Hello!
Right, let's see if anyone's still reading this.
It's been -- ages. Sigh.
I'm going to keep this fairly brief, otherwise I'll intimidate myself out of writing it. Hopefully it might get me back in the habit.
In my last entry, I'd just gotten a new job. The job was with the Global Education Project - we work with teachers to help them bring a global perspective to their teaching. This involved doing professional development at schools, as well as working with preservice teachers as part of their university studies. I've spent the last eight months travelling to primary and secondary schools, working with classroom teachers and curriculum coordinators to try to shape both what they're teaching, and the way they teach. I've also run tutorials and delivered lectures at all of the universities in Melbourne, as well as in Ballarat, Bendigo Geelong and Shepparton. We did some online seminars as well - I'd run those at the Library, the biggest challenge there was upskilling my colleague who was presenting!
It's been fun. I'd never given university lectures before! Feedback was great, for the lectures, tutorials, and presentations. I know I'm a good presenter, so that was never really a worry.
The worry was funding. the Project is funded by the federal government, in particular AusAID, the foreign aid department. We had an election in September, and sadly, the winners are a bunch of arch conservatives. One of their first acts was to abolish AusAID altogether and cut the aid budget by billions of dollars. We had no word on our funding. At all. We had three changes of manager inside of two months. Everything felt very up in the air.
And then a friend from the Library mentioned on Twitter that they were hiring where he works. I applied. I had an interview - on my birthday. They called within four hours to offer me the job!
So - new new job! I'll be working at Monash University, with their Better Learning and Teaching division. We're responsible for making sure academics are making the most of the ICT the University supplies. I start on the 10th of February. I still have some presentations for Global Ed to do, and Monash have allowed me time off to do them, which is lovely. The main advantages of this job are some stability - I'm there til at least the end of 2015, and the skills base - I'll learn heaps, and let's just say I don't think eLearning will be LESS popular in the next few years. Being an "insider" at universities will also make getting other university jobs a LOT easier.
So that's the big picture.
Hi.
It's been -- ages. Sigh.
I'm going to keep this fairly brief, otherwise I'll intimidate myself out of writing it. Hopefully it might get me back in the habit.
In my last entry, I'd just gotten a new job. The job was with the Global Education Project - we work with teachers to help them bring a global perspective to their teaching. This involved doing professional development at schools, as well as working with preservice teachers as part of their university studies. I've spent the last eight months travelling to primary and secondary schools, working with classroom teachers and curriculum coordinators to try to shape both what they're teaching, and the way they teach. I've also run tutorials and delivered lectures at all of the universities in Melbourne, as well as in Ballarat, Bendigo Geelong and Shepparton. We did some online seminars as well - I'd run those at the Library, the biggest challenge there was upskilling my colleague who was presenting!
It's been fun. I'd never given university lectures before! Feedback was great, for the lectures, tutorials, and presentations. I know I'm a good presenter, so that was never really a worry.
The worry was funding. the Project is funded by the federal government, in particular AusAID, the foreign aid department. We had an election in September, and sadly, the winners are a bunch of arch conservatives. One of their first acts was to abolish AusAID altogether and cut the aid budget by billions of dollars. We had no word on our funding. At all. We had three changes of manager inside of two months. Everything felt very up in the air.
And then a friend from the Library mentioned on Twitter that they were hiring where he works. I applied. I had an interview - on my birthday. They called within four hours to offer me the job!
So - new new job! I'll be working at Monash University, with their Better Learning and Teaching division. We're responsible for making sure academics are making the most of the ICT the University supplies. I start on the 10th of February. I still have some presentations for Global Ed to do, and Monash have allowed me time off to do them, which is lovely. The main advantages of this job are some stability - I'm there til at least the end of 2015, and the skills base - I'll learn heaps, and let's just say I don't think eLearning will be LESS popular in the next few years. Being an "insider" at universities will also make getting other university jobs a LOT easier.
So that's the big picture.
Hi.