I first met Alec Couros among that amazing gathering of people at the inaugural PLE (Personal Learning Environment) conference in Barcelona, in 2010. Alec is Professor of educational technology at the University of Regina in Canada. I add him to my list of selfies and photos for many reasons (here we are larking about on the Barcelona Metro). Alec is very influential in the world of learning technology, and has a huge following on Twitter and other social media channels. Alec is what you would call a 'connected educator', and you can watch him talking about this in an interview with Howard Rheingold during a video webcast. Watch out in particular for his ideas around 'visualising networks' and how tools mediate connections.
When you hear Alec speak you realise just how passionate he is about openness in education. He is a true champion of web democracy, and he practising what he preaches by sharing all his content and resources freely. Time and time again he demonstrates how social media and personal technologies can be used to enhance learning, engage students, reach out to others and gain a deeper understanding of the world around us. He also has a wonderful sense of mischief, and makes you think deeply as he entertains you with his humour. I don't know anyone else in the field of learning technology who can pack so many fresh ideas into a keynote speech. Many of his talks and all of his slideshows are available online to download for free - and I admit to having used some of them in my own presentations over the years!
Photo by Joyce Seitzinger
Selfie number 5 by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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