Gina Bennett

Hi Dan,

OK, you asked 2 questions:

1) Who am I? I'm a faculty member at College of the Rockies, in Cranbrook BC. I support distance education (mostly e-learning) & new curriculum development for this small rural college.

2) What do I own? At the risk of sounding like a kook, I don't really believe that I 'own' anything; rather, that I get to use things on loan unless someone with a greater need comes along (of course, deciding which of us has the greater need is a muddy area ). However, the most important stuff I am currently 'loaning' includes a small house, car, couple of computers & sewing machines. And it gets weirder: I think the concept of 'intellectual property' is an idea whose time is past. I do have a Master's thesis which is copyrighted under a Creative Commons licence so I suppose that implies some sense of ownership...?

Looking forward to the discussion!
Gina Bennett

Hi Janet & fellow SCoPERs

I live in Cranbrook (Rocky Mtn. area of Canada), where I support online- & other distance learning deliveries for a small rural community college. I work with lots of collaborative groups, both on- & off-line. Probably half the people I work with on a regular basis are not situated anywhere near me.

I am especially interested in how our participation in virtual communities affects our involvement in more 'proximal' communities. According to Dunbar's number, there's a limit to how much real collaboration any one individual can do. So I'm interested in finding out how to effectively incorporate collaborative activities in teaching-learning, without overwhelming existing community structures. Something like that.

Looking forward!
Gina

Hi! I'm Gina Bennett, eLearning Specialist at a small rural college in Cranbrook, BC (in the Rocky Mountains region of Canada). Although I support all kinds of distance teaching & learning at College of the Rockies, our primary focus for the past 10 years has been on online delivery. I have been trying to promote greater adoption of social media for several years but the uptake is slow. I'm hoping for inspiration!

----------------
... and I'm Nomadia Nordwind in SL

Sorry Corinne; I'm confused about what to do next. I clicked on the download link you provided & installed IP but not sure if that downloaded the academic version or the plain vanilla one? Also, when I registered I mistakenly chose 'College' as my type of institution instead of SCOPE (not sure that even appeared on the list). I know I went to the educational registration site... What must I do next?

Gina

Interesting point, Graham. I included this little vignette (about my daugher's disinterest in SL) not to criticize the premise of SL but just to point out that having a clear objective for learning is not necessarily viewed as oppressive or overly directive by NetGen learners. SL's unprescribed environment is what I like (being of a rather non-competitive nature). But of course I set little learning objectives for myself; that's the fun. Maybe we do need to 'make the objective obvious' when designing serious game activities. But maybe we also need to design activities that help those learners with a strong gaming background to develop their OWN objectives. I think it's a great life-skill.

gina