Sylvia Riessner
sylviar at educomm dot ca
867.334.2207 | 250.738.9310
Short Bio
I am retired educator, still exploring better ways to learn and teach. I plan to share my experiments and findings on this site.
I’m an educational technologist taking time to develop deeper skills using open technologies rather than supporting data-sucking, increasingly annoying mainstream social media tools.
I am a writer who blogs, tweets, and writes about whatever catches my attention. I’ll be exploring new topics (i.e., nature and environment, farming, urban gardening and green living tech and techniques. And I’ll keep an eye on the higher edication and lifelong learning sectors.
Sample Workshops
- Issues and Possibilities: Teaching With OERs and Open Practices
- Develop Engaging eLearning Activities
- The Emperor’s New Clothes: Teaching in the Open
- Explore Open Educational Resources
- Instructional Skills Workshops – face-to-face, blended, online
- Learning Theories / Teaching Perspectives
- Re/Design a Course or Design a Curriculum
- Rediscover Blogs and Wikis
Past Work
BC / Yukon
- As part of a team, evaluate an innovative leadership development Pilot training program in the North
- Customize facilitation skills development for instructors in project-based and Northern contexts
- Mentor online facilitators through Facilitating Learning Online workshops
- Design and facilitate intensive, 2 day, Course Design Sprint using Liberating Structures and the Pomodoro Technique
- Facilitate 5 week online Facilitating Learning Online workshops and 2 week Facilitator Development Online workshops
- Create collection of “Facilitator Thoughts” videos and written handouts
- Created and facilitated open online seminar: “Creating Engaging Online Learning Activities”
- Created and facilitated Moodle workshop “What’s Different? Moving From Classroom to Online Teaching”
- Online coaching for “first time” online instructors teaching and developing First Nations governance, Early Childhood Education, Teaching Assistant and various Liberal Arts online courses.
- Facilitated ISW workshops for First Nations healthcare workers
Education / Skills
- BCcampus – Facilitating Learning Online and Facilitator Development Online workshop leader
- University of BC, Master of Educational Technology (MET)
- Simon Fraser University, BA, Major: Communications Minor: Publishing
- Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW) Facilitator
- Facilitator Development Workshop (FDW) Trainer
- Facilitating Learning Online workshop facilitator
- Online Course Development – Campus Cruiser, Moodle, Desire2Learn
- Full-room Videoconferencing – Cisco Tandberg
- Desktop/Web Conferencing – Adobe Connect, Elluminate (now Bb Collaborate), Webex, Google Hangouts, Skype, Fuze, Zoom
- Learning Activities – Adobe Captivate, Presenter and Articulate Engage
Pinnacle Studio (video editing), Windows Moviemaker, Wevideo - MS Word, PowerPoint 2010, OpenOffice
- Cloud-based services (e.g., Google, Microsoft)
- Accessing open educational resources (OERs) from various repositories, web sites, portals