Inquiry through Blended Learning

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Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Friday, November 14, 2014

Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario - November 2014


Last weekend, I had an opportunity to visit with Alex at Western and this weekend I had a chance to visit with Eric at McGill and I made sure to take lots of pictures!!

From my perspective, both boys are really doing well at university.  This trip began with a flight to Toronto and then a drive to the cottage where I had Friday night dinner with Bill at the Lombardy Diner and then spent the night at Ruth and John's cottage.

Saturday morning I drove to Montreal for a visit with Eric and his Calgary friends (Luc, Joe, and Thomas had driven from Queen's and Dylan had flown from Calgary).  We went shopping on St Catherine's Street in the afternoon, had dinner a Rueben's Deli, and then Eric and I went to a Montreal Canadians hockey game. The team was playing Minnesota and before the game they had a ceremony to retire Guy Lapointe's number 5 jersey.  Both Larry Robinson and Serge Savard provided emotional speeches.

On Sunday, I got back in the car and drove to Toronto for a visit with Phil and Angela at their new home in Ancaster.  We had a wonderful evening walk and dinner at a local pub.  The next morning we took the GO train into Toronto where I sat in on Phil's 4th year entrepreneurship class.  We had lunch and a tour of campus and then I headed to the hotel for some work.

On Monday night, the Ryerson Teaching and Learning Centre group took me out for a wonderful dinner at a Portuguese dinner.  They are a very passionate and energetic group and I was so glad they invited me to speak to their faculty!!

On Tuesday, I facilitated a lunch time session on  Teaching in Blended Learning Environments: Creating and Sustaining Communities of Inquiry that was well attended.  I really enjoyed the audience participation and I hope I get a chance to come back to Ryerson as this is a very innovative institution!!

Monday, November 03, 2014

King's College at the University of Western Ontario - October 2014

I was very fortunate to be invited to once again provide a keynote and workshop session for King's Technology and Pedagogy conference at the University of Western Ontario.  Not only was this a chance to re-connect with a very engaged group of faculty members but it was an opportunity to visit with our youngest son Alex, who has just begun his first year in Kinesiology at Western.

The focus of my sessions were on using digital technologies to support high impact practices such as Collaborative Learning Assignments/Projects and Undergraduate Research.  I was also able to attend some very interesting sessions on capstone course and the use of class blogs.  Here is the link to the capstone course blog and a sociology course blog.

Outside of the conference, Alex and I had a chance to visit the Niagara Falls region and spend some time with Cathy and Peter in Toronto.  There were still some fall colours despite the cool weather and I did my best to capture some pictures of my trip :)