Earlier this morning, in my Week 3 entry, I indicated that today I would post a links entry to model for my EDTECH537 students. So…
Last year the Links Entry I wrote for EDTECH537 was entitled My Five Most Downloaded Articles On Academia.edu. So this year I figured I would focus on my presentation slides that I post to my Slideshare account. Unlike the Academia.edu, which will give me statistics since an item was first uploaded, Slideshare will only give me the views per year in the Analytics. I can organize the presentations by “most popular,” but that also factors in the length of time on the platform (i.e., a presentation uploaded a year ago with 100 views is more popular than a presentation uploaded three years ago with 200 views). So I decided to provide both groups (and there is some overlap).
My Five Most Viewed Presentations On Slideshare for the Past Year
1. Job Talk (2012): University of Western Ontario
In the Summer of 2012 I made the decision to withdraw my application for promotion and tenure, and go on the job market. We had a new Dean in the College of Education at Wayne State University who believed that faculty should wait until their seventh year to go up for P&T, and run the risk of not having a job in their eighth year if they were unsuccessful (for those not in academia, typically a faculty member would up up in their sixth year and, if they were unsuccessful, the university could offer them a one year contract as they sought another position). As the Dean was against my sixth year application, I made the decision to withdraw the application and seek to leave Wayne State. One of the first on campus interviews I had – and the first one I had ever had for an educational leadership position – was at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada. This was the research-focused job talk I gave. As a side note that Dean stepped down in the third year of a five year contract, after the faculty in the College had voted over 90% no confidence in her leadership.
2. Brigham Young University – The State of K-12 Online Learning Research: Looking Forward
In February 2013 my wife and I were in Utah visiting with a friend of our’s, and since I had a lot of colleagues and friends at Brigham Young University, Charles Graham asked that I come down and speak to the doctoral and Master’s students there. So this session was a focus on where I saw the field of K-12 online learning at the time from a research perspective, as well as avenues of future inquiry that the students in the room who might have an interest in the topic might pursue.
3. Job Talk: Research (2013) – Kennesaw State University
Similar to the first item, this was the job talk that I gave during an on campus interview at Kennesaw State University. Generally speaking, these are short sessions that tell the audience a little about you and your background and then focus on your research. Some institutions that have more of a teaching focus will ask for some content about one’s teaching style or philosophy. It is interesting to look at these different sets of job talk slides, as it will often times reveal the specific items that the institution has asked you to focus on.
4. MVLRI 2015 Webinar – Eight Trends in K-12 Online and Blended Learning and Their Implications for Research
This was a webinar that Tom Clark and I provided for the Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute on the eight trends that we had identified as flowing throughout the book that he and I edited entitled Online, Blended, and Distance Education in Schools: Building Successful Programs.
5. ON MoE 2019: Overview of e-Learning in Canada
This session was a presentation that I gave to one of the research units in the Ontario Ministry of Education. Interestingly, they had reached out to me because the American Education Research Association was holding their annual meeting in Toronto and I was attending. So my presentation and the focus were actually set sometime in late January or early February. But then on 15 March the province, in somewhat reckless fashion, made their Education that Works for You – Modernizing Classrooms… So my presentation took on a whole different focus.
My Five Most Popular Presentations On Slideshare
1. Job Talk (2012): University of Western Ontario
See above description.
2. Sabbatical (Massey University-Wellington) – Blogging in Higher Education: Examining How the Tools Can be Used for Personal Development and with Students
One of the nice things about Wayne State University was they had a procedure for a one semester sabbatical after three years of service. I took my sabbatical in the Winter 2011, and spent most of that time touring around New Zealand collecting data for a research project, doing talks at different universities, and visiting innovative schools (one of which will come up later in this blogging course). One of my stops was at the Wellington campus of Massey University, where I spoke about the potential for using blogging in the university environment.
3. iNACOL Southeast Cmte (2014) – Changing Role of the Teacher in K-12 Online and Blended Learning
Back when iNACOL was actually still focused on K-12 online and blended learning I used to be quite active (e.g., chairing the research committee, establishing the VSS overlay, writing reports and books, etc.). Even when it became the mouthpiece for the corporate interests in the field, I tried to stay involved to be a contrarian voice. While I can’t recall for sure, I suspect this presentation occurred as I was transitioning out of direct involvement in the organization. Regardless most of the geographic regions in the US had a committee that would meet regularly to discuss issues of importance for programs in their region. In some cases this would just be a collaborative session, but in other cases they would invite guest to come and speak on a topic to help set the discussion. In this instance I was speaking to the southeastern committee on the work of Niki Davis and others that were examining the diffusion of the teacher into multiple roles and multiple people in the K-12 online and blended learning environment.
4. WSU Humanities Fall Symposia 2013 – Privatizing Public Education Through Cyber Schooling: Examining Truth And Myth In The Dominant Narrative of K-12 Online Learning
While I was at Wayne State University the Center for Humanities would host a fall symposium each year. During the 2013 one, which would have been the Fall after I had actually left WSU for Sacred Heart University, I returned to speak on the lack of research to support the neo-liberal rationale full-time K-12 online learning, and how that was leading to a privatization of public education.
5. Sabbatical (Massey University) – An Introduction to a New Research Paradigm: Design-Based Research
Another one of my sabbatical talks was at Massey University’s main campus in Palmerston North. Having been mentored into academic by Dr. Tom Reeves, design-based research was a frequent topic I spoke on during my sabbatical travels.
Note for the EDTECH537 students… See how I have provided a short annotation for each item. In many cases, people just provide a link to an item with no rationale for why it is included or what the reader is expected to do when they get there. A short description of the link or instructions on what to focus on or where to go is always useful when writing links entries.
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