Circuitous is the only way to describe my ongoing thoughts and ideas moving into specific actions to finally define 'what remains' when the PhD changes you.
Markers of change
- the not so good part: being able to quickly spot errors in minutes of the FEDFac Council mtgs and questioning reasons for change of grades
-the good part: I became an avid supporter of fellow faculty members intending for their course proposals to be approved for institution. I hyperfocused on that for a few days to ensure positive results - that is, for the courses to be offered in time for the graduating students to take it within their last academic year at my open unive. This effort is in support of the new AA program chair.
- I have become more conscious of people, their jobs and achievements of late. This meant removing biases against faculty members from other units. This is like me giving chances to others for future collaborations.
My eyes have also opened on fellow academic and professional staff whom I've taken for granted. I realized that in the process of doing webinars I've made allies out of them = the BEST part. And this time, I found a space where I can continue to teach and learn with them through FEDs Continuing Education Program (CEP) where my daydreams continue to take flight. The fun part is defining this thing called FED-CEP, which may be the space for a CeTL or MeTL to take root and take flight.
Markers of what remains
This idea of a MAEd program have been in my conversations with Sol, a FEd colleague and dear friend. We had those days in the DilFacrum@NCC where we imagine teacher education programs for my open university. We tried to suggest but failed in that area. I think because our brains weren't primed to follow given templates of action in our university. A colleague has reached exasperation point with our ideas, telling us to consider the channels or levels we have to negotiate with in order to have our ideas approved. So that remained afloat, for about years or so. Our lives went on safely, after all, we had enough teacher ed programs.
Now it's back, and with a vengeance. The ideas have solidified. Thanks to my Australian unive experience.
Markers of possible Change-a-coming
With weapons on hand (academic writing to launch the ideas), I have now crafted a Concept Paper on a prospective Master of Arts in eTeaching and eLearning. The weird part is I am going through this back to front. The idea is to play around with a bunch of non-formal short courses towards proposing a masters degree of purely coursework but with RPL schemes.
And when I PLAY, I mean these in my sandbox of sorts:
> we will set up a virtual learning community site which would contain spaces for: blogs, forum posts, OER sharing, news/articles
> do all sorts of discussions among fellow short course participants
> do our short courses in our Moodle rooms or some Google Classroom
> open up the site to DGurong Pahinungod 1.0 ~ 4.0 to focus on the OERs
> then add SSE students for Service Learning Option OER projects
> craft course combinations leading to a CeTL - Certificate in eTeaching and eLearning
> define pathways to become RPLs schemes from this non-formal program to formal programs or the CTL leading to an MeTL
OMGahhhd, the list is going on and on.
I just pray I have my network of K-12 teacher-friends to help me.
I've started with a series of webinars, which ran quick surveys of possible short courses as part of the evaluation. Then came a list of courses and a list of possible course developers and teachers.
What am I missing here? A sure shot of course participants.
Good thing, I am now in this network of Gurong Pahinungod System-wide Group. Who would have known that we pioneer teacher volunteers will be working together?
Gotta stop here. Methinks my thoughts take me up too high.
Earth2Aleta...yoohoo...
