Skype with my Partner Jacque

I had the privilege of speaking with Jacque today about her field of archeology. One of the most interesting things Jacque described was her focus on accessibility in learning. Archeology has had the tendency to be more of an anglo-boys club with a heavily Westernized approach in the past, and now she is happy to see this changing. Simon Fraser University is an excellent example where a wider Aboriginal perspective is brought to faculty.

You can learn more about Simon Fraser's program by visiting them at http://www.sfu.ca/archaeology

I found it fascinating that of the 5 scrolling images of award winning students and faculty on their main page for the archeology department, all 5 were women.

Jacque is not new to online endeavours, and when pursuing her Ph. D in education, she constructed an online website designed to help get her information to the public. She saw it as an ethical need; something the public deserved to be provided with. Preservation was a key for Jacque in her archaeological digs. Her passion struck a chord with me and just made good sense as she explained how the public had a role to play in the ethical preservation of what lay in wait underground.

Both Jacque and myself acknowledge we have much to learn about blogging and need to expand our use of social media/web based video and the like.

As we discussed our experiences in this program and the occasional scramble to meet deadlines or check to make sure we were not behind, Jacque mentioned something that has impacted a future blog of mine; real life examples.

Discussing the 5 learning concepts is great, but without a classroom, one must hypothesize a fair bit. "This is what I will do, and this is how it will work," without any real reference for that delivery being received as you expect.

Fortunate to have a class at my disposal to play with, I plan on sharing the execution of my "Beach Day" experiment, in hopes it will offer some of the "real life"