Techfoot is my personal blog, where I speak only for myself and not for my employer or any other organization.  Most of what I write concerns the use technology in higher education, about the connection between higher education and lifelong learning and about the power of technology to foster creativity, community and collaboration. I’m starting my 16th year at William and Mary and my 3Oth in higher education. A couple of months ago, I accepted a new position at W&M as Interim Director of University eLearning Initiatives to help coordinate the efforts of our faculty in launching new projects to use technology to engage students in deeper learning.

The new job is an outgrowth of my previous work as director of Academic Information Services at the College of William and Mary, and my responsibilities still include working with the academic technology specialists, our academic engineering team and the members of the lab/ classroom team to support teaching and learning at the College. Our group assists over 600 faculty and staff and a growing number of graduate and professional students. We are responsible for leadership in design, build and maintain over classrooms and labs and are increasingly involved with video conferencing in all its glory.

I also have an academic appointment as Executive Professor in the School of Education., where I currently teach courses in technology planning, adult education and emerging technologies in education. William and Mary’s new SOE building has opened up a whole host of opportunities for new collaborative projects, including our Center for Technology Integration, the new Executive Ed.D program, and some experiments in e-learning in distance formats.

A couple of caveats about my writing:

• I’ve never written two sentences without a typo; I certainly don’t intent to start now.
• Andrew Jackson said, “It is a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word.” I happen to have a damn fine mind that can think of many ways to spell just about anything.

For the last year or so, most of my blogging has been directed toward our Academic Technology Blog on a variety of topics, including things like MOOCS and Flipping the Classroom. Kim Mann, our indefatigable editor has helped me explore a variety of topics through posts and podcasts.

A little bit about what I’m doing right now…

One very interesting project is working with our Dean of Libraries and the Technology Integration Center at the School of Education to launch a self-directed professional development to help faculty learn the tolls and techniques to create new online resources for their students. The project is supported by the College’s Creative Adaptation Fund and will involve collaboration with a wide range of colleagues from across the William and Mary eLearning Community.

We’re currently working on a variety of projects focused on expanding the conversation about teaching excellence and supporting new types of faculty and student research. Our group is continuing to work with the staff at Swem library on a variety of projects, including this summer’s launch of a new version of the Faculty Digital Center, and some ongoing work on helping librarians to work with media-savvy students.

At this stage in my life, I’m also learning more than I want to to about topics such as osteoarthritis, atrial fibrillation and dealing with the aftermath of total knee replacement.