D'Arcy Norman, PhD

Martin Weller’s book 25 Years of Ed Tech is a great people’s history of educational technology, covering the major innovations over the last 25 years. He published it through the Athabasca University Press under a Creative Commons License. As a result it’s been adopted by the edtech community, who have produced an audiobook version, as well as a “between the chapters” discussion series.

Chapter 7 is on Learning Objects, read by Brian Lamb. I was part of the Between the Chapters discussion for the chapter, with Brian Lamb, John Robertson and myself1, hosted by Laura Pasquini.

One of the things we talked about was the permanence/impermanence of online content. I’ve snagged a copy of the discussion .mp3 for the inevitable future when Transistor.fm shuts down. In the meantime…

And the original chapter:

it sounds like I was having bandwidth issues, with Zoom compensating by trying to catch up by putting me into fast-talking-squirrel-mode. I mean, more than usual. ↩︎

The UCalgary Department of Computer Science has been publishing a great podcast series called What the Tech? It’s intended as a way to share some of the work being done by faculty members and grad students, and covers a pretty wide range of topics. I was asked to be on the show to talk about learning technologies, innovation, and some of the things I’m going to be working on for my PhD research.

Paolo Sabater and Lyndon Ando are really good hosts, and it’s great to see students being involved with hosting, producing, and in my case, being interviewed for the podcast.

In this episode we talk to D’Arcy Norman, manager of the Learning Technologies group in the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning, as well as a PhD candidate in the UCalgary Computational Media Design program. Today, we discuss what the tech is up with Ed-Tech (Educational Technologies), and how crucial technology is in the current landscape of teaching and learning.

The fourth and final part of the Reclaiming Educational Technology series, recorded at the University of Mary Washington after Open Education 2014.

This segment features commentary from:

Direct link to audio file

Recorded at the University of Mary Washington after Open Education 2014, this episode features commentary from:

Direct link to audio file

This one’s a gem. Well, they all are, but this interview is especially relevant for me because at the time of the interview UMW’s DTLT had just moved into their shiny new digs - and the Taylor Institute at UCalgary was still under construction. There were a LOT of parallels between DTLT and what was becoming the TI at UCalgary. The tension between “Innovation” and “Enterprise” colours all of our work, and it was great to hear from these amazing people about their work and experiences in the field.

Reclaiming Edtech Part 2:  Fostering a culture of innovation, featuring commentary from:

Direct link to audio file

It’s time to re-reboot the podcast, starting by resurrecting the audio from the Reclaiming Educational Technology interviews that were recorded during a hackathon event hosted at the University of Mary Washington after Open Education 2014.

I keep coming back to these episodes, even 5 years later, as they are full of amazing insights by incredibly passionate and interesting people. I’ll be posting the audio from all 4 episodes shortly…

This episode features:

Direct link to audio file

Interviews were conducted by D’Arcy Norman and David Kernohan.

Video and audio were recorded by Andy Rush.

Amateur editing by D’Arcy Norman.

As part of Open Education Week at the University of Calgary, Richard Zach and Aaron Thomas-Bolduc gave a presentation to introduce the concept of OERs, where to find them, and how to make them. Lots of love sent to BCCampus’ Open Textbook initiative and Pressbooks.

Direct link to audio file

It’s time to kick off the Taylor Institute Learning Technologies (TILT) podcast series. I was fortunate to be invited to chat with Brian Lamb and Royal Roads University’s LRNT 525 class, nominally to talk about institutional change management and decision making, but it turned into a wide-ranging discussion of innovation and the tension between creativity and enterprise-scale.

Direct link to audio file

ps. I’ll be moving these podcasts onto UCalgary media servers, once that’s a thing. For now, self-hosting to get things started…

pps. Some of the links mentioned in the webcast: