Elearning Update - Cape Town 3,4 September, 2009

So, having been sort of outside the mainstream of elearning in South Africa, I thought it would be useful to "Stir the Pot" a little again!

So, together with SSIR Schools Internet Resources, EpiUse learning, and a number of other friends, former colleagues and former students I am arranging an ELEARNING UPDATE in Cape Town.

The programme is coming on really nicely.

You can check it out at http://tinylink.com/?RJ557cAy9r

The beginning or the third year!

This month marks the beginning of my THIRD year at CPUT.
I find it hard to believe that we have survived two years together.
What troubles me, though is that, although I arrived here with stars in my eyes and high hopes for the future, after two years I get the idea that nothing has changed. That, instead of changing the Faculty, the Faculty has changed me.
Furthermore, I need to know if I am on the right track. I started here saying that my main job is to ensure that the Faculty staff achieve their objectives.
So, I need to meet with you and your department as soon as possible during a regular departmental meeting.
I need you to put three things on the agenda.
a. What has changed in the last two years? (What are we doing differently, what are we experiencing differently - for better and for worse).
b. What are your plans (each individual, or the department - I leave that to you) for the next three years?
c. What must the Dean do next?

I look forward to an open and frank, yet positive discussion.

What is it with conferences

So here I am sitting in a conference and spending the time updating my blog, my Facebook page, my Twitter, and even re-arranging my hard drive - while up in front a sequence of pretentious people are READING out loud a lot of pompous generalisations that they are presenting as science.

Moreover, not only do they read in boring monotone, they also stumble over their words.

And I could have read it all in about a quarter of the time.

Why do people do this!

How can one revise what happens at conferences that it actually becomes interesting!!!

Swakop

We are staying in the most beautiful place - the Swakopmund hotel, which used to be the railway station.

I am working with sixteen delegates from Namibia and Kenya and we are working on developing e-learning strategies for about four or five institions.

What I am enjoying most about it is testing my model that integrates the Balanced Scorecard and the ADDIE model.

I will be reporting on it during the E-Learning update on 3/4 September.

Brussels

Prof Piet Kommers of the University of Twente in Enschede, the Netherlands was instrumental in getting me to Brussels last week.

He asked me to be the respondent for a document that he had written for a European Union-sponsored report on the social impact of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies). Piet wrote the section on lifelong learning.

This commitment required some juggling of my diary. I had agreed to go to Kartoum, Sudan, and Swakopmund, Namibia, and finally Johannesburg. I thought I could combine all three. Turns out that the costs involved would be enormous. The result was that I postponed Khartoum, and separated all the trips.

It turns out that the fastest, and cheapest way to get from Johannesburg to Brussels, is on Ethiopian Airways via Addis Ababa and Paris - 16 hours and your're there.

Meanwhile Jolanda de Villiers Morkel of CPUT department of Architecture put me in contact with Dolf Wieers, a retired architect, who has had a long-standing relationship with our Department. Dolf thought it would be a good idea to take me on a trip to Ghent, and his brother, Paul was kind enough to lead me around through Brussels. I took myself on a trip to Antwerp.

You can see the pictoral evidence on my Facebook profile in an album called Belgium 2009.

Paul Wieers speaks no English, so it gave me the opportunity to learn Flemish in a great hurry. You just speak Afrikaans slowly and with a terrible accent (ha ha ha). It was great to get to the stories behind the stories of all the institutions and constructions in Brussels, and Paul, a trained tour guide and teacher at heart was careful to stop from time to time and to quizz me to ensure that I was learning. (In what year was the main square bombed? And what are the dates on these buildings...)

Ghent is an amazingly beautiful city, and having an architect take you around and point out sites of historical and architectural importance was a rare privilege.

Then it was on to the European Union. As I was getting ready to sit down the chap next to me was fiddling with the plug of his computer, and I saw a little bit of his name tag. His surname was Van Oranje. This, I thought, was rather a grand surname. Then his name became visible and it turns out to be Constantijn. Oh gosh, I thought. How funny, a really grand surname like Van Oranje, matched with a really grand sounding name of Constantijn. So I asked the chap if he was related to the Dutch Royal Family whom I know to be called Van Oranje. "Sort of" he replied. I then mentioned to him that we had a whole provinde named after them, but that we changed the Orange bit after 1994.

Then it dawned on me that he might well be PRINCE Constantijn of Orange. When I looked more closely at his name tag, I notice he had blacked out the word "Prins"! Piet Kommers took a picture for my "Big Trees" collection.

The presentations at the EU were very interesting, and I will be reporting more closely on what I have learnt - once the report has been published.

All in all it was a tremendous experience, and the only thing that I regretted is not taking some or all of my famliy along to share it!

Pieter

I have devoted quite a bit of space on this blog in celebrating some kind of award. The very post preceding this one is in praise of our Faculty winning the best stand at open day. Somewhere earlier I praise myself for winning the ICT achiever award, and so it goes on.

But if ever there is someone who strongly deserves an international award, then it is my brother, Pieter.

But he does not live in a realm that gives awards, and, although he does so much for which he deserves awards - there simply are not institutions that have awards for people who do exceptional things, do them well, and go unrecognised.

Professionally he is a medical specialist - an anaesthetist. He spends his days in an operating theatre keeping people alive, while the surgeon, the dentist or the gynaecologist performs a procedure. Then, when the operation is done, and the patient is awake, he goes away, unrecognised, and unsung.

Otherwise he spends his time keeping the bodies of brain-dead people alive while the doctors harvest their organs for transplant - so that other people can live. While we celebrate the new life that other people receive, we seldom recognise that someone has to be there to assist the dying person in giving the ultimate gift. And again, while we know that there is a surgeon who harvests the organ we fail to remember that there is an anaesthetist who cares for the donor.

He is not married and has not kids. So he does not get the automatic praise that goes with being a dad (My dad is stronger than yours). Nor does he get to be elevated on Father's day - my kids sometimes even forget that he is their godfather! But on windy days he is out on the sportsfields of the Groenkloof Campus teaching some kids from the Bramley home to build and fly kites - that act of family togetherness that was made so special in Mary Poppins.

He is the vice-chair of the Tuks Road Running Club. Not the chair - the vice chair. The one who works in the background, seeing that the tent is up, the beers are bought and the phyisotherapists are lined up. The medals he gets are silver and bronze - the same ones that everyone gets.

If he is not knitting the most difficult, elaborate aran pattern jerseys, working out the design as he goes along, then he picks away at his silent guitar - working away diligently at really complicated pieces, but not intending to take it to the stage - preferring to work in the wings, and to put others, like James Grace, on the stage instead.

Arranging concerts has become a way of life for him over the past few years. His first concert had two aims - to expose new talent, and to raise funds for Bramley Children's Home. It was a huge success, and it launched the careers of a couple of classical musicians. Then he did one with Helena Hettema to unite with old friends. The venues, like him, are the unknown jewels, hidden away somewhere in Pretoria - the Nazareth House Chappel, the Groenkloof Campus Auditorium. He covers the basic costs himself, and donates the proceeds to charity. His Christmas concerts have become eagerly anticipated events.

Last Saturday and Sunday he was responsible for two concerts by Laurika Rauch - a personal triumph for him - and at the same time a nerve wracking experience for his closest supporters - our mother, and Lucille Weyer of the Groenkloof Campus. And both concerts were hugely successful!

Over the years he has donated almost R100 000 to various institutions. And none of them have ever tought of having a dinner in his honour, or even to present him with something as simple as a certificate of thanks.

And so I felt it is necessary to change that. He deserves a medal of honour - he deserves a poem to be read like Barack Obama. So, here is a medal of honour, and here is the poem.

Way to go, Bro, ek is trots op jou!

PRAISE SONG FOR THE DAY

A Poem for Barack Obama's Presidential Inauguaration

by Elizabeth Alexander

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each other's eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky. A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smoooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know there's something better down the road."

We need to find a place where we are safe; we walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign, the figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thyself."

Others by "First do no harm," or "Take no more than you need."

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

We won again

Congratulations to the Department of Public Relations!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They have made the Faculty proud.

They ran our open day as a project. They raised funds, build stalls and produced information for almost every department in the Faculty.  

AND they won first prize for the best stand, which they built for Interior design, and they won second prize for the stand of their own Department.

I walked though our entire exhibition and interviewed the students that did duty. I found them knowledgeable, enthusiastic and helpful. It was amazing the way they seemed to sound as if they were actually students of the courses that they represented.

Of course, the other side of the coin is that they now know the Faculty very well. They know which departments come up with the goods, co-operate, and appreciate what they are doing.  And they know which departments are more lazzais-faire about what should happen at open day.

Aysha Toyer did a phenomenal job project-managing the whole thing, and Johann van der Merwe did a great job motivating heads of departments to cooperate.

Thanks to all who participated.