Writing About Writing
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One tribe, two tribes, three tribes and more …
Read more: One tribe, two tribes, three tribes and more …I have written before about going to academic conferences and finding my tribe. For a while I had found my tribe – in the Educational Technology world. I felt that it was where I belonged. I teach emerging technology and instructional design. I love online learning – helping my students learn what a good online graduate…
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On Hybridity and conference presentations…
Read more: On Hybridity and conference presentations…On Wednesday morning, at the OLC Innovate conference, we (me, Autumm Caines, Maha Bali, Whitney Kilgore, Apostolos Koutropolous, Andrea Rehn, and Alan Levine) presented a 90-minute workshop on Meeting the Potential of Hybridity: Equity, Access, and Inclusion. Our presentation itself was both innovative and technically risky. We had some previous experience running a hybrid workshop at…
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Struggling with fitting illness narrative into storytelling
Read more: Struggling with fitting illness narrative into storytellingIn reading more about illness narratives from the perspective of medical humanities, I find myself struggling a little. Lampress & Braithwaite (2016) talk about teaching patients to write illness narratives. They compare illness narratives to that of the fictional hero journey, specifically outlining the standard trajectory of the narrative: In the narrative arc of the fictional…
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An adjunct’s challenge with Open Educational Resources
Read more: An adjunct’s challenge with Open Educational ResourcesI teach in an area that would be served well by creating a decent eBook. One that has activities, is easy to update, and links to lots of resources available on the web. The problem is, it would take a fair bit of work to create said eBook. I’m in a position to do it…
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Commenting on student’s blogs?
Read more: Commenting on student’s blogs?In a discussion with guest speakers in one of the courses I’m teaching, one of the guests brought up the issue about student blogging. She commented that she does not leave comments on her student’s blogs. This is in part because of the teacher – student relationship. There is an issue with a sense that…
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Emotional reactions to reading narrative analysis of cancer experience
Read more: Emotional reactions to reading narrative analysis of cancer experienceIn preparing my new dissertation study proposal, I was tasked with reading a book chapter on narrative research – specifically: Josselson, R. (2011). Narrative research: Constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing story. In F. J. Wertz, K. Charmaz, & L. M. McMullen (Eds.), Five ways of doing qualitative analysis: Phenomenological psychology, grounded theory, discourse analysis, narrative research,…
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Social media and ePatient blogging – a Virtually Connecting special issue
Read more: Social media and ePatient blogging – a Virtually Connecting special issueWhen Dr. Michelle Schira Hagerman (@mshagerman) asked me to speak to her class about my experience as an ePatient blogger and my upcoming PhD research I thought it would be a great opportunity to facilitate an expansion to Virtually Connecting. I have wanted to do more in Virtually Connecting in the ePatient space since we did…
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Marking and impostor syndrome
Read more: Marking and impostor syndromeWill my students think I don’t know what I’m doing? Will they think that I’m a fraud? That I don’t deserve to be the instructor of the course? ~ The impostor in my head Nothing like marking to bring about a case of impostor syndrome. It is funny. I teach online. I don’t have that…
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Emergence of pathography
Read more: Emergence of pathographyA pathography is an extended single-author narrative, situating illness and treatment within the author’s life and linking them with the meaning of that life. Pathographies provide the story of illness from the perspective of the individual patient. (Hawkins, 1999, p.127) One thing that I particularly like about this definition of a pathography – which is…
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Google Docs – Research
Read more: Google Docs – ResearchI have been using Google Docs as a way to write collaborative academic papers for years now (e.g. Writing the unreadable untext), however, I had not come across the Research Tool before. This tool is changing the way I write research papers because I can easily Google Scholar search for a citation and immediately add…
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Scaffolding and the three bears #moocmooc
Read more: Scaffolding and the three bears #moocmoocThis week one of the themes of #MOOCMOOC, a free open online ‘course’ exploring instructional design from a critical pedagogy perspective, is subversion. It has me reflecting on scaffolding and the role it plays in my teaching. What is particularly interesting this semester is that I’m teaching two graduate courses in Instructional Design. One course…
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Scaffolding, babies, and bathwater – #MOOCMOOC
Read more: Scaffolding, babies, and bathwater – #MOOCMOOCToday began an exploration into critical pedagogy and in particular taking a critical look at Instructional Design. What is interesting here is that I’m just about to start teaching a course on the Foundations of Instructional Design and Learning Technology. This is one of the first courses in an Instructional Design master’s program. It needs…
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RSS feeds and why everyone should use one
Read more: RSS feeds and why everyone should use oneThis week my students in the undergrad digital citizenship course I’m teaching are exploring RSS feeds. It has been fascinating reading their reflective blog posts, as this is the one tool that has been transformative for many of them. Here is a Wordle of their posts: When I taught the Should I blog course, and…
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The Adjunct’s dilemma – how much do you tell your students? #adjunctchat
Read more: The Adjunct’s dilemma – how much do you tell your students? #adjunctchatI’m looking for advice from both adjuncts and those who are in permanent faculty positions. I teach and have teaching experience at several universities. I’m fresh off of a great Virtually Connecting session, where there was a brief discussion about the working conditions of Adjuncts, which has me thinking even more about this. All the…
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A bio of sorts – autopathography
Read more: A bio of sorts – autopathographyStories have to repair the damage that illness has done to the ill person sense of where she is in life, and where she maybe going. (Frank, 2013, p. 53) I’ve been given the task of writing my biography – and it is due today. Not nearly enough time to write the book that I’ve…
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Sometimes you learn from your students
Read more: Sometimes you learn from your studentsThis semester I’m teaching a half credit course on digital citizenship. I didn’t design the course. I’m actually somewhat limited to the changes I’m allowed to make. The course is well structured, and I’m loving the opportunity to read my students weekly reflections in the form of blog posts. Having a blogger as a teacher…
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It’s not a methodology … or is it
Read more: It’s not a methodology … or is it“While auto-ethnography is not a specific research technique, method, or theory, it colors all three as they are employed in fieldwork” (Hayano, 1979, p. 99) “ANT [Actor-Network Theory] cannot accurately be described as a single, stable or identifiable theoretical framework” (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010) “Educational design research can be defined as a genre of research…
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Frameworks in research
Read more: Frameworks in researchMy new research is an exploratory study. I’m now in the process of reviewing the literature in a variety of different areas. In doing so, I have happened across a review study that presents what could be used as a framework for my inquiry into what people learn from breast cancer blogs. Of course, as…
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What ought to be my research?
Read more: What ought to be my research?Last week Stephen Downes wrote a post about research – about how research often focuses on what is and not on what ought to be. For me, this links directly to the idea of axiology – what we value in research. It has me asking the question about what I value in research. When I…
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UnAffiliated or MultiAffiliate: Exploring Adjunctification in Higher Ed #dlrn15
Read more: UnAffiliated or MultiAffiliate: Exploring Adjunctification in Higher Ed #dlrn15This was a post I found in my drafts folder … written back in 2015. I wonder why I didn’t ever get around to finishing it? When Jeffrey Keefer and I first proposed this presentation for the #dlrn15 conference, we were both in very different situations then we are today. I was off on medical…
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Is my research selfish?
Read more: Is my research selfish?“I was not openly aware and conscious of my motivations before entering into the research project. What did I want to discover? What did I hope to gain? These were not questions I honestly asked myself. I was too embarrassed to admit that what I hoped to gain was not completely selfless” (Pearce, 2010) In…
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Reflections on Big Ideas Fest (#BIF2015)
Read more: Reflections on Big Ideas Fest (#BIF2015)First off, I want to say that I found Big Ideas Fest to be an excellent conference. All the main stage speakers were engaging and incredibly high calibre. I was particularly awe inspired by the day three rapid fire speakers. They launched the morning with incredible stories of success (Jason Young, Kylee Majkowski, Kristi Yamaguchi, Michael…
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Making IS the conference #BIF2015
Read more: Making IS the conference #BIF2015The focus of the conference today was on Action Collabs – that is, small group sessions where you work through the design thinking process, starting by listening to stories to help identify what the actual problems are, then using a variety of techniques to try to come up with creative solutions for the problem. More…
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Big Ideas Fest – #bif2015 day one insights
Read more: Big Ideas Fest – #bif2015 day one insightsThis is just a quick update during the morning break. I wanted to talk a little bit about my insights form last night. I had a brief opportunity to talk about Virtually Connecting. I explained how it started out as a partnership and turned into a bit of a grass roots movement. In our small…
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How do you describe a blog?
Read more: How do you describe a blog?How do you describe what a blog is? There is the technical definition, which describes the various characteristics of a special type of dynamic website. We could go back to the root of the word web + log = blog. We could look at a blog as a form of self-publication or self-broadcast. A blog…
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Getting ready for Big Ideas Fest #bif2015
Read more: Getting ready for Big Ideas Fest #bif2015For several years, Big Ideas Fest has been on my conference bucket list. I almost went in 2013, however, the MOOC Research Initiative conference ended up at the same time. This year, they have changed venues – they have moved from Half Moon Bay to San Jose. The change in venue meant that it was…
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What’s wrong with this?
Read more: What’s wrong with this?I’m preparing to teach in January. I just got a copy of the course textbook, and I’ve been reading through it. I came across this paragraph, and has a visceral reaction to it: Society has changed. In the past it was the norm for families to join together around a dinner table and talk about…
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Netnography and international / cross institutional research
Read more: Netnography and international / cross institutional researchThis post was inspired by the post written by Maha Bali (this morning I her time) – Revisiting Impostor Syndrome. It is rather serendipitous that Maha chose this moment to write about her idea of a website here, as I was reading all about doing ethnographic research on the web and recommendations for creating…
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Digital Connections
Read more: Digital ConnectionsWhen I meet my online friends in person for the first time, I’m struck by how we share a particular desire for connecting people. It is not uncommon for any of my friends to say thinks like “Let me introduce you to …” or “You should meet … ” We are connected, but…
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Digital reading tips?
Read more: Digital reading tips?I’m looking for some tips on digital reading. My issue is that I need to learn how to scan documents. I’m a slow reader at the best of times, and chemo brain has done nothing to increase my reading speed. Part of my reading challenge is that I feel the need to read every-single-word in a…
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Digital writing as dissertation …
Read more: Digital writing as dissertation …A major aspect of digital writing is digital audience. ~ Rusul AlRubail for #digiwrimo I feel the need to clarify my request of a couple of days ago. I’m searching for examples where at least a portion of the formal dissertation was written as a blog. Thanks to some responses, I’ve found examples where people…
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Re-telling of stories, lived versus living experience
Read more: Re-telling of stories, lived versus living experienceWhen I had to repeat the story of the X-ray that led to suspected cancer, I began to feel after multiple tellings that a voice outside of me was talking, and I was listening to that voice. I was not speaking of how I felt; I was addressing the interests of particular listeners in rhetoric…
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Dissertating and blogging …
Read more: Dissertating and blogging …For today’s post I have a request for all my academic friends. Does anyone know of any dissertation that was done all or in part using a blog as the format? Or any other digital (non-linear, monograph) type format? I am preparing to go back to school to finish my PhD. What is even more…
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Need a name for this place…
Read more: Need a name for this place…Signing up for #NaBloPoMo made me realize that I really need a name for this space. This blog is currently just my name. There is no tagline and no name for the blog. As I wrote this post, it actually evolved into the prompted post about unofficial CVs for #digiwrimo … In some ways this…
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And with this post, so begins Na…
Read more: And with this post, so begins Na…Ever since I first heard of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), I’ve always felt like I should be writing in November. Since I began my PhD journey in 2011, I haven’t been able to play with NaNoWriMo – however, I’ve looked at other options. It seems that every year there is a new form of…
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The agency of space and devices
Read more: The agency of space and devicesThis is perhaps one of what I hope to be many reflections on my experiences at the #dlrn15 conference – actually, this is more of a reflection on Virtually Connecting in general – in part on how it has evolved but also on a few things we have learned over the last seven months. First…
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Pathography and blogging
Read more: Pathography and bloggingIn preparation for relaunching into PhD studies, I am working on getting back into the habit of reading academic papers. Over the coming weeks, I hope to be reading more and writing more. Yesterday’s articles surrounded the very limited literature on the intersection of pathography and blogging. I found three articles: Lent (2009), Elperin (n.d.),…
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Deepening connections
Read more: Deepening connectionsOver the last few weeks I’ve had the privilege of deepening connections. I’ve been lucky enough to have been healthy enough and had funds enough to travel to the UK to attend two conferences (ALT-C Ed Tech Conference and QUB ePatient Blogging conference). This was quickly followed up by the Medicine X Ed conference here…
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My hybrid identity
Read more: My hybrid identityThis last few days at the Stanford Medicine X Ed conference (and following along with the Medicine X conference), I found myself in an weird position of hybrid identity. My experience with medical education is with the work I’ve done with the Department of Family Medicine and Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa.…
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Let’s move beyond the ‘center’ #medx
Read more: Let’s move beyond the ‘center’ #medxThe entire concept of putting someone at the center is crossing both my worlds today. First it was Bernard Bull talking about how Great Teachers are Not Rock Stars and encourage us to put learners at the center. Then it was various folks at Medicine X tweeting about the need to put the patient at…
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“We are all patients” … NOT #medx
Read more: “We are all patients” … NOT #medxOne of the comments that was made, and repeated several times on the first day of the Medicine X Ed conference I attended last week was “we are all patients”. This caused me to tweet out: “we are all patients” rhetoric serves to silence the suffering of those with critical/chronic illness #medx #meded — Rebecca…
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My latest bio
Read more: My latest bioI think that at some point I will need to go back through my various publications and see how my bio has changed over time. The bio is an interesting thing. It is a form of identity ownership. It changes over time, but also within different contexts. For me, I recall the training I did with…
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Tribes and autopathography
Read more: Tribes and autopathographyI have blogged before about how one of the reasons I go to conferences is to help find my tribe. I’ve also said that I won’t go to conference unless I know a few people, as that is helps me be an insider, or at least a little connected. Last week I attended two conferences.…
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Virtually Connecting at the QUB ePatient conference (#qubept)
Read more: Virtually Connecting at the QUB ePatient conference (#qubept)After all the excited from the ALTC Conference in Manchester, I flew back to Belfast to attend a conference on ePatient – The medical, ethical and legal repercussions of blogging and micro-blogging experiences of illness and disease (#qubept). It was a small conference of about 30 attendees. You would not have known how small it was…
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Shivering in a paper gown…
Read more: Shivering in a paper gown…I am very proud to have had a chapter that I wrote included in this anthology (“Breasts that aren’t Breast”). I’ll be attending the book launch on Thursday evening in downtown San Francisco – if you are local and want me to pick up a copy for you, let me know. About the Book: Shivering…
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@vconnecting and connecting at ALT-C
Read more: @vconnecting and connecting at ALT-COver the last couple of days I’ve been onsite at the ALT-C conference in Manchester UK. This is a rather large conference (over 500 participants), mostly educational technologists in the UK. As with any large conference, there are cliques, which are great if you are in them, and not so great if you are not.…
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Like a phoenix – on re-emergence and identity
Read more: Like a phoenix – on re-emergence and identityI have commented previously on how I use different names in different contexts. Rebecca is my formal and professional name. I use Becky with close friends and within the breast cancer community. When attending conferences, I’ve been able to use the name as a signal. People that know me well or read my breast cancer…
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Watching your baby grow up – reflections on Virtually Connecting (@vconnecting) at #digped
Read more: Watching your baby grow up – reflections on Virtually Connecting (@vconnecting) at #digpedBack in April, my friend Maha and I decided to try out a new way of connecting. The idea came to us out of a desire to share the physical experiences of being onsite at a conference with each other. For a variety of reasons, Maha was unable to travel to the conference. She is…
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Connections, Social Media, and Academia (#smsociety15, #rhizo15)
Read more: Connections, Social Media, and Academia (#smsociety15, #rhizo15)One of the presentations I did at the recent Social Media and Society (#smsociety15) conference was as a panelist for the discussion on “More Than Just a “Follower”: How Is Academia Being Influenced by Online Communities of Practice & Networked Scholarship?” I debate how much I wanted to talk about my cancer journey at this…
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Insiders, tribes, and a rant about lunch …
Read more: Insiders, tribes, and a rant about lunch …I am a self-confessed conference junkie. I got the conference bug early on in my PhD studies, when a paper I was co-author on was accepted to the International Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning (iamlearn‘s mlearn conference). I soon discovered that conferences were a place where I could find my tribe. I could find…
