Grades are posted as of last night. Today is the first full day of my 16 month sabbatical. Yes!
So what are the plans? A little bit here and a little bit there.
Ten Sabbatical Plans:
1. Blogging: I intend to blog more. Also, plan to make the posts shorter and to the point. I have some experiences from the past winter and spring to post yet (from the UK, Austin, U of Florida, Shanghai (via videoconferencing), UW Milwaukee (via Web conferencing), and elsewhere).
2. Book Completion: I need to finish my online motivation and retention book as well as my World is More Open book. Both will be free to the world when done. Too many committees and service work has been slowing me down. Draft chapters are available to those who ask.
3. Travel Plan Outlook: I will likely send one week each month in different parts of the world. Here are some initial travel stops tentatively planned after the coming summer.
a. Tokyo (International Christian University (ICU) in September. My friend, Dr. Insung Jung, is arranging and said that I will stay in a guest house of ICU.
b. Las Vegas for E-Learn in October (I are planning to coordinate a preconference symposium on MOOCs and Open Education with Mimi Lee, Tom Reynolds, and Tom Reeves. This event will take place Monday October 21st with a presession reflection in Red Rock Canyon the day before. The preconference symposium will be like the session on "E-Learning in Asia" that the four of us did 5 years ago at eLearn in Vegas in 2008 that resulted in a special journal issue and print-on-demand book. We hope that many of our friends and colleagues from 2008 will return to help out.).
c. After E-Learn, I will keynote the Health & Safety Institute Conference 2013 in San Antonio, Texas and then head for Anaheim.
d. Anaheim for AECT 2013 in the following week in early November.
e. Taiwan (at National Sun Yat-Sen University in Kaohsiung and most likely Taipei as well) in mid to late November,
f. The UK for BETT and other things in January.
g. University of Hue in Vietnam (Wikipedia) to keynote a conference, "Innovation and Good Practice: Global Perspective" for various Asian university leaders March 15-16, 2014.
h. AERA April 3-7 in Philadelphia in April, 2014.
i. Tampere, Finland for Ed Media in June, 2014 and perhaps Helsinki and other places in Finland.
This is just a starter list of travel destinations for TravelinEdMan. There will be dozens and dozens more requests.
4. Upcoming May Travel Plans. This Month is Jamming. This week Wednesday May 8th I will be speaking at the University of Indianapolis where my daughter, Nicki, goes to graduate school in occupational therapy. Next Monday May 13th, I will be speaking at the Faculty Summer Institute at the University of Illinois (the FSI agenda). On May 15th, I will speak at the 4th Annual Stone Soup Professional Development Conference at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina. And on May 21-22, I will be on a discussion panel and then keynote the 2013 UA System Scholars Institute at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
5. Upcoming June Travel Plans: In June, I will speak on MOOCs at our Indiana University 2013 Mini University (full list of speakers). This will be the opening session on June 10th. I will also present some of my research on MOOCs and self-directed open learning at the 25th Annual Ethnographic and Qualitative Research Conference in Cedarville, Ohio on Friday June 7th.
6. Book Reading: I intend to read more books. I have been listening to many books in my car since 2006-2007 (when I had my last sabbatical).
7. New Book Projects: I have many other book writing plans. Some related to the open learning world and extreme learning and others related to emerging video technology.
8. Running: I plan to run in Bloomington and elsewhere. I get to see the cities which I visit better from a morning run. During my last sabbatical, I started a trend of running every day at least once a day until I got plantar fasciitis. Ouch! Wish it was not raining so hard. I have had my jogging clothes on all day.
9. Reflection: I plan to reflect more. I have a lovely wooded backyard with a creek at the bottom and many birds singing. Placed a bench down there overlooking the creek and park (former farm) below.
10. Rosemary: I plan to see my auntie Rosemary (my father's younger sister) and her 50 year anniversary of being a nun at an even in my hometown of Milwaukee on Saturday July 6th.
Ok, those are some plans. All for now. Remember, that I plan to blog more.
