Tuesday, November 28, 2017

My PhD Journey - Musing #8 - It's raining....again....

It's raining....again....the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales has had an unusual second half Spring season with cooler temperatures and lots of rain. Good for our water-thirsty garden - but not so good for my ambition to walk on the beach this morning.

Oh well....back to the blog, and my musings, which have been much neglected. Since the last PhD post on October 17 I have been to China and back and taken a weeks 'holiday' to mark my husband's retirement. Yes, after 46 years in K-12 education, my ever-ready spouse has decided it is enough (and I agree!) and has officially retired. So....you can picture the scenario...I work from home, and he is now retired....we are working it out as we go.

My China trip was exhausting (maybe I am getting too old for this? no!). As a Learning2 Leader at the L2Asia conference I ran 2 workshops and prepared a short talk - the talk took me a long time to get ready - and it wasn't on the 'surviving your PhD' topic I suggested in my last blog post. I went for my other passion.....which is of course PhD related -  'Global Collaboration - Learning on the Edge' sharing examples of global collaborative learning and reasons as to why this should be a vital part of education at all levels of K-12.



Next week I am heading to Toowoomba (University of Southern Queensland, and where I am a PhD student) to the ASCILITE Conference (Australian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education). So excited and nervous to be co-presenting an academic paper based on my PhD research. This is a VERY big step for me. Despite years of presenting and leading and keynoting conferences with a totally or predominantly K-12 focus, I am quite nervous about this one because it is in the Higher Education area. I did present my developing research at the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) conference in 2016 at a round table format - and that challenged my skills to speak about my research. Now, at ASCILITE it is a formal (albeit short - 30 minutes) session where we plan to succinctly share the following:
  • What is online global collaboration and why is it important?
  • Online global collaboration - affordances and inhibitors
  • Teacher education - implications
The co-author of the 10-page paper accepted by ASCILITE is one of my PhD supervisors, Dr Petrea Redmond. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Southern Queensland with a focus on educational technology - and a real dynamo!

Meanwhile my PhD has taken a back step with everything else that is going on - but I do have a supervisor's meeting in Toowoomba next week so better get moving on some work before then. 

Listening to soft rain punctuated by shrill calls from the pair of Eastern Whip Birds that have taken up residence in our garden recently. I think they might be nesting. That link has an audio recording showing the male call with the female 'choo-choo' response. This video is a polished artefact sharing mainly the male call.




Back to the real world.....see you next Tuesday, or one not long after that!

Julie Lindsay
PhD student......surviving in the wild.

Thursday, November 23, 2017

Case Study 4.6: Leadership for Global Learning - Judy O'Connell

The Global Educator - Case Study 4.6

Leadership for Global Learning: A Reflection on Higher Education Experiences in Australia

Judy O'Connell

 

Judy, currently a Senior Lecturer at Charles Sturt University, is an astute and passionate educator. She was my catalyst into working at the higher education level and continues to be a role model for best practices in education, especially when using online technologies. In this case study Judy shares her journey from High School English teacher, to be a leader in school libraries, and now a leader in the tertiary sector. In this case study her understanding about knowledge and information in a digital society is shared in relation to being a global connected educator. Judy also comments on teacher education in Australia with special mention of the new Masters degree she launched at CSU - Master of Education (Knowledge Networks and Digital Innovation) which, in her words "aims to develop agile leaders in new cultures of digital formal and informal learning".

Connect with Judy
Twitter: @heyjudeonline

DOWNLOAD the full case study

In Judy's words....



As an update Judy is completing her EdD at LaTrobe University and continues to push boundaries for learning with peers and students. One of her favourite sites is Top 200 Tools for Learning 2017.

In the past year she created the CSU '23 Things for Digital Knowledge', an open source tool that anyone can access and learn at their own pace. 

A recent article by Judy published online in the New South Wales educational research magazine SCAN:
O’Connell, J. (2017). Mastering the art of digital scholarship: from mind to mind. Scan, 35(4), pp. 39-45.


This is the 15th post in what is a regular series featuring the 36 case studies from my book, 'The Global Educator: Leveraging Technology for Collaborative Learning and Teaching'. This book was published by the International Society for Technology in Education in July 2016. The book contains contributions from over 100 educators and case studies featuring over 50 educators.

Read more about The Global Educator and find out where to purchase the hard copy and eBook/ePub versions. Access other Case Studies in this series.

Julie Lindsay is the author of The Global Educator, and of this blog. 
Connect with Julie
 - Twitter @julielindsay
 - about.me/julielindsay

Sunday, November 19, 2017

Global Education Highlights (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.