators maintain these domains, you as a visitor are immediately hooked into a wonderful pile of engaging, open, and innovative ideas. Just have a look at The Theory Blog by Bonnie Stewart from the University of PEI.

Oh and guess what? Bonnie, along with Dr. Natalie Delia Deckard and Davidson College’s open online learning series Davidson Now are running a short “Pop-up MOOC” called Engagement in a Time of Polarization. So far a small group of Ontario PSE educators have signed up. Read up on it here and/or join the course by registering here!

Network Connectivity

The Network Connectivity section is not here to help you hook into the wifi. You’ve probably already done that if you’re accessing this blog. It’s here to hook you into a network of Ontario post-secondary educators by introducing someone that may be able to act as a node in your personal/professional learning network.

This week, we feature Jessica O’Reilly from Cambrian College’s Teaching & Learning Hub. Jessica is an Instructional Developer at Cambrian as well as one of eCampusOntario’s Open Fellows. Just have a look at the video that she submitted as part of her application to be an Open Fellow and you’ll see why she made the cut.

Follow her on Twitter here and you might as well follow Cambrian Hub while you’re at it. And if you want to learn more about Jessica, tune in to voicEd Radio Friday morning at 9:00 a.m. to hear her interviewed on Gettin’ Air. Or find her episode on the On Demand page for the show here.

Open Treasure

Typically the Open Treasure section is used to reveal a treasure trove of open resources. You need a map to treasures even if they aren’t hidden. This week we want to point you in the direction of things and people that have been certified as treasures. We figure that if something has won some kind of award, it qualifies as an open treasure. For example, The Best in Show, Learner Centred award from the Technology Enabled Seminar and Showcase 2017 went to the open online modules and serious game Therapeutic Communication and Mental Health Assessment developed by Ryerson, George Brown and Centennial. See the other winners here.

The Catch is a weekly blog post on ecampusontario.ca curated, created, and collaborated on by the eCampusOntario Program Managers: Terry Greene, Peg French, Joanne Kehoe, and Jenni Hayman. Other contributors include… you? Let us know if you have something that you think would fit nicely in here by emailing thecatch@ecampusontario.ca with the subject heading “Catch This!” or whichever subject heading you want to use, really.