I'm a proud Badger. I graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with an MS degree in electrical engineering about ten years back. It was quite a struggle as I opted to do research in a field I knew little about (don't ask why) and I was on the wrong side of 'publish or perish' for a few years. But one benefit of my relatively long stay at UW-Madison was the gradual assimilation of the Wisconsin Idea. You can read about it on Wikipedia and this is my favourite excerpt:
'Van Hise declared that he would "never be content until the beneficent influence of the university reaches every family in the state". Today that belief permeates the UW System's work, fostering close working relationships within the state, throughout the country, and around the world.'
I was a teaching assistant for many semesters at UW, but I wouldn't have guessed then that education and edtech would become a big part of my career. Anyway, I'm not surprised. I was training to be an engineer but I was always a better teacher. The engineering side of my education has however been a boon for what I do with the 'tech' part of edtech and stuff like data analysis. But more than that, it's the Wisconsin Idea that I look to for inspiration.
I work in a capacity building context in international development, and lately I've been supporting some teams at universities in Ghana, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Vietnam use Moodle. They have different aspirations and varying levels of Moodle proficiency, but they all have one thing in common: they can see how a learning platform like Moodle can expand access to learning and networking opportunities for people at their university and beyond, in their region or even nation. Moodle is open source software and there's generally an IT person in the teams I work with. I tell them that how well they use Moodle is a matter of their own commitment, both on the technical side and pedagogical side. They can easily scale up to a level of supporting a few thousand students without needing very specialized support. That's good news for universities in developing countries where there's usually not a lot of money to go around.
I think open source edtech like Moodle and the Wisconsin Idea go hand in hand for the kind of work I do. They're both about breaking down geographical barriers to education. Living in India - far away from both Wisconsin and Australia (where the Moodle headquarters is) - I can feel the effect of both.
'Van Hise declared that he would "never be content until the beneficent influence of the university reaches every family in the state". Today that belief permeates the UW System's work, fostering close working relationships within the state, throughout the country, and around the world.'
I was a teaching assistant for many semesters at UW, but I wouldn't have guessed then that education and edtech would become a big part of my career. Anyway, I'm not surprised. I was training to be an engineer but I was always a better teacher. The engineering side of my education has however been a boon for what I do with the 'tech' part of edtech and stuff like data analysis. But more than that, it's the Wisconsin Idea that I look to for inspiration.
I work in a capacity building context in international development, and lately I've been supporting some teams at universities in Ghana, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Vietnam use Moodle. They have different aspirations and varying levels of Moodle proficiency, but they all have one thing in common: they can see how a learning platform like Moodle can expand access to learning and networking opportunities for people at their university and beyond, in their region or even nation. Moodle is open source software and there's generally an IT person in the teams I work with. I tell them that how well they use Moodle is a matter of their own commitment, both on the technical side and pedagogical side. They can easily scale up to a level of supporting a few thousand students without needing very specialized support. That's good news for universities in developing countries where there's usually not a lot of money to go around.
I think open source edtech like Moodle and the Wisconsin Idea go hand in hand for the kind of work I do. They're both about breaking down geographical barriers to education. Living in India - far away from both Wisconsin and Australia (where the Moodle headquarters is) - I can feel the effect of both.