I was born in Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada and lived in Mississauga then Toronto for much of the early part of my life.  I attended Ryerson University in Toronto where I achieved a Bachelor of Commerce in Information Technology Management with a minor in International Business Relations.

Brother and Sister '82

Brother and Sister ’82

In 2003 I had the amazing opportunity to travel to South Korea as an English teacher at an English immersion summer camp.  This was a life changing experience for me and a great opportunity to immerse, interact, and work with people from another culture.

SuperStars class

SuperStars class

After finishing university in 2005 I was awarded a Commonwealth Internship from the Commonwealth of Learning.  This brought me to Namibia where I spent the following three years working with the Namibian University of Science and Technology (NUST) in information management.

Namib Desert at Spitzkoppe

Namib Desert at Spitzkoppe

In 2009 I moved to Cape Town to pursue my masters in education technology with the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa.  From 2009 to 2012 I worked with the Centre for Educational Technology at UCT on the Shuttleworth funded open educational resources (OER) project.  I served as a researcher and technical analyst for the project and was involved with the technical analysis, selection and development process for the UCT OpenContent OER directory built on the open source Drupal coment management system.  I also actively engaging with UCT academics to promote the creation of electronic teaching materials as OER and consulted on technical, legal, and social concerns.

Cape Town

Cape Town

In 2012, after seven years abroad in Southern Africa I decided to return to Canada to get closer to family and take on a new adventure on the West Coast of Canada.

From 2012 to 2018 I was Learning Technologies Application Developer at Vancouver Island University in the Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning; at the time, a growing teaching and learning centre.  In this role I was actively involved in: researching emerging technologies and practices in higher education as well as administrating the Desire2Learn learning management system, Kaltura streaming media server, WordPress blogging networks, Collaborate/Zoom online meeting spaces and Mediawiki at VIU.  I also conducted workshops and training to support informed educational technology usage.

Nanaimo

Nanaimo from VIU

I am now an Assistant Professor in educational technologies with the University of Victoria. My research interests include open education, open source software, open technology, networked learning, learning analytics, and all things education technology (#edtech). More information about my current work is available on my personal portfolio.

This site is intended to enable friends and family to keep up on what I am doing.  It is also become very important to me as a journal and I often spend time just browsing older posts to rekindle lost memories. I hope to keep up to date sharing my adventures and exploration.

The header image on my blog was created by Cory Doctorow.  You can create your own similar puzzle here.