It's quarter past ten in the evening & I'm exhausted but sleep still feels hours away. For one thing, it is still so light outside, maybe like 8 pm would be at home; & for another thing, my head is just too full to sleep. So I'm glad for a commitment to blog duty.
We started off the morning with a 2-hour drive to the town of Falun where we were set to visit some people at the Högskolan Dalarna. The Swedish names for educational institutions are a bit confusing for us Canadians. Although the word 'Högskolan' translates literally as 'High School' it actually means 'higher education' & in fact Högskolan Dalarna is a university. (When you mean 'high school,' you say 'gymnasiet').
Our two hosts at the university, Joakim & Ragnar, do the same work that I do. But with a university population of over 10,000 students -- 40% of them doing online courses -- the volume & complexity of their work is an order of magnitude bigger than mine. They use essentially 3 complete systems to reach their students: a collection of streamed & recorded videos to deliver lectures, a web conferencing application called Marratech for synchronous small group work, & 2 learning management systems (Fronter, & to a lesser extent - Moodle) for the content. We saw the recording studio in which professors can go to compose their lectures & the classrooms in which they can deliver simultaneously to campus-based & distance students. We had a detailed look at Marratech (a Swedish tool that was so good it was acquired by Google!) & discussed at length the pros & cons of various web conferencing applications. And we had a look at Fronter & discussed learning management systems. We had coffee (fika!) & lunch & spoke with a couple of distance teachers but basically talked shop all day. Really, it was an e-learning specialist's dream come true.
On the way back to Söderhamn, we stopped at Sundborn to see Carl Larsson's 'garden' (home/yard). We had the guided tour -- in English, no less! -- & so were treated to yet another rich educational experience. I really knew very little about Carl Larsson before, except that he was Swedish & painted lovely, happy family scenes. Turns out that he had come to this (now famous) little Swedish cottage with his family with the intention of doing some landscape painting. However, the weather was not cooperative & rained for 6 weeks & in desperation he started to paint the activities of his children in the cottage. The paintings speak volumes about his joy in family life. But they are also celebrations of the incredible decorative sense & textile artistry of his wife, Karin. Carl Larsson's paintings launched an interior design style for Sweden which persists today, almost 100 years after his death.
It will be another early morning tomorrow, our last day in Söderhamn. We will then head to another host family in Bollnäs & I am not at all sure what my internet access will be so this may be the last 'daily' entry for a while.
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