Monthly Archives: August 2014

Can MOOCs Motivate Personal Change? | Higher Ed Beta @insidehighered

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https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-beta/can-moocs-motivate-personal-change

Okay, almost time to commence the countdown to my departure south to San Miquel de Allende. Have quite a few ‘ducks to put in the proverbial row’ before I head to Victoria to catch the Victoria Clipper ferry to Seattle, then onward to Leon. At that point I’ll take an airport shuttle to my winter home in San Miquel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico for about six months until May.

This year going towards a new watershed decade I’ve decided to live on the edge of possibilities and will leave the return to be decided and booked on the other aside of the border. I hope I can do this because travel agents here cannot book flights on Volaris, the Mexican airline…yet!

What’s in the crystal ball? Still a bit cloudy…but as they say stay tuned!

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Mena Trott: Meet the founder of the blog revolution

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Mena Trott: Meet the founder of the blog revolution #TED : http://on.ted.com/t048x

Sometimes when I say I’m a lifestyle/retirement blogger I find there is interest; sometimes not or even an upfront declaration that they never read them. They don’t understand the appeal, find them self indulgent or trivial or both.

Certainly, due to the ease of establishing a blog on either of the two main blogging platforms, Blogger or my platform of choice, WordPress this can be absolutely true. No doubt about it. My fondest wish is that the millions of abandoned, unattended blogs would simply vaporize into the ether (including some of my earlier efforts!) instead of still appearing in google searches add infinitum. But that’s just me.

Everyone needs a voice and a sounding board when it comes to something they feel passionate about. Right now, just a mere two years after taking the early exit ramp to Freedom 55 from my previous passionate engagement in 30 years of primary teaching I have indeed found my authentic voice in the blogosphere.

I discovered blogs about ten years ago in graduate school at the University of Calgary, Alberta when I was working on a Masters of Educational Technology and I have fairly steadily used various blogs for grad school course work and other creative outlets including just last week when I submitted my final learning/teaching design project for peer review for an online MOOC Leaders of Learning class at http://www.edx.org

I think I might have lost track of the current’head count’ but yes, I have given birth once more to yet a new vehicle for my post professional voice. Instead of wishes, hopes, aspirations and plans just continuing to drift around in my head I am now intrinsically motivated to verbalize and clearly illustrate my vision for the evolutionary evolvement of my life as I leave my fifties behind in 2015, the next leap year.

And what does this all mean…if anything?

Guess you’ll have to read my next blog and the one after that and the one in an old blog and an abandoned blog and oh no!

The newest blog still in the’incubator.’

http://www.continuingtheartistway.wordpress.com

In conclusion, let me poise a purely rhetorical question because you already know the answer before I even ask it. What do you think I was doing in the wifi sports bar in my meigjbourhood in Ajijic in early February, 2012 when a hoodie wearing hoodlum entered Tom’s Bar and wrenched my IPad right out of my hands and sprinted down the entry cobblestone street to a waiting getaway car? Best guess..

If you respond blogging you would be right!

And so it is on this New Moon Monday in August in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada.

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How to Become a House Sitter and Travel the World for Longer

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http://charlieontravel.com/how-to-become-house-sitter/

Time to think about my Mexico countdown… This week, I’m getting my hair cut and coloured in anticipation of getting a ten year passport! I’ve also started to look at preliminary possible scenarios for getting to the airport, which routes to consider and whether I want to leave my departure open to an in country Volaris Airline flight home at the end of April…Decisions, decisions, decisions…

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Tipping Point…

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Having passed the tipping point about two week ago just today I hauled out my two suitcases that I’m going to start packing. One is my case for one way clothes, art supplies and yarn for the knitting group that makes hats and scarves for the kids in the campo and the other is for my actual six month wardrobe. Fortunately, I left my so called winter clothes in SMA with an amiga. I only need them for January anyway.

I was researching something else when I came acoss ths site that mentions two films that were filmed in San Miquel de Allende. I simply must track them down!

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20471622_484446,00.html

Me gusto Johnny Depp!