How many jobs have you had? (B)

In my early 30s, I didn’t have a passport and had never been overseas. It was 1984, we had a young family, and were keen to take off somewhere … anywhere. I viewed enviously a business studies teacher at Hobart Technical College who had obtained a position in the Seychelles – such an amazing move seemed well out of reach. But then … Continue reading

Confessions of a COL consultant 1: India

One of the greatest pleasures of working in higher education was my opportunity to be an occasional consultant for the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) for a couple of decades – a much longer period than the reigns of its Presidents, as there were three of them during this period. When I started the President was Raj (that’s Professor Dhanarajan to you, unless you’re one of the multitude encouraged to call him Raj), with whom I’d worked at the Open Learning Institute of Hong Kong (later the Open University, OUHK), where I was Senior Course Designer. Continue reading

ODL is still transforming lives – a heartening tale

‘Fisher folk’ – the warm-hearted term caught my eye as I browsed the titles of the papers from PCF7, the 7th Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning. The full title of the paper is ‘Enhancing Lives and Livelihoods of Fisher folk through Innovative Technology applications’, though the title on the PDF version uses the term ‘fishermen’. Continue reading