More (or less) original insights from an old blogger
After exporting my blog pages and importing them to Hugo, I now have a temporary version of my blog on GitHub pages at cpjobling.github.io/blog.cpjobling.net. It automatically updates when I commit and push to GitHub from my local git repository.
The story of the conversion is here: Transitioning from Word Press to Hugo
Instructions for publishing a blog post from Hugo is here: Hosting on GitHub.
Hugo is a static web generator written in Go. I’m thinking of exporting this WordPress site to Hugo so that all the posts, pages and assets are text, easily version controlled and ready for writing as I transition from academia to private life.
I’ll keep notes on the process and post them in the new Hugo site.
Yesterday, I received my copy of Martin Weller’s book 25 Years of Ed Tech. Inspired by Chapter 2 The Web (1995), I travelled back in time to my own first attempt to teach online. I visited the Way Back Machine (web.archive.org) to discover that the first official University website (www.swan.ac.uk) was archived on 11th December 1997.
Navigating through that web site, I discovered that the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering website (which I built) was archived a few months earlier. I also rediscovered that I had published a potted history of the Electronic and Electrical Engineering web site on this blog.
In the spirit of celebrating my own 35-year career in teaching, I looked back at my own first attempt at e-learning. And here is my web site for EE208: Control Systems, circa May 1997.
The course notes were created using LaTex2HTML, but unfortunately, the images and the mathematics, which was presented using images, have rotted in the archive. Today I use Markdown for my lecture notes, and MathJax for math generation, but the technology that delivers my content to students still web-based.
So for me, like most ed-tech folks, the key technology in my teaching career has been the World Wide Web. The difference now, for most of us, is that we don’t need to know that!
Yesterday was the 12th Annual conference of the Swansea Academy of Learning and Teaching (SALT) which, due to circumstances, had to be held on line. I attended but didn’t present but as usual I came away with a head full of ideas and links to follow up on.
The highlights for me were the session on formative feedback by Monika Seisenberger and Teaching Award winner Liam O’Brien from Computer Science; the Coffee Lounge where I met up with folks for the first time since March; the talk on aligning our Canvas tools to the future of assessment with Instructure’s Jonathan Perry (beamed live from Britains most boring town and Birthplace of Margaret Thatcher Grantham, Lincs.) ; and the panel on the values and assumptions of assessment and feedback chaired by Swansea University’s Dean of Assessment Jo Berry.
My unordered notes, thoughts and links shared by the participants are recorded in my Journal.
News of several useful Advance HE guides arrived in my email inbox today curtesy of Stuart Norton of the Learning and Teaching Network of Advance HE Connect.
Day 36 of the first 2020 Covid-19 Lockdown
I’m a bit envious of the Covid-19 journals of my friends and colleagues Chrissi Nerantzi and Sheila MacNeill so today I thought I’d try an experiment and post my Crispy Journal entry for 28th April 2020 here in my blog. There was a bit of formatting to do to convert TiddlyWiki markup to WordPress blocks which would go away if I used MarkDown in both places. I think it might be better going forward to just link to the Journal page and post some highlights and a reflection. But, hey, what is a Covid-19 lockdown if it isn’t a chance to experiment.
In this time when personal contact with our students is so important I have to comment:
On Monday I attended the launch and first public lecture of the Swansea University’s centenary celebration Swansea 2020 and the launch of the Centenary Essays site.
At the lecture, Sam Blaxland, the historian appointed by the University to write the history of the University’s first 100 years, gave us an excellent overview of the highlights of that centenary and how he went about writing the book which will be released in June.
On Wednesday, in the lead up to the LTHChat (wakelet), my Twitter colleague Simon Rae asked me how I thought the original academics who welcomed the first 80 odd students to enrol in 1920 might have viewed Twitter:
To which I replied:
This led to this interesting conversation between Simon and Sam (tweeting as @Swansea2020) which I include in full:
Sam’s approach to writing his history included the use of oral history and he has interviewed hundreds of people over the three-year project. He has adapted these skills further by hosting the University’s Exploring Global Problems Podcast an excellent series that is worth a listen!
On this first day of the winter break, I will be reading “In at the Deep End“, a new resource from the Learning and Technology Academy at Heriot-Watt University.
Our thanks to friend and advocate of lecturers and author of the original Lecturer’s Toolkit, Phil Race:
It’s also worth calling out the other resources to be found on the Inspiring Teaching website:
Lots here for getting your teacher’s head back in the right place in advance of 2020.
If you prefer your tips in Video form, there’s also a YouTube channel from the LTA at Heriott-Watt featuring Phil Race and his wife Sally Brown that’s also worth a watch https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmhOCPbOa9jVMDVKufGLuGw.
Cross posted on the LTEC Blog [private resource].
