Friday, June 12: Friday Fun Fact – Where is Camosun College, and how old is it anyway?

So, this has nothing directly to do with educational technologies or online learning, but Camosun College is the reason Distributed Education (and I, your intrepid blogger) is here, so I thought I would look into a bit of its history for this holiday Friday’s post.  And yes, it may seem a funny thing to post on a blog belonging to a unit at Camosun College, but I think most of the audience following this blog, mostly through Twitter, does NOT work here, so I think it’s fair.

Camosun College first opened in 1971, so it’s a fairly young institution.  To quote the camosun.ca website, “Located in picturesque Victoria, British Columbia, Camosun is situated on the traditional territories of the Lkwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples. The college adopted the name “Camosun,” a Lkwungen word meaning “where different waters meet and are transformed
” (http://camosun.ca/about)

We have two campuses – one close to the University of Victoria in an area of the city called Oak Bay, the Lansdowne campus, and the second up in Saanich called Interurban – and close to 20,000 students studying in over 160 programs.

We do a lot of cool things at Camosun College (in addition to online and blended learning).  I don’t pretend to know what they all are, so I won’t start listing them here at the risk of missing something. The one plug I will make, which I think is particularly cool, involves our Centre for Indigenous Education & Community Connections, Eyēʔ Sqȃ’lewen which you can read more about at the IECC website (http://camosun.ca/learn/school/indigenous-education-community-connections/index.html).  One of the initiatives driven by the College and the IECC is the indigenization of Camosun College curriculum (http://web.camosun.ca/cetl/curriculum-design/learning-about-indigenization).  There is even a free course offered to all staff and faculty at the college, TELTIN TTE WILNEW (Understanding Indigenous People), which does bring me back to Distributed Education, because this is a blended course which we support through our online learning management system, as well as instructional design guidance and recommendations.

So, that’s my short post for this holiday Friday, and now you (perhaps) know a bit more about Camosun College from which all these blog posts originate!

Find out more at: