벤쿠버에 눈이 정말 많이 왔어요!

제가 살고 있는 벤쿠버에 눈이 정말 많이 왔어요. 벤쿠버에서 13년이 넘게 살았지만 겨울에 눈이 많이 온 것은 손에 꼽을만 하답니다. 집 앞 눈을 다 치우고 들어왔는데 율리 알빈이가 이웃집 눈이 하나도 치워지지 않은 것을 보고 치워주고 싶다고 하길래 날씨도 춥고 해서 걱정도 되었지만 기특한 마음에 알아서 해보라고 허락을 해주었답니다. 한 시간, 한 시간 반이 지나도 아이들이 돌아오지 않아서 창문을 열고 두 아이 이름을 불렀답니다. 대답이 없길래 40대 한국 여인네의 거친 음성으로 "율리야 알빈아" 하고 악을 썼더니 짜증스런 대답이 들려옵니다. 그래서 10분 이내로 들어오라고 협박을 하고 책상에 앉아있는데 전화벨이 울립니다. 받아보니 딸아이의 음성이 들립니다. 그 어눌한 한국말로 "엄마?" "응" "엄마, 밖에 다른 사람이 있는 곳에서는 yelling하지 마세요. Communication에 아무 도움 안돼요." "응, 엄만 너네가 대답이 없길래..." "곧 들어갈께요. 일은 complete 해야 돼잖아요." "그래, 알았어..." 웽???


난 늘 그렇다. 아이들에게 체면이 안 설 때가 있다. 이 급하디 급하고 이기적인 모성애 땜시...


좀 미안한 마음에 얼른 핫초코를 타서 딸아이 셀로 전화를 했다. 딸아이가 왔다. "이거 둘이 나눠마시고, 그래 시간이 얼마나 더 필요하니?" 라고 했더니 딸아이가 "Thanks, mom" 하면서 20분이 더 필요하다고 한다. "애고 뭣 땀시 사서 저 고생인가..." 하고 아까운 마음이 들었지만 꾹 참기로 했다. 창문 귀퉁이를 통해서 열심히 일하고 있는 두 아이들의 모습이 눈에 들어왔다. 특히 키가 작은 아들 녀석은 자기 보다 더 큰 shovel 을 열심히 움직여댔다. 기특하기도 하고 대견하기도 하고... 그러면서도 혹시나 감기나 걸리지 않을까 내심 걱정이 되었다. 한참 후 다시 한 30분쯤 되었을까, 두 아이가 재잘거리며 집으로 돌아왔다. 여기 저기 눈을 터느라 분주했다. 그리고 딸아이가 5불 짜리 지폐를 아들 녀석에게 훽 던졌다. 보아하니 $10을 수고비로 받은 모양이다. 그래서 물었다. "웬 돈?" 딸아이가 설명하기를, "그냥 공짜로 해주는 것이라고 했는데도 $10을 주었단다." 그래서 내가 다시 "그래 올 겨울 내내 눈 좀 많이 왔으면 좋겠네, 우리 율리 알빈이 용돈 좀 많이 벌게."


아이들의 건강한 정신과 건전한 사고 그리고 깨끗한 영혼과의 교류 속에서 난 가끔 부족한 어머니임이 부끄러울 때도 있고 때론 그런 아이들의 어머니임이 자랑스러울 때도 있다. 난 어린날 우리 어머니께 어떤 딸이었을까 하고 생각해 보았다.

McGraw-Hill Ryerson, National Teaching, Learning & TeachingConference, 2008 (May 13-15)

Stephen (instructor of ETEC 500), Jeff, and I presented at 33rd McGraw-Hill Ryerson, National Teaching, Learning, & Technology Conference which took place on May 13-15 at SFU Burnaby.

Debunking the online course cookie-cutter myth: the impact of the instructor

The question of learner-centered, interactive learning has long been an issue in the discussion of the benefits of online distance education. Collaborative/cooperative learning, social development theory, and communities of practice are concepts underlying this issue. At the University of British Columbia (UBC), the birthplace of WebCT, more than 100 courses are delivered online, including a number of courses which are concurrently delivered by different instructors.
This paper addresses how instructors plan, develop, and promote interactive learning. By examining a course which has multiple sections taught by different instructors, factors leading to different levels of student-student and student-instructor interactivity will be investigated. Depending on the instructor’s attitudes towards teaching and learning, knowledge of and capabilities in using technology, relationships with students, and ways of facilitating communication, there is a difference in the way student learning takes place. This paper sheds light on how the instructor’s facilitation/scaffolding makes a difference to student learning in a learner-centered and interactive learning environment. The intended audience members include instructional designers and instructional support staff for online courses, and instructors teaching online courses.

AAOU, 2007 (Oct. 29-31)

Thanks to our departmental support, Doug and I successfully presented our paper, Developing Effective Interactive Learning Experiences for Online Distance Education Courses, at AAOU (Asian Association of Open Universities). About 300 people from 20 different countries gathered in Malaysia Kuala Lumper and shared their common interests and distinctive experiences. The rich and informative conference helped me to open my eyes to a new context, Asian Open Universities.

With the Vancouver sky covered with grey clouds, I headed to the airport. Hoping to meet different people, I became a little bit excited and nervous. Life is full of indescribable moments. The mysterious moments always come to me and I sometimes fall into an ocean of unknown territory, dreaming of new explorations.

Previous expectations: I felt I was a naive in the environment of Open University but expected to see some common interests from this conference. At the same time, I wanted to compare and contrast between Asian and Western cultures in the discussion of Distance Education.
Experiences: The conference theme was Empowering Asia through Partnerships in Open and Distance Education. Therefore, sharing and partnership were the key words throughout the conference.

One of the Keynote speeches was presented by Sir John Daniel, who is the President and CEO of Commonwealth of Learning in Vancouver. His title was Blending for Success in Open and Distance Education: Public/Private Partnerships; Human and Social Capital; Free and Copyrighted Content; Mixing the Media. He emphasized that it is timely to discuss sharing and partnerships in open and distance education and he elaborated some related issues for healthy partnerships.

Here is an interesting citation from his paper.

Our challenge, as open universities, is to blend technology and people so as to help students learn. The way to achieve success is to keep our focus on our students, not on the latest technology or on the internal dynamics of our institutions. If we keep that focus then we will find our way naturally into partnerships. We shall find ourselves blending the private and the public, thinking in terms of both human and social capital, being pragmatic about our use and licensing of learning content, and being ready to blend different media to achieve our purpose.

In line with Sir John Daniel’s partnership, I attended an interesting presentation, entitled Empowering Asia through General Curriculum Adaptively Based on Cultural Differences in Open and Distance Universities presented by Iranian scholars. They shared barriers in sharing and creating partnerships. There are issues which thwart creating partnerships: language barriers, literacy issues, lack of respect, recognition, trust, and reciprocation. The presenters pointed out different cultural aspects between Asia and North America. I thought that the meaning of sharing could be differently interpreted and practiced in different contexts.

In addition, language is one of the practical issues. I wonder how the language problem could be solved for non-native speakers of English. How can a partnership be accomplished without a shared language?

Also, how can we deal with the cultural differences, because it is hard to generalize what Asian culture is because there are many uniquenesses existing among Asian countries? The term, culture, which is made by the values that its people bring to their daily lives, always makes me confused and fascinated at the same time.

In other sessions I attended, some barriers in sharing and building partnerships were also discussed. There were three main issues in the discussions: language, cultural differences, and accessibility.

Doug and Sunah’s Presentation Our presentation went well. We had good feedback and several questions after the presentation. Our twenty min presentation was extended to forty min due to the next presenter’s absence. We had a good number of audiences (more than 30). Doug’s professional and profound experience in distance education services made our presentation successful.

ReflectionsI was surprised at the large number of students studying in Open Universities in Asia. For example, In Malaysia, 60,000 students (20 PhD students through online) with a wide variety of different students from different areas. In Taipei, there are 160 Open Universities with a four-year program. Through the journey to AAOU, I learned that UBC is one of the respectful sources in Distance Education. With Tony Bates’ legacy in contribution to Open Universities and Distance Education, reputation as the birth place of WebCT, and our continuing and flourishing leading role in technology and education, I became proud of being a member of OLT here at UBC.

CADE and AMTEC, 2007 (May 12-16)

First of all, I appreciate the generous support which allowed me to make my first learning journey to CADE/AMTEC in terms of not only the departmental financial support but also team members' mental support.

While I was coming back home, I thought reflecting on what I learned from the conference would give you some information on where this learning community is heading and what happened in this community. I think sharing always doesn’t have any harm at all. Also, my learning couldn’t be possible without the departmental support.

I had three expectations from this conference: I wanted 1) to know more about the Distance Education people because I was curious to know who the participants were 2) to see how technology issues are discussed within distance education, and 3) to experience how the organization runs and the annual meeting takes place.

Being a lonely goose from our department, I realized that a sense of community and belonging is really important. But due to the loneliness, I was able to meet more people.
First of all, my presentation about Wimba went well. I got good questions/feedbacks after the presentation.

Here are some thoughts and comments about the community and events I experienced:

1) Pre-conference workshop
I attended a half day workshop, “Using Second Life with Moodle in the Classroom, Enhancing Pedagogy through Serious Games.”

My main motivation to attend the workshop was to know more about the cutting-edge technology. My aim was to explore Second Life.
I grasped a basic knowledge about Second Life from the workshop.

(1) My awareness about the program has increased. Even though it seems very complex and hard to use for me, the popularity about the program is tremendously growing. The current subscribers already reach more than 6 million people. (2) The program combined the virtual world and real economy. (3) It also enables humans to do what is impossible in real life such as Avita’s flying, and changing characters by using various items from inventories. (4) The virtual world is not a game. It means that it doesn’t have any challenging destination, unlike games. (5) The facilitator, Jeremy Kemp, is currently involved in a project, which combines Second Life and Moodle, creating a merged one named Snoodle. Second Life isn’t voice enabled yet. Snoodle merged the social interaction feature from Second Life and the educational management system from Moodle. As you may know, Moodle is an open source CMS tool. . (6) More importantly, the workshop kept me thinking about pedagogical implications. It seems interesting, but what and how can I use it in the classroom? It seems too far to make any feasible implications at this moment because the computer I used kept freezing while exploring the program. That was a reality but who knows, in about in a decade, we sit in a virtual world to teach. I could be a slim and blonde teacher in the virtual world.

2) My learning from the main conference consists of three things. Also these three things were the main issues many people talked about.

(1) Global village
This conference took place under the theme of Global Village, Marshall McLuhan’s envision in the 1960s. Most of the keynote speeches stemmed from the conference theme. There were four keynote speakers: Derrick de Kerchhove, Eric McLuhan, Ellen D. Wagner, and Herve Fischer. There were a few presentations about the global village.
A more important and interesting issue from the theme was in alert and warning about constant technology evolution from the printing technology to the Virtual world. Quite a few people voiced that we need to take a moment to think about where we are because new technologies do not mean always good and improvement.

(2) Social Softwares: Web 2.0
I spent some time in the sessions about Social Softwares. Even though I was aware of the tools thanks to Brian’s contribution to our department, I was curious to know how they are used in classrooms. The presentations I attended will greatly help me to explain their functionalities as well as the pedagogical effects to the instructors who may be interested in the use of the Social Softwares in the future. Also I found out about one more interesting social software, which is called Kayuda (http://www.kayuda.com) Brian might be of interest in exploring this software in the future.

(3) Second Life
Even though I had attended the Second Life workshop, I naturally wanted to see how it could be used in online classes. As I mentioned earlier, Second Life still has a lot of room for improvement for pedagogical implementations.

3) At the Award Banquet on behalf of Chris
Whenever I was taking photos (three times, uhrrr.), I told them that I am not Chris. Even though I was definitely proud of my colleague, Chris, for the award, I was a little nervous whenever people flashed lights over me because people may misunderstand me as the recipient who is very smart and dedicated (haha…). I got a lot of congratulations from the people and I was finally overwhelmed. Anyhow, I safely took the award without any mistreatment and delivered it to Chris.

I think my expectations from this conference were generally met. The people I met there were very friendly and nice. I thoroughly felt the unique Canadian atmosphere. I became more aware of where distance education is at and where it is headed for. Also the conference was very well prepared in terms of the time management of the main conference and preparation for the next year event. It will take place in April in Banff next year.

Who is Sunah Cho?

Family:
I have two children: Julie born in Korea and Alvin born in Canada. They are the most precious gifts I have ever been given. I am also lucky to have gentle, hansome, majestic Colton (see his photo above). I was born in Korea and immigrated to Canada. The members of my family of origin that are still alive are my mother and two older sisters. My husband is good at all kinds of sports, which is totally unlike me.

Education:
- PhD: University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada)
Title: Technology use for heritage language acquisition and maintenance.

Teaching Experience:
-Ewha Woman's University (Seoul, Korea)
-Concordia Language Villages (Minnesota, USA)
-University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada)

Career:
I am instructional designer/project manager for distance & blended education in the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, UBC, Canada. I like this job because it allows me to practice all the theory I have learned from my class through all sorts of activities: meeting people, facilitating projects, considering others, using technology, sharing my expertise, mentoring others, constantly making decisions...
I am also teaching a graduate course in UBC's Masters of Educational Technology. I love teaching as well because it makes me more confident and proud of myself as one who can share my knowledge and experience with others. I know I am sometimes selfish but mostly I like to share with others.

What I like most:
I like working with people, being together, and laughing my head off.