Monthly Archives: September 2017

Teaching + Living + Learning

As one of the leaders of a new project KSC Open, I have been sorting through a decade of intellectual work in digital environments.

This work began with my thinking about technology in the writing classroom during graduate school. It gathered momentum in the late 1990s when, as a new assistant professor of English and American Studies at Keene State College, I set up a web site to make public my intellectual work.

Српски (ћирилица)‎: Portolano Jandranskog mora, škola Dieppe, c. 1538

During a sabbatical in 2008-09, I set up a blog From the Far Field to share with our families and friends our experiences living, working, and traveling in India–sixty or so posts and images in all. The following year this work led in a number of directions:

The Far Field  A chronicle of teaching and learning in English, American, and environmental studies at New Hampshire’s public liberal arts institution of higher learning, Keene State College

Far Field Family A blog for family and friends that keeps tabs on our lives on a New England farm

On Staying Alive A professional mentoring project that offers reflections on the difficult work of sustaining an emotionally, ethically, and spiritually healthy life in academia—no matter what happens.

Course Sites The use of the open-source platform Word Press to move all of my teaching, and my student’s thinking and writing, into the public domain

The course sites were set up on wordpress.com. This summer I moved all these site to ksc.open and created a teaching and learning hub that includes course sites and student project sites: Teaching and Learning at the Far Field.

What I come to realize is that I have found a medium to bring into alignment parts of my life and to integrate those parts: teaching, living and learning. And I am practicing what I am coming to see is an opportunity for students in a Domain of One’s Own project like KSC Open:

Digital Identity (Taking ownership of your presence on the web. Expressing your ideas. Integrating your learning and interests)

Digital Fluency (Using open-source platforms. Building projects using digital tools. Creating portfolios, exhibits, galleries, blogs, or wikis)

Digital Citizenship (Engaging with the community. Constructing the web. Navigating, and critically questioning digital technologies.)

Grazioso Benincasa (1473) from the British Library Pelagios Project: Portolano. Egerton MS 2855

 

Here is a working map, a portolano of sorts, of what Teaching, Living and Learning at the Far Field looks like from a guy who surely needs to learn a thing or two about design, mapping, and visual displays of information.