I have begun a masters program at The State University of New York, Empire State College. As my area of focus will be on “Openness” (although I have come to learn that many of those deeper into the program change, rather refine, their focus), I thought I would apply the same open practices that I am interested in exploring and understanding to my formal education. Therefore, I will be posting all of my activity within the program and each course here; everything from reading and class notes, to papers and the instructor’s responses.
My hope is to, create a laboratory for practicing and assessing the ideas and issues with openness as well as harvest–what I believe at the start of this program–the benefits of openness. For example, I would be very interested to use this site, i.e. an open format, to learn from others regarding my readings, research, writing, etc., who are outside the traditional context of a course, my program, the college and even the academy.
I am not at all sure what this will provide me, but it just seems too interesting not to do.
Why the Title
I think the title captures a few ideas…
- Opening My Masters: I am just starting graduate school (opening day!),
- Opening My Masters: I am sharing not only my education but the process as well,
- Opening My Masters: Maybe this process will be a paradigm shift for my instructors, my program, my school, maybe even education.
A little about me…
I am currently serving as the Chief Information Officer at The New York State University of Technology at Delhi. My professional background includes medical/scientific visualization, application development, integration/interoperability, Service Oriented Architecture, portal development, Virtual Learning Environments, and computer generated imaging. Prior to Delhi, I was Director of Technology for SUNY Learning Environments and from 1993-2004 I served as the Director of the UCLA Media Lab developing scientific and medical applications for education, research and patient care. I began my career as a Medical Illustrator at UCLA.
Professional interests include Agile Project Management, Enterprise 2.0, Open Practices (Open Source Software, Open Courseware, Open Educational Resources, Open Content) and specific projects such as Bedework, JA-SIG’s uPortal, LAMS, Moodle, Sakai as well as communities such as Eduforge. Away from work, I enjoy ice hockey, playing in a variety of adult leagues and coaching youth and college teams, including the UCLA Bruins (1998-2004).
I live in Loudonville, New York with my wife Jamie, a physician, and my two boys Jack and Hank.
Mastering Openness by Patrick Masson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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Opening My Masters 