The first few pics are from a beer and cheese tasting I did with my friend Kurtis a few days ago.

In 2005 I embarked on a year long internship for the Commonwealth of Learning based in Windhoek, Namibia. Six and half years later I departed Cape Town having spent a total of three years in Namibia and three and half in Cape Town, South Africa.  Leaving the continent was a tough decision as I had fallen in love with the beauty and spirit I found in the Southern African region. I also had grown very comfortable working with the Centre for Educational Technology at the University of Cape Town.  Ultimately, I chose to leave and pursue a new professional challenge in British Columbia, Canada in order to take on a new trajectory and get just a little closer to my family and friends in Canada.

I will carry fond memories of Africa in my heart. I have seen a diverse range of environments in my six years, having travelled in Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. It’s hard to sum up the range of experiences as even within each country one can find a wide array of environments, people and lifestyles being lived. Southern Africa is exquisitely beautiful and special in so many ways which I can not put into words, I only hope this website has helped to share some of that beauty with you.  I have great hope for the continued growth and well being of the people and nature in Southern Africa.

I do not believe that it has fully sunk in that I have left Southern Africa. I will be curious to see what sort of impression it has left on my soul.  Perhaps I will wake up in a cold sweat longing for the great plains of the Namib Naukluft desert, serenity I found on Signal Hill or the beautiful beaches of Beira, Mozambique?

I know I shall return, either to visit or for another adventure. I wish to thank all of the lovely people I had the honour of interacting with during my six and half years on the continent. I will speak fondly of Africa and wave the flags of the countries I explored!

Lots of love,

Michael Paskevicius

Lovely day!  Although I have now done the winelands tour like three times, its always a pleasure and I always learn something new.  Looking forward to exploring new wine regions!

On the last day at Kwa Madwala I had a chance to interact with two tamed elephants.  Due to the overcast weather the female elephant was not interested in interacting, which we could understand – it was cold and wet!  The male elephant ‘Tswale’ was still in good spirits however and we had a chance to get up close and personal with this magnificent animal.  The elephant interaction tour promises an:

Introduction to the elephants which includes a brief talk on their history as well as an explanation on the training concepts that are used and some games that are played to demonstrate smell and memory. The elephants are asked to lie down and guests can then have the opportunity to touch and feel them from head to toe.

I have never had an opportunity to get this close to an elephant.  It was a really special experience, which I will not soon forget.  More information on the elephants and the experience here.

Elephant stops and sidesteps

Took a day trip into the Kruger National Park to explore and view wild game.  WE stuck mainly to the lower regions of the park near the Malelane gate.  The park itself is tall and narrow and covers nearly 20,000 square kilometres of land bordering Mozambique and Zimbabwe.  The terrain in the south is rocky with low mountains.  On our visit we experienced overcast weather with cool temperatures, which is not ideal for game sighting, but I think we had a great visit seeing nearly all of the animals except the big cats.

Just returned from a few days vacation to Mpumalanga province of South Africa where I visited the famed Kruger National Park.  I stayed at the lovely Kwa Madwala Private Game Reserve which has a variety of animals for viewing on their private farm. The accommodation was atop a lovely rock piled mountain and featured amazing rooms, food and lovely staff.  The first evening  I went on a game drive around the reserve where we spotted lions, rhino, giraffe and a variety of other animals.  It was great to be back in Southern African nature and to see the animals once again.

With sadness, I report that today is my last day here with the Centre for Educational Technology (CET) at the University of Cape Town (UCT).  I have enjoyed the past three years immensely working on the open educational resource project here at UCT.  Support for the project has grown quite steadily which I suspect will continue as OpenUCT takes off in 2012.   

I initially come to Cape Town in February 2009 to complete my masters in educational technology.  I believe I was very fortunate to find part-time work with CET just as the OER@UCT project was beginning in early 2009.  At the time, the concept of open education was quite new to me, but I was interested in using technology to enhance educational experiences.  It’s been an absolute delight to be a part of UCT’s move towards openness and knowledge sharing in education using the internet.  I firmly believe that UCT is an institution to watch in the open education space and I wish the OpenUCT team the best. 

I really could not have imagined working with such a wonderful bunch of colleagues. I really want to thank you all for being part of the experience!  This includes CET as well as my friends in the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHED), Information and Communication Technology Services (ICTS) and the array of open scholars and academics I was fortunate to work with throughout the faculties. 

UCT will always hold a special place in my heart!  Feel free to stay in touch on my personal blog, on twitter, Facebook or via email michael.paskevicius [at] gmail.com

P.S.  This blog shall live on and will continue reporting on developments with open educational resources at UCT.  

Now some magic moments!  

Roger Brown, Michelle Willmers, Shihaam Shaikh, Michael Paskevicius and Stephen Marquard at the Launch of UCT OpenContent February 2010 (nice t-shirts)

Michael Paskevicius, Stephen Marquard, Glenda Cox, Shihaam Shaikh, Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams and Roger Brown: UCT OpenContent moves from an external project to a CET core activity August 2010

Michael Paskevicius, Thomas King, Michelle Willmers, Samantha Richmond, Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams, Shihaam Shaikh, Laura Czerniewicz, Eve Gray, Stephen Marquard and Julian Kinderlerer just before DVC Max Price signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access.

Cheers and best wishes!!

I use Evernote quite often to keep track of ideas, recipes, grocery lists and books/films I want to see.  Evernote works pretty seemlessly between my desktop and my mobile which means I can acccess and edit my notes at anytime.  I was interested to see the Evernote for education website and this interesting article on using Evernote as an eportfolio tool.  

In all honesty, I never really even considered Evernote to be a candidate for eportfolios.  However consdering the usability of the tool in terms of creating, organising and editing notes, fusing audio and visual media within the notes, mobile app integration and sharing individual notes as well as entire notebooks, I now see how it might be very useful as an eportfolio platform.  I imagine that many students walking around with tablets and laptops are using Evernote for in class notetaking (I know that a number of my colleagues do so) so it seems Evernote notebooks could be set up to showcase students work.  

The idea was written about in 2009 by Martin Hawksey at JISC.  Since then a number of improvements have been made to the Evernote system which I believe could make it ever more appplicable to eportfolios.    You can follow the implementation of Evernote eportfolios in an elementary school on Rob van Nood's blog.