Re-connected

Rather than making excuses and apologies for a ten-month absence, I think I'll dive right in and get back to this. Much has been happening with me over this span...but it has circled back to this blog as my opportunity to reflect, read, write, reflect some more, etc. Just before my recent vacation, I attended (http://www.nscc.ca/) NSCC's Introduction to Portfolio Learning course, and in that experience re-affirmed the importance of deep reflective thinking and writing as a critical learning cycle. I'll have more to say about that course and its experiences in future posts.

I have signed up for PLENK 2010 (Siemens, Downes, Cormier, et al) and looking forward to the mid-September start of this open course on Personal Learning environments and Network Knowledge. I shared a seat and some discussion with Stephen Downes on the way to St. John's on August 4 and later caught up with him doing his photo walkabout downtown St. John's. It reminded me that I have a great deal of material to be edited and posted on Class in the Cloud podcast - from Downes, Siemens, Trent Batson and others.

EDUCAUSE, TEKRI and others are currently bringing some focus to Learning Analytics - a subject near and dear to me for the past couple of years as a result of my work on program renewal and matrices for program assessment (of feasibility as well as quality). EDUCAUSE has opened SEI (Seeking Evidence of Impact) while TEKRI has just announced a conference on learning analytics. I'll be looking forward to engaging in both of these and interested in any other like-minded conferences, discussions, presentations.