Activity 1: Introducing myself (online)

I have been working as an associate lecturer at the OU for the last seven years, starting on M150 and now on TU100 and TT284. Until a year and half ago I was also working as a teacher and IT support manager at a local secondary school in Cambridgeshire having gained QTS after doing my GTP at the same school. Before that I lived in London and worked in TV & Film.  But my first career was working in publishing and the IT departments of various national broadsheet newspapers. So I on this module I am working towards my fifth career and, to be honest, I am also hoping it will be my last one.

Web development was a natural progression from the work I did in publishing and was also how I got into education. I became very involved in Moodle (the course management system the OU uses to deliver all its modules) at an early stage, way before the OU had started to work on its development. Now I am working on improving student interaction in OU Live, following my H809 research proposal, and hoping to create a career niche for myself by perhaps combining the two expertises. This MAODE module is the one I have been most looking forward to and although I took part in the innaugral OLDS MOOC last year, I couldn't give it the required time and dropped out after a few weeks. I have since managed to complete another whole MOOC and felt incredibly proud of myself for doing so! I am also very interested in Open Badges and gamification (it won't take you long to guess why that might be!).

Cobolt with one of his many toys

My great dane (he has his own FB page) takes up a good amount of my spare time as does playing World of Warcraft. In WoW I play most aspects of the game and am currently concentrating on battle pet achievements. One of my latest book purchases is written by Nick Yee, and I was happy to be one of the many research subjects that helped him in its preparation. Oh yes, and I also go to the cinema regularly, this afternoon I am struggling with the choices available, which is unusual. Finally, I love my Humax. It saved me from a life of TV addiction and freed me to watch only those programmes I really can't be without.