January 2019

Tomorrow, my pal and I will be presenting at the Morton College Adult Education In-Service day. We’re excited to share our thoughts on “Integrating Technology into Instruction—Realistic Strategies for the Adult Education Classroom”. Here’s the overview of our session: “While most adults have smartphones, many lack the digital skills needed to acquire and evaluate information, communicate […]

My latest used book arrived in the mail yesterday, Schon’s 1984 “The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think In Action” 1st Edition. With Monica Tracey and John Baaki on our board at Designers for Learning, it was only a matter of time before I ordered this. They cite Schon’s work throughout their chapter titled, “Design, Designers,

In my course this term, students have the option to write a case study for one of their course assignments. In digging for writing/assessment guidance, I came across the Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership. Since Ed Leadership is outside my area of expertise, I’ve never seen this peer-reviewed (and yes … behind a walled

Today started by rolling out of bed to the picture (that should appear) with this post. It’s from my condo looking to the SE about 2 miles from downtown Chicago. If I didn’t know Lake Michigan was “behind” the city skyline, I would have thought Chicago had another fire on our hands. As the day

Designers for Learning just completed a 5-week Evaluation Sprint, a crowdsourcing effort to evaluate 108 open educational resources (OER) created by volunteers in our prior service-MOOCs to support adult basic skills education programs. I’m always amazed by the support we receive from our network of volunteers and this project was no exception. In terms of

Here’s a copy of my dissertation: Maddrell, J. A. (2011). Community of inquiry framework and learning outcomes (Doctoral dissertation). Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA. I’ve had my dissertation up on my personal website for years. I’ve never taken the time to set up my site to track the “hits” to it, so I must not really care

As I write (and rewrite and rewrite) the overview for the first week of Technology, Learning Systems, and Culture, a course I’m co-teaching with Stephanie Moore at the University of Virginia, I’m trying to pull examples from recent history to frame the (wonderful!) readings Stephanie assembled. Our first week’s reading list includes Andrew Feenberg’s 1999

I love my city, but we’ve got a whopper of a major problem. As the 3rd largest city in the US, Chicago had 650 murders in 2017, which is more than the combined total of NYC (290) and LA (286). Things improved in 2018 with a drop to below 600 murders, but no one here is

Dr. Stephanie Moore nominated me to post a book a day on Twitter and my selection today was Flawless Consulting: A guide to getting your expertise used. I’ll link to the 2nd edition of the book as used copies of this older edition cover much of the same ground as the newest edition at a fraction

As I continue reading The Purpose Economy by Aaron Hurst, I want to spend time thinking about the three core categories of purpose he outlines, including 1) Personal purpose, 2) Social purpose, and 3) Societal purpose. From my interpretation, personal purpose relates to what we asked participants at our exhibit booth during the 2015 AECT convention. The question “What impact will you make?”