“Tony-smiling-2013-UBC” By Tony Bates is licensed under CC 4.0
In one of our earlier activities, while discussing the history of educational technology in my blog post, From printing press to the internet, what is next? I cited Dr. Bates (2014) for his discussion of A short history of educational technology. I truly enjoyed reading his work and his style of writing on his website, and immediately wanted to explore his website more. It did not take me long to realize that I had stumbled on a gold mine of information which lead me to choose Dr. Bates for this assignment as a leader in his field.
To briefly introduce Dr. Bates for those who are unfamiliar with him and his work, he is an educator, researcher, speaker, and author with over 50 years experience in the field of educational technology. He is currently the president and CEO of Tony Bates Associates Ltd, a consulting company; a research associate at Contact North; and visiting professor at Ryerson University (Bates, n.d.). His credentials continue on from there and are nothing short of impressive.
His articles and books touch on subjects such as distance education and using technology for teaching- something that is relevant to many of us in this program, and me personally as a DL teacher. Upon researching more about Dr. Bates and browsing through his website and accomplishments, I was amazed by his ability to lead by example and “walk the talk” (Daniel, 2015, para. 10). This can be seen by looking through his 2015 Book, Teaching in a Digital Age, an open source book, written with links and sources including visuals and audio, which is an optional reading/resource from this course. The entirety of his book now sits high on my ‘to read’ list. I also have added his website to my RSS feed, as he is often posting and adding to it. As someone who is currently teaching online courses, to be introduced to resources that not only discusses the current theories, but gives the tools to implement these theories is priceless.
Useful links to learn more about Dr Tony Bates
His RSS feed for his website posts
Link to his book Teaching in a Digital Age
References:
Bates, A.W. (n.d). Tony Bates Biography. Retrieved from https://www.tonybates.ca/tonys-publications/tony-bates-biography/
Bates, A.W. (2014). A Short History of Educational Technology. Retrieved from https://www.tonybates.ca/2014/12/10/a-short-history-of-educational-technology/
Bates, A.W. (2015). Teaching in the Digital Age. BC Campus.
Daniel, J. (2015). A review from an open and distance education perspective. In A. Bates (Eds.), Teaching in a Digital Age. (pp. 579-580). Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/
Hi Amanda,
Great introduction to Dr. Bates and his work. I discovered Dr. Bates during my research on the history of educational technology and found his work fascinating. The immense information and resources he provides for working with online learning and distance education in various universities and colleges is tremendous. I hope to read more into his work as time progresses.
Thanks for sharing.
Cheers,
Phyz