I feel like the title here is self-evident, and yet we keep seeming to circle back to having to learn it over again. Today’s absurdist example is the guy who invented the Oculus (the VR headset thing) who seems to think people would want a VR headset that literally, actually kills you if you die […]
Author: Brenna
I’m Going to Miss Twitter
I know we all call it the hellsite and talk about how much Twitter is ruining our lives, but I’m going to miss her when she’s gone. Honestly, I already do. I haven’t seen a lot of follower haemorrhaging thus far, but I am feeling the tweaks to the algorithm. I have a small but […]
On Dad Jobs
Among other things around my childhood home, I’ve been putting the garden to bed these last three days or so. I’m sure this job shouldn’t take three days, but let’s be clear here: I’m bad at it. Real bad. But my dad’s passing has meant taking on a bunch of Dad Jobs in the hope […]
Podcasting Lessons Learned
This week at my day job, we restarted our popular open course on podcasting. (There’s still time to join, by the way, and you can register on our site.) In addition, I recently finally had the chance to listen “A Harem of Computers,” which is a new CBC Ideas radio documentary co-produced by a graduate […]
The Teacherly Ego
There’s not much I have supreme confidence in. I think of myself as basically competent but not expert in lots of areas and decent at my job really just because I am comfortable facilitating the transfer of knowledge about teaching and learning. So listen when I tell you: I am freaking great at lecturing. And […]
Ten Things I Now Know About Mourning
One. You need to laugh. People will say incongruously offensive things in their effort to be nice and you don’t have the emotional bandwidth to hold a grudge and you sure don’t have the energy for a zinger so just save it up, tell it to your people, and laugh. Everything you are experiencing is […]
You’re Doing It Wrong versus Safe Places to Fall
Last week, before I found my way back to the land of the living, there was post on Times Higher Education about ungrading. Even in my shocked, grief-addled space, it found its way to me. Nothign like a tablespoon of rageful hate-reading to cut through the fog of mourning. Anyway. Ungrading is a way of […]
Grieving, Writing, Thinking
A few weeks ago, I pondered on Twitter the value of undertaking a wee experiment this #AcWriMo (Academic Writing Month, the month of November, a piggyback of the wildly popular #NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month): what if instead of undertaking my usual #AcWriMo project of moving one big project along, I committed instead to blogging […]
Open as in Hearts
In a few talks and conversations lately, I’ve been using a wee maxim to describe my own thinking — and more importantly, my own priorities — when it comes to open education: “open as in hearts, not open as in source.” That’s not to say I don’t think open source projects matter or that I […]
The One About Where The Old Blog Went
Ok, so archivism, file systems, backing up, none of these things are my strong suit. I’m more of the, like, re-develop every course you ever teach entirely from scratch every semester because the idea of revisiting your own notes makes you want to die kind of gal. It’s not ideal, but we make do. Anyway. […]