In a nutshell…
Librarian @mountroyal4u 📖 Research: #OER #SoTL #UX 🖊️ Tech geek 💾 Usability aficionado 📱 Guitarist 🎸 Blog: tech-bytes.net 💻 Podcast @edtechexamined 🎙
I’m an academic Librarian in Calgary Alberta, Canada. I’m primarily interested in how education can be made more accessible through the development and sharing of openly licensed content. I collaborate with librarians and academics across Canada and abroad on open education initiatives and research. I also love to teach. I believe critical thinking, research and writing skills, and a dedication to the pursuit of truth are essential to living a meaningful life, and I greatly enjoy working with students to develop their competencies in these areas.
Education
In 2011, I completed a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. My primary focuses were American politics, international politics, and economics. My fascination with research and information technology led me to the University of Alberta where I completed my Master of Library and Information Studies (MLIS) in 2014.
Experience
Since completing my MLIS, I have been supporting instructors and students in higher education. I have experience supporting large education technology and IT projects, consulting on instructional design projects (at the course and program level), providing research and scholarly communication support to university faculty, and teaching information literacy, research, and analysis skills to students. Throughout my career, I have consistently served as either an information architect, web admin, or technical consultant for a variety of platforms and initiatives. Despite being a teaching-focused academic, I regularly present at local, national, and international conferences and publish the occasional scholarly article. I’m an active member in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (specifically ISSOTL) and open education associations thanks to the encouragement of my colleagues.
Outside of my day job, I dedicate the majority of my time to professionally relevant side projects. I’m a long-time computer and electronics enthusiast (hardware, web development, automation, gaming, etc.). I continually stay abreast of new technology, and I’ve been blogging about the tech industry since 2013 at Tech Bytes. I’m most interested in how modern computing trends impact our work, productivity, communication, and privacy. Reading and writing about technology has made me a far more competent writer, web admin, and knowledgeable ‘go-to’ tech person throughout my career. I develop new technical skills through online courses (Lynda/LinkedIn, Treehouse, Coursera, etc.) and by undertaking personal projects. I’ve built computers, home servers (NAS), media centres, many websites, automation scripts, etc. I can usually ‘MacGyver‘ a solution to most computing or electronics problems. I’ve been playing electric guitar for over fifteen years, so you could say I’m familiar with music electronics and have an ear for good sound. I also co-host an education technology podcast (EdTech Examined). Thanks to music, podcasting, and teaching, I’m a reasonably experienced audio and video editor, and I’ve worked with a variety of industry-standard software suites. Developing a tech blog, a personal website, and an original podcast has taught me a lot about branding. Choosing a name, administering domains, working with content management platforms, and managing the social media accounts are all things I can do comfortably.
A motto a repeat to my students is “side projects matter.” I’m living proof of this.
About this website
This website is my professional communication hub. Here, you will find information about me (this page), my work (links to my scholarly works, presentations, and current projects), contact information, and links to my blog and podcast.
I post updates about my recent academic publications, conference presentations and workshops, teaching projects, podcast episodes, and tech blog posts. Writing about technology trends has been my primary blogging interest since 2013. My technology blog is tech-bytes.net. Why do I have two different websites? I started Tech Bytes first. I also think the audience and purpose of Tech Bytes are very different. I also republish many of my blog posts on Medium.
Pertinent Links
🔗 Tech Bytes: My primary technology blog
🔖 Pinboard: My public bookmarks and saved articles
