A new venture into open learning

A brief introduction and background:

My name is Grant Penny, and I am Edtech/a FT Lecturer on Waterfall campus. My passion in education technology began while working in Japan, where through experiences had there I decided to engulf on the MA in Online and Distance Education course through the Open University. Since then, the edtech world has been both part of my profession and hobby. I am sure that the ONL181 course will expand my knowledge and provide fresh challenges in this exciting field.

As a slight extra: a large chunk of my work within this degree was on OER for schools and universities, and towards the end shifted slightly to open learning as a concept. This focus was largely influenced by the work of Dave Comier and Martin Weller (see Weller’s blog here). Comier’s work in “rhizomatic learning” talks to what I understand ONL and PBL to be. This video below sums up his thinking very well: