My name is Penny Gardner and I live and work in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. I have not come across any other UK based students in my studies at USQ so far. My previous courses have been FET 5600 Online and Distributed Learning, FET 5621 Introducation to Web Publishing, FET 5601 Instructional Design, FET 8610 Creating Educational Web Environments, FET 8603 Assessment Principles and Practices, FET 5622 Creating Interactive Multimedia and FET 8611 Emerging Environments for Learning
FET 8660 Masters Project 1 is my 8th and final course towards a Masters in Flexible Learning with USQ (the University of Southern Queensland). I hope to graduate in Toowoomba on 8th September 2007 and we are planning a big trip for that occasion! (see itinerary section below).
This photo was taken at my daughter Katie's wedding on May 27th 2005. There are some more photos on my blog if you are interested.
I teach at Napier University, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK in the School of Accounting, Economics and Statistics. In summer 2004 we moved into a new business school at Craiglockhart (pictured on the right), a modern addition to the former hydropathic hospital where Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen (the War poets) recuperated in 1917. Edinburgh is a beautiful city and we love to welcome visitors - strangely though, not many people come to see us in the winter months (November - March). I created an interactive Flash guide to our campus for new students as part of FET 5622.
I grew up in London, England and studied Architecture at the Bartlett School, University College from 1969 to 1972. (Now I've looked up this link - what a dull website!). After graduating and realising that I was heading for a future designing bus shelters and car parks, I took a job as a trainee accountant with a local authority, passing my professional exams in 1976.
After my daughter was born in 1978 I decided not to return to work full time, but started teaching part time at a local college. I moved to Scotland in 1987, separated / divorced in 1990 and married my husband Gus (Angus) in 1995. Gus and I were married in the Chapel at Craiglockhart (where I now work) and I have a view of it from my office window! I've been teaching accounting full time at Napier University since 1987.
I am secretary of the East of Scotland Branch of Ataxia UK - a charity for people with cerebellar ataxia. I designed the website for our branch as my project for FET 5621, with accessiblity very much in mind.
We love to travel and make the most of our teachers' holidays, having visted USA, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, Mauritius, Sri Lanka and quite a bit of Europe. We've had many holidays cycling in France, enjoying the fresh air, exercise, good food and wines.
I enjoyed taking my studies further, learning more about web design in FET 5622. In FET 8610, I developed a web resource for our 3rd year degree students, many of whom struggle to succeed - especially the direct entrants from HND (Higher National Diploma) courses at colleges of further education. It still needs some work on it (particularly the link colours) but the students found it very useful. I think that our students have grown up with computers and the web and that it's a largely untapped resource for learning. I was also pretty new to using DreamWeaver and wanted to become more proficient that, plus learning how to use Flash and Fireworks. My final Flash project for the course was an interactive map of the campus for our new and prospective students.
I enoyed FET 5622 with Peter Evans as tutor and decided to change my enrolment from Research Methods in order to continue with Peter in the knowledgeGarden environment in semester 3, 2006. I enjoyed experimenting with the emerging environments for learning and working collaboratively with other students and have started using wikis in my teaching.
So far, we have only booked our main flights - internal flights / dates not decided yet. Gus and I leave the UK on 27th August and have a 3 night stopover in Dubai, where we hope to meet up with other USQ students for a meal - and maybe I'll fit in a bit of shopping too. We arrive in Sydney on 30th August and head home on September 19th - in between hoping to visit Brisbane, Toowoomba (of course) and Cairns. As we firm up on the details I'll update them.
You can email me at pennyjgardner@btinternet.com or use the course email facility. I also have a Skype ID: pennyjgardner and MSN Messenger ID pennyjgardner@hotmail.com - maybe we can set up some online chats? Looking forward to meeting you all and working together this semester.
This page was last updated on March 4, 2007