Scot's+Journal

Journal Entries

 * Thursday, October 25** **and beyond**: Go here for future entries.


 * Tuesday, September 25**. I continue to be fascinated with the possibilities of maintaining relationships with colleagues, co-learners and friends in the online environment. Some have asked me why I am continually looking for new tools, new applications and new ways of doing online courses. I teach primarily in the online environment and so I do not have the opportunity for gathering in a room together with my students. While I appreciate the need for online courses and am confident that the learning experience for students can be rich and meaningful, I miss the continual and ongoing opportunities for live face-to-face interaction with my student colleagues. Much of my quest in this course then, is searching for ways by which we can experience fellowship and community in the online environment.
 * Wednesday, September 26.** I spent about 30 minutes in Second Life (SL) yesterday afternoon. I had been reviewing some bookmarked web sites relating to churches in SL. I found a review of a church sites and visited a place on Experience Island. There I found a huge church building with offices, auditorium, and lots of open space. This space reminded me a lot of what one might find in a large suburban church in Anytown USA. I met Silvia and her husband, from Spain, Zeke from Australia and A fellow from Chicago. The Chicagoan was a member of this virtual church and was preparing himself academically for "internet ministry". Zeke was a Christian and wondered why churches in SL were like churches in RL. Silvia and Damm (who spoke no English) and I carried on a conversation in English, Spanish and my pidgin Spanish. Silvia said that Jesus spoke "pretty words". She was quite interest ed in conversing with me about Jesus, who he is and what he taught. I told them about the story of the man who was beaten and hurting by the road and how he was helped by a stranger. Jesus used that story to teach us who our neighbor is (those in need that we encounter on our way) and what our responsibility is (to help).

I asked the church member if there was much interchange between Christians and others in SL. He said that there were few "safe places" in SL. He cautioned me against bringing students into SL as, other than a few church sites it was filled with sex and sinners. I asked him about mission work. That is, what was going on to establish relationships between Christians and sinners. He told me that he did not know of much, other than some church members passing out cards inviting people to visit church. I am beginning to see a picture. Perhaps SL is really a good mirror of RL in regard to how Christians live their lives. More to come...


 * Friday, September 28.** I spent a little time in SL yesterday, visiting Capitol Hill, amidst the swirling leaves of autumn. I met a landscape architect there who was working with some trees. I toured the Mall and took this shot of an elephant that was visiting the grounds. I also had a good visit with my friend, Joop van Schie, who lives in the Netherlands and works as an educational technologist. Joop is currently investigating the use of SL for educational purposes and has a helpful [|blog] in which he reviews educational activities there. Joop and I use Skype to communicate with one another. [|Skype] is a free compter-to-computer voice and text chat application. It has been a great tool for interacting with colleagues all over the world. I suggest you investigate its use! If you install Skype and want to try it out, my username is scotheadley. Give me a call.By the way, for all of you who think the life of an online instructor is all-encompassing, never ending toil, I offer you this. Celebrate the day!
 * Thursday, October 4**: I am preparing a proposal for the [|SITE conference] which would feature a panel discussion with four participants. The panel would discuss four different projects looking at the usability of Web 2.0 applications. I am working with Sean McKay, from George Fox, Joop van Schie, working with the Dutch Ministry of Education, and Doug Mauger from Vancouver (BC) Community College. We are making use of Google Groups for holding our files, and Skype for live voice and chat conferencing. I have found Sykpe to be an excellent tool for staying in touch with colleagues from around the world. More to come on the proposal as we firm it up over the next several weeks. Second Life, diigo and wikis are the three applications we are examining.


 * Wednesday, October 10:** Today I attended a meeting at the Murdock Charitable Trust, in Vancouver, WA. Personnel from the trust interacted with representatives from four Christian Universities and four Associations of Christian Schools. The purpose of the meeting was to determine what would be needed to address needs of Christian K-12 schools and educators who work in those schools. How this meeting relates to the content of our course is that all four of the universities acknowledged the need for and pervasiveness of internet-based distance education. There was a lot of discussion about how the internet has opened up great opportunities for educators in access to information, people and educational activities. To think that ten years ago, most Christian schools had not even thought to do this in contrast to what is happening today is somewhat satisfying for me. What was once perceived as a marginal and somewhat untested medium has now been recognized as vitally important for helping Christian educators advance in their professional growth.


 * Thursday, October 11**: I just got back from two trips today. One trip was out to Grand Ronde, where my colleague, [|Sean] and I met with several staffers in the Education Department for the Confederated Tribes. We were exploring possible usage of Web 2.0 applications for educational use. In addition, Sean and I took a trip to Swain, in Second Life (SL), where we met with [|Joop Zuhal], a Dutch educator, who is conducing a research study on the use of SL in education. Sean participated in a survey and I observed and we helped Joop refine his method so as to get good information in the study.

I returned to SL for a brief time yesterday evening. I visited a charismatic congregation and met an Anglican visitor there named Aelred. He told me about an Anglican community in SL. I visited the cathedral and met the leader of the community. I joined their group and visited with several men there. At the charismatic meeting, there were about 15 people. We visited and then some young women started dancing, then there was a light show.


 * Monday, October 15**: I had a great time renewing my connection with Pokey Edelman after the Friends meeting for worship in SL on Saturday. Pokey lives in Oklahoma. I also met Gabriel on Capitol Hill, who has family ties to George Fox. Over the week end, I worked with Doug on designing and implementing a research project on the use of [|Diigo] for educational purposes. We have 35 potential participants, most of whom are teacher educators at [|CCCU] institutions across North America. The purpose of the project is to determine factors contributing to adoption of new web-based technologies and possible uses of diigo for teaching and learning.


 * Friday, October 19**: I completed the proposal for the SITE conference yesterday, had my colleagues review it and submitted it to the conference site for peer review. I have included a copy of the proposal here, if you would like to take a look at it.[[file:Perspectives on Evaluating.doc]]


 * Tuesday, October 23**: I am in Seattle for the [|EDUCAUSE conference]. Educause bills itself as the premier IT conference for higher education. This is not primarily an academic conference. It is a conference that brings IT vendors together with IT professionals in colleges and universities. There are several academic tracks, though and I am here with my colleague Sean McKay, to present a poster session at the conference. The session is on the use of Second Life in higher education. I was overwhelmed this afternoon as I walked around the exhibit hall. Every IT vendor you have ever heard of, plus hundreds more that you had no idea existed are here in force.


 * Thursday, October 25**: Go here for future entries.