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Friday, November 14, 2003

Today I decided that I'd get in touch with Health Canada to let them know that the yellow "SARS" forms they're handing out to inbound passengers on international flights are a waste of their time, my money, and trees.

"Travellers" are informed that they may have been exposed to SARS "during your time outside Canada"
(that's the only affliction they name, one assumes there may be others ;-)

I've been getting one of these forms on every filght into Canada from the States since about a month to 6-weeks AFTER the SARS mess went away the last time.

Today they didn't have enough of the forms onboard and no one was allowed off the plane until all forms were distributed and completed, so I finally decided to get on the phone and beg them to stop.

Visit http://www.sars.gc.ca or call 1.800.454.8302 to get more information.

While I'm at it, I'd like to compliment Sean, the gentleman I just chatted with, on his professional and courteous telephone manner.

Wednesday, November 12, 2003

Here's an entry from today's Daily Links from eLearningpost.com. I've been a subscriber, and a big fan, of this mailing list for years now. It provides nothing but first-rate links to all things elearning. The entry below outlines the latest from another's work I've followed, and respected, for years -- David Wiley.

David Wiley: THE FUTURE OF LEARNING OBJECTS
Just attended a workshop by David Wiley titled, The Future of Learning Objects. David's presentation was, clean, simple, and surprising to many, very easy to follow. Most LO presentations tend to be very arcane, but his was very entertaining and engaging. Guess this says a lot of the person himself. Here are my takeaways:

* There are various types of learning objects. Content objects, strategy objects, discourse objects are some that are in use, but there could be many more depending on context.

* The higher you get in Bloom's taxonomy, the greater the need for social learning. So, a LO on facts is fine in the stand-alone mode, but a LO on synthesis or application would benefit more if they include the social aspect -- the discourse object.

* When it comes to learning objects, instructional design is actually context design.
Content, structure, strategy, and instructional design affect the granularity of the LO. If one starts with strategy, this affects the granularity as it affects the content, the structure and the ID.

* Some innovative approaches to LO design include Separability (content is separate from presentation); Usability (entering metadata is more usable); Computability (classification of LOs, taxonomies, ontologies, semantic web); Sociability (social recommendations, self-organizing groups); Sharability ( MIT OCW ,Educommons )
http://www.reusability.org/blogs/david/
http://ocw.mit.edu/
http://educommons.org/

Tuesday, November 11, 2003

A post from Houston, TX.

Travel from Dallas to Houston this morning meant that this is the first year in a while that I've not attended a Remembrance Day service. It's known as Veterans Day here in the States, but the message is the same.

It's a day to stop, remember and reflect on the price that many have paid, and continue to pay, for the freedom we enjoy.

Lest we forget....

Sunday, November 09, 2003

Greetings from Dallas. Had an early flight from YYC to DFW this morning. Flying at 0700 hrs gets you where you need to be, but getting up at 0430 hrs is something that I'd like to do on a regular basis.

Had a very hectic week in terms of work, school and volunteer activities. Being involved in all three has meant that my time-management skills get a real work out. Traveling to conduct training sessions for my employer means that I spend a lot of time on preparation and follow up in terms of logistics. I also spend a fair amount of time on the design and development of the curricula we deliver at sessions.

School takes a good deal of time in terms of keeping up with assigned readings and reading and contributing posts to the course discussion threads. We are expected to log into the course interface (WebKF) at least three times a week; however, I try to get in to check posts at least once every two days. Longer than that and I find it difficult to keep up.

Volunteering this week meant two days spent programming base stations and handheld radios in preparation for this year's World Cup ski races at Lake Louise. Indeed, between travel for work, and a couple of stints "at the Lake" working the races, I'll not be spending a whole lot of time in Calgary between now and the end of 2003.

As always, watch this space for details....