User:Davidp
 David Porter | |||
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| Blog: | conviviality.ca | ||
| Employer: | BCIT | ||
| Occupation: | Associate Vice President: Education Support and Innovation. | ||
| Other roles: | OER Foundation Board of Directors | ||
| Nationality: | Canadian | ||
| Languages: | English | ||
| Country: | Canada | ||
| Skype address: | dendroglyph | ||
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My Profile
Professional Background
I've been a long-time advocate for the benefits of adapting new technology to deliver educational opportunities for both students and educators.
Past accomplishments
I've worked in the education and training fields for close to 30 years including working with both public and private sector organizations. I've been a project manager for industry-based projects in Canada and the US, and have worked as a project leader and consultant for international projects in:
- Mexico
- India
- Vietnam
- Mongolia
- Malaysia
- the Caribbean.
Recent work
I was hired to lead BCcampus in 2003, with a mandate to create a web-based suite of services that BC’s 25 post-secondary institutions could use to enhance their online teaching and learning capabilities. The potential of online learning for the post-secondary world was something I recognized early in my career and have championed through a series of projects with various groups, such as the NewMedia Innovation Centre, YouAchieve Inc., and the Open Learning Agency.
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What we do at BCcampus:
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Let us know what you think of this set of services.
| And here is a really nice link to Freelearning, a site my organization, BCcampus, has developed to promote easy access to OERs and open textbooks. |
Give this resource a try and tell me what you think of it.
Education
After graduating from the University of Toronto, and time spent teaching at all levels, I earned a Masters Degree in Curriculum and Instruction (Education and Technology) from Simon Fraser University. I was also a student in the PhD program at SFU for three years. Currently I'm an instructor and course author in the Master of Educational Technology (MET) program at the University of British Columbia.
My Interests
My blog, conviviality is where I do my non-academic writing these days.
Recent RSS feeds of my blog posts:
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I also enjoy speaking at national and international conferences, exploring the challenges and opportunities of creating vibrant and productive online learning environments.
Professional
I was a founding member of the Knowledge Management Community of Practice (Vancouver) in 2001 and have authored numerous articles and papers on online learning development.
My organization (BCcampus) is member of WCET, a US-based organization that promotes academic consortia and collaborations enabled by technology. Currently, I'm co-leader of WCET's e-Learning Common Interest Group (CIG). We are leading an initiative to promote academic and e-learning consortia in North America with a view to bringing both rigor and transparency to the activities of the partner agencies.
The purpose of the WCET e-Learning CIG is to build and maintain a dynamic community that will:
- Identify common problems and openly share solutions or potential solutions to those problems;
- Build, continually develop, and openly share a resource or toolkit that supports the development and management of successful collaborations; and,
- Promote the benefits of successful collaboration in higher education.
Some of the profiles of the Canadian and US academic organizations involved in this activity can be found on the e-Learning Consortia wiki. It is a work in progress and will have great value to its partners when completed.
We are also members of EduCAUSE.
Personal
My family lives in North Vancouver, British Columbia.
My wife, Joan Acosta, is a very successful author of literacy and English as a Second Language (ESL) materials. She was the editor of The Westcoast Reader for 27 years, a publication of Capilano University. Her career has included numerous accomplishments and accolades from Prime Ministers, Presidents and Premiers.
Joan recently authored a series of e-books and activities for literacy and ESL instructors and students that are CC-licensed open education resources (OERs).
Our daughter, Erin Porter, is a manager of victory ceremonies for the upcoming Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Photos
I have a photoblog site called WesternEdge. It is currently under construction, but you can view some sample images here and there.
Taos Pueblo Church, New Mexico, USA
Galisteo Cemetery, New Mexico, USA
Bear scratch on aspen, Mono Lake, California, USA
Bodie ghost town, California, USA
My Projects
Here are a few personal projects I'm monitoring...
| I've been following a series of blogs that have active discussions on open educational resources. You might like to follow some of them, too.
I also invite you to add to the table that I've begun on this internal page. |
My Sandbox
I'm really interested in agile OER workflows. After all, most teachers already have a preferred set of materials and tools that they use on a daily basis. The starting point has be there, playing the ball where it lies, to use a golf analogy.
So, my sandbox activities are going to concentrate on exploring and highlighting simple and efficient practices that may invite wider participation from teachers in OER-related activities, by drawing on existing workflows and tweaking them to encompass new thinking, even if a teacher's current practice is rooted in a proprietary tool set like a learning management system (LMS).
My Reflection
27 September 2009
Well, this has been a busy day. I think I've caught up with the first five days of work in this online WikiEducator seminar, and am ready for the live event later this evening.
It's actually been a lot of fun to immerse myself in the MediaWiki space over the past two days. I'm looking forward to the rest of this excursion through the WIkiEducator terrain.
I really enjoyed the opportunity to play on the WikiEducator WizIQ whiteboard this evening because it was the best real indication of what people were thinking as their questions poured out for all to see.
28 September 2009
Wrote a blog post this afternoon titled Searching for an agile OER workflow, about my first week immersed in the WikiEducator training program.
Created a Sandbox page to explore the notion of an agile OER workflow.
Exchanged a series of emails with Wayne Mackintosh about conceptually mapping the WikiEducator development path in the context of the Alec Couros networked educator diagram. One of my favorite variations of the Couros diagram is this one in Portuguese (I think).
29 September 2009
Inserted an educational template organizer 
into my user page to focus attention on OER bloggers,
and added RSS sample feeds from own blog to my user page and couple of other places on WikiEducator.
Used an education template organizer 
to highlight a project of EduCAUSE's that examines the Top Challenges facing technologists in higher education.
Updated the Photographs section of my user page with four b/w photos and captions.
Left a note for Randy Fisher, a local Vancouver member of WikiEducator, offering to help out with WE activities locally, in an ambassadorial kind of way.
Published my blog feed via Feedburner in an effort to bring more eyes to my WikiEducator blog post.
Fixed a broken link from another user on the OER Bloggers page. Invited other WikiEducator users to add appropriate blog links to the table of feeds.
30 September 2009
Added more information about my organization, BCcampus, and a summary of what it does to support students, educators and institutions.
Add a really cool BCcampus-developed resource for finding OERs and open textbooks.
Did some reformatting of photos and captions.
Began to plan the layout of my Sandbox pages using templates and iDevices.
Took a look around the extremities of the WikiEducator site to see what was new, what had recently been changed, what I could support with further writing and/or editing -- and what was left to explore.
Feedback & Notes from my WikiNeighbours
(
: Welcome David. You made a great start and doing it so quickly!! You are on your way of becoming a skilled WikiMaster. Warm wishes,--Patricia 22:24, 27 September 2009 (UTC))
(: Hi David, nice to meet you here. Your enthusiasm is wonderful! Warm wishes,-- --Janet Bianchini 16:30, 28 September 2009 (UTC) Thanks so much for your kind comments on my page. look forward to sharing more with you on WikiEducator.--Janet Bianchini 15:54, 29 September 2009 (UTC))
(: Dear David. Thanks for sharing your reflections with us. Looking forward to reading more. Warm wishes, --Patricia 22:03, 28 September 2009 (UTC))
(: Welcome aboard David! Great looking user page, and a great basis for developing a dialogue for how WikiEducator, Open Education Resources Foundation and BCcampus can find alignment, and realize common interests. Randy Fisher 03:24, 1 October 2009 (UTC))
