Flight Path
Who
My name is Daren Okafo. I’m originally from Dublin, Ireland but have been living in eastern Canada for about 20 years, with brief-ish side trips to various spots in the UK, Montreal, Cairo and New York.
I currently live in Arisaig, Nova Scotia with my dearest friend and wife, Carrie Ellen Gabriel and our four year old daugther Ciara.
I’ve done a number of things over the years ( soldier, bartender, bouncer, science educator, radio presenter, musician, etc. ) but currently the role that seems to be in command is that of technology designer/developer at The Coady International Institute, StFX University. I’ve had a lifelong relationship with computers which began in the 80’s and a svelte Sinclair Spectrum, which was promptly modded to look like the BBC/Acorn – anyone remember those rubber keys on the spectrum :{
I also make music, mostly under the moniker Stigg of the Dump, often with my friend Sixtoo as Villain Accelerate.
565 Objectives
I’m quite excited about this course – I’ve spent a number of years in and around web-based technologies of all sorts, often ‘learning’ technologies of various guises. I’ve also built several learning platforms in the past. However, I have rarely spent much time really getting to grips with the design issues, user issues, teacher issues, etc. Sounds like a very backwards approach, which I think it is, but the pressures of the software workplace often mean produce now, worry/reflect later.
The learning technologies folks at UBC are highly respected in this field, so I was very excited when this course was launched last year. I hope to learn about what teachers actually want from learning management systems, social software and multimedia systems, what they see float in the classroom and what they feel seems to be the wishful thinking of tech designers – both from a pragmatic perspective but also from an academic perspective .
I hope to learn better strategies for assessing the learning technologies I use and make, and to more fully engage at a critical level with the broader world of e-learning technologies by learning from the experiences of classmates and course instructors. This is particularly important to me, as my teaching context is explicitly critical and ‘Frierien’ in it’s approach and as such I feel my role as technologist should reflect this. Gaining a better grasp of the tools to better understand the roles, impacts and potentials of the technologies I deploy is a vital objective for me in this course.
I’m sure I’ll add/edit/alter this as I proceed in 565, but that seems like a good first take on a flightpath through this course and the MET program.