User:Pstacey

Hi I'm Paul Stacey.

I'm based just outside Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada.

My entire career has revolved around innovative use of technology for adult education.

I started out as a school teacher for autistic children who couldn't read, write, or talk. Quite a first time teaching assignment! I kept a journal of the experience and ever since have written extensively about my teaching and learning experiences as part of my own professional development.

In the 1980's I worked in Ottawa for Up & Running Systems which specialized in Apple Macintosh. I managed a profit centre training department providing instructor led adult training sessions on Macintosh software applications for office productivity, desktop publishing, graphics and multimedia. This work really got me in to technology and its use for education. Even then we connected computers to projection systems so students could see and follow-along. Up & Running Systems adopted and embodied a great deal of Apple's culture and remains for me a model of how a company should be run.

After Up & Running Systems I worked for the Transport Canada's National Training Institute in Cornwall. I worked as part of a team revamping the national curricula students go through to become air traffic controllers. At the time there was a greater than 50% failure rate. Part of the difficulty students had was in visualizing three dimensional air space. We ended up developing and including a wide range of multimedia simulations and animations that improved students ability to visualize three dimensional air space and improved the overall success rate in the program.

In the early 1990's Hughes Aircraft won a contract to build Canada's next air traffic control system and established a division in Richmond BC just outside Vancouver to develop air traffic control systems and sell them around the world. I was recruited and moved to BC to work on this effort. I became the overall training manager responsible for the education programs that accompany the sale of any air traffic control system. As you can imagine it's critical that air traffic controllers know how to use the system and that the technical engineering staff know how to maintain the system and keep it operational. I really got a taste for international work at Hughes as we provided air traffic control systems not only to Canada but to Switzerland, Indonesia, China and the middle east. Flying instructors around the world to deliver education programs is costly so when the Internet really began to emerge in the 90's I became interested in its potential and began exploring its use for education by participating in Canada's Telelearning National Centres of Excellence research program.

At the end of the 1990's I jumped at the opportunity to help create a new online university from scratch. The BC provincial government decided that a new university was needed that focused on producing graduates for BC's burgeoning high tech industry. There are hardly any new universities being created around the world so the opportunity to participate in creating the Technical University of BC was amazing and really immersed me in the use of web-based technologies and pedagogies. Over the four plus years I spent there we ended up creating degree programs in Interactive Arts, Information Technology, and Technology Business and Management. During that time I wrote a regular E-Learning column for T-Net Vancouver's Technology portal. Eventually TechBC got merged with Simon Fraser University and I transitioned to another new startup BCcampus.

BCcampus was created by the BC Ministry of Advanced Education to provide ICT and online learning services to BC's public universities and colleges. Starting in 2003 I led the BCcampus Online Program Development Fund which over 9 consecutive rounds of public funding invested $9 million dollars in the development of Open Educational Resources. In the end 47 credentials were developed in whole or part through the Online Program Development Fund including 355 courses, 12 workshops, 19 web sites/tools and 396 course components (learning objects, labs, textbooks, manuals, videos). These materials were developed across almost all academic fields of study and were licensed for open free sharing & reuse. I presented this work at many conferences and workshops and published extensively. During this phase I started my own blog http://www.edtechfrontier.com as a continuation of my public writing. I also enjoyed supporting educational technology and online learning professional development activities for staff and faculty across post secondary including the Educational Technology Users Group and online communities like SCoPE.

In 2012 I transitioned to Creative Commons where, as part of the education team, I'm working to expand and enhance the availability of open resources around the world.

I have four degrees including a B.Sc in Biology, a B.A. in Psychology, a B.Ed in Education, and an M.Ed. in Adult Learning and Global Change. I have wide-ranging interests including painting, spending time in the garden growing food, ocean kayaking and enjoying the big surf and sand off Canada’s west coast.