Sulaimon Lawal will soon join our lab as my first PhD student. He grew up (and still lives) in Lagos, the largest of Africa’s three megacities. Sub-Saharan Africa! The motherland for our species. The only land that was spared the worst of the Late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions. A land of huge cultural and biological diversity. [...]
Back in 2019, at the International Bat Research Conference in Phuket, Thailand, I gave a talk on knowledge and views of bats among Singaporeans - the work of my honours student, Cheryl YIP. At the end of the talk, I said this was the pilot for a global study I was keen to do, and [...]
These days, we recognise that cities play a starring role in the global climate crisis. Indeed, at least 70 % of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from cities themselves or activities that take place elsewhere but satisfy urban demand for goods and services. So, limiting warming to 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels — a goal [...]
In our final post, we are asked to critically reflect on our overall ONL202 learning journey. To that end, we are given five guiding questions. What are the most important things that you learnt through your engagement in the ONL course? How will your learning influence your practice? What are your thoughts on using tech [...]
This, for me, is the most relevant topic so far. I was motivated to take ONL202 so I could become a more competent online educator. Although I couldn’t get through the 35-min intro ppt (sorry, but what was the thinking there ?), I did find the other materials much more useful. Salmon’s 5-stage model gives [...]
This third ONL202 topic alienated me a bit at first. As I watched Kay Oddone’s YouTube videos (1 and 2) on the theory and practice of personal learning networks (PLNs) and read the studies by Capdeferro & Romero and Brindley et al, I felt kind of ‘meh’. Quite a contrast from how content for the [...]
Look at this mind map (from the GEF site). It conceptualises the state of the Global Commons. The thing I kept thinking about during Ragupathi & Creelman’s podcast, David Wiley’s Ted Talk and Dave Cormier’s primer on MOOCs, and while reading Chapter 11 in Teaching in a Digital Age. I mean, other thoughts came up [...]
Until this week’s topic, I’d never given much formal thought to the concept of digital literacies or even heard of Prensky’s digital natives vs immigrants dichotomy. So the paper by White & Le Cornu’s and David White’s video were enlightening. What resonated most with me were the assertions that there isn’t a dichotomy so much [...]
In 2012, four universities in Sweden created a collaborative course for educators, called Open Networked Learning. Basically, it's an opportunity for HE professionals in different countries to work together in small, problem-based-learning (PBL) groups on a series of five topics which, combined, grow their abilities to provide quality learning in an online environment. Currently (in [...]
Of Singapore's 20+ bat species, perhaps none epitomises the urban denizen better than the dog-faced fruit bat (Cynopterus brachyotis). You can find this bat almost everywhere on the urbanisation gradient, and this bat seems to have adapted well to city life (notwithstanding the apparent genetic impacts of urbanisation) - including by adopting the behaviour of [...]
