(NOTE: This was my first web page and may not be strictly up to date)
My story starts in Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas, "Land of Opportunity". Two mountains and three lakes cradle this lovely tourist attraction. I began to make a lot of discoveries in school which reveals the theme in my story - I love learning. My B.A. is in Speech and Drama from the University of Arkansas.
At the first opportunity - I discovered Canada! Better than that - I discovered beautiful British Columbia! I had many adventures there, deckhanding on a salmon troller, working at the Playhouse Theatre Company and in later years, living on the Sunshine Coast and founding Ensemble Theatre.
Along the way, I acted, directed, produced, wrote and designed for the theatre. My M.F.A. in Theatre is from Trinity University at the Dallas Theatre Centre. This is the only theatre ever designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. I also travelled a great deal and lived in Greece. I moved to Toronto in the mid-eighties. After playing the Teacher in the "Parenting" TV Series, I began my adventures at Seneca College.
In addition to teaching Creative Drama, I was a counsellor in the FUTURES program at Seneca from the mid-eighties. I discovered that developing educational materials in multimedia gave me more opportunities to be creative in my work. I am now teaching a variety of courses full time in the School of Marketing and eBusiness and I also teach at OISE/UT - for details see my teaching portfolio.
I also am active in the Centre for Professional Development at Seneca. We have developed an award winning online Certificate Programme - Designing Curriculum using Technology and the eTeaching and Learning Certificate Programme. I am also a graduate of this programme.
If you are curious about my professional life you can read a recent bio or my resume.
Exciting discoveries have been made creating a CD ROM, "Live and Learn", to accompany a distance learning package for the Prior Learning Assessment Portfolio Development Course. This project was commissioned by the Ontario Ministry of Education. On this project I also worked with TV Ontario to produce the docudrama series and with Mohawk College to publish the study guide for the "Live and Learn" package. My favourite tools for this multimedia project were Authorware Professional and Photoshop.
These days I continue to make discoveries at OISE/UT (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto)pursuing an Ed.D. I am interested in Holistic Studies, Computer Applications and Arts-Based Inquiry. I serve on the Holistic Educator's Conference committee and am one of the editors on a SUNY publication (2005) of Holistic Learning and Spirituality in Education - a collection of papers presented at the previous three Holistic Conference. I web mistress for the Holistic Conference site and look after the Saturday meetings of Holistic Educators at OISE/UT.
Between my work at Seneca and studies at OISE, there's a little time left over for my cat PeepEye and for my favourite leisure activities - photography, (you'll find my photos on all of my web pages), movies and television, webpage making, and recreational reading. My favourite magazines are also digizines: Wired and Entertainment Weekly.
Tell me about your discoveries!
Selia Karsten skarsten@oise.utoronto.ca