Goodbye January 2025

I have lost about ten pounds since the beginning of the year. 
I went from nearly two years of no running to running almost four miles. 
I registered for a half marathon in May. 
Long live the Official #ds106 Athletic Club!

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I somehow managed to survive the darkness, and I don’t mean the Washington State winter, of our recent election and clown car of imbeciles that were elected or anointed. I mean “appointed.”

I did the right things and I can only say that I am humiliated to be a human. We have a long way to go. 

But for today, I shall reflect on the month of January where my work is concerned. These in no particular order, they just all happened in January.

We finally completed our “Creative Pedagogies” collaboration with the University of Glasgow. Our beautiful Teaching & Learning on the Open Web community shared space and time with faculty from Scotland in November and we created a nice place to view our work. 

One result of my work in that space was a January 29th release of an article that Marie McQuade and I wrote for Faculty Focus. Yay for us!

I had 12 scheduled meetings with faculty and likely another 5 or so impromptu zoom meetings. I counted 45 emails that needed a response. Those vary in time and detail from a five sentence textual response to a few of those and some Zoom minutes. Maybe 10 or so text messages that needed a phone call or reply and one faculty came into the office looking for cookies during our office hours.

I got to share some time with a math class that is trying to document some of the life they have lived thus far and develop a portfolio of sorts. I use a couple spaces as resources for them. One was made by moi some years ago and the other was made by a student I had as an “digital scholar” for a summer a few years back. It is fun to share some of my old college work and my old high school students work in a math class environment. 

I was asked to teach a graduate course again titled Pedagogy and Technology. That is good, and I win a few extra pennies. 

I did a number of hour long workshops at the start of the year for our new quarter. “Canvas for New Faculty.” “Poll Everywhere.” All the usual tech stuff. Hardly anyone showed up. The new normal. 

Our open Web community hosted the wonderful Joe Murphy on the second Friday of January. It was the most recent in a long line of amazing educators we have had the pleasure of spending time with. 

I asked the Dean of one of our schools to come visit our office for an hour. It was lovely to have her in our space. She has been here three years and had never visited our team in our space. Some good came of the visit as you might expect. That was a win. 

In October of last year I did a Pecha Kucha gig at the Northwest eLearn conference. It was in the lunch hall and right after lunch so there were like 100 people in the room. I tried to sell a site I had made two years ago that I hoped would create a bit of a community. I lost interest, and the site ste there all lonely. At the conference I pitched it as a space to share ideas and stuff. I also added that I would host a monthly meeting. For three months no one showed up. Till January 17th… Three people showed up!

I know I don’t look very happy, but I was ecstatic! We had a great hour talking about all kinds of things. That was a success. 

I was asked by Bob Halis to present again at the “Transforming the Teaching & Learning Environment” conference in February. I presented once before at the event and it was nice to be asked to return. I am doing the “What Happened to my Community” poem. 

I met with the BC Campus people again. What an incredible group. I also met with The NorthWest XR Network. I am still playing with my Quest three headset and hope that it can become more a part of my work. I think. 

There was a new #ds106 class launched by Paul Bond & Jim Groom and as always, it is so nice to see the student work go by on mastodon. I feel the energy. How beautiful. 

I finished and submitted a proposal, and it was accepted, for the, “Pedagogy without Borders: New Frontiers of Teaching and Technology” conference in February. I am doing a session with the co-creator of the Creative Pedagogies event. We are just going to tell the story of how it came to be and encourage others to maybe find willing colleagues to play with. Very serious stuff. 

We started our COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning)  meetings with faculty this month. This is my sixth year or so working with this group and it is wonderful to see how excited the faculty are to try giving students some new experiences. 

On the 22nd I met with my POD group again for the third time. There are four of us “in the group,” but this was the first time more than myself and another person showed up. That is nice. We are the “old instructional designers group” or something. We have all been doing this stuff for a while.

As usual, I wandered down many dark hallways, past faculty office after faculty office with paper over the windows and lights out. I do this frequently. I don’t know why. I am looking for people to spend time with. Not that some Zoom is not “time with,” but it is not the same. That is clear to me. Somedays, the work feels like this image.

I received a raise that was not a “cost of living” raise. Nice gesture after eight years of exceptional annual reviews and four nice compliments from the faculty I work with. Go Todd.

I got a 100 dollar gift card to a local restaurant from one of the amazing faculty I work with. Made my whole week. Or month. Or year. She is one of those people that always says, “Thank you.” Like five times. She means it. 

Mostly, I have survived. I’ll give myself a bit of credit for that. I don’t give up easily. 

I hope I remember to do this at the end of each month.