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Friday, January 09, 2004

Back to YYC to a chinook. About 25 degrees, celsius, warmer than Monday.

Speaking o' "same hotel I'm staying at" -- special thanks to my hosts (friends, if I may) @ Cleveland Corporate Services for the accommodations, amenities and atmosphere. We had a great time in the sessions over the past two days.

Fantastic ownership and staff and guests, and I thank them each for their hospitality.

Had the opportunity to work with a number of colleagues fellow SMARTians if I may -- Messrs. DeHaven, Sage, and Williams [and special thanks to JudyM via Bridgit] for their support over the past two days.

Thanks to each of you. Greatly appreciated. I learned a lot from interacting with these intelligent and effective individuals in both "face-to-face" F2F and CMC "computer mediated communication" environments. A most enjoyable and educational experience. I look forward to exploring how to archive the 'net-based interaction we had today as components of educational "how-to" SMARTeo

Had the opportunity to check back with the gang at Halfbakedsoftware.com -- I've made reference to their HotPotatoes software from the first post of this blog -- the first time they'd ever been mentioned in a weblog, I was told at the time.

Version 6 of the software released in Dec/03.

I also see that they now offer an application called Quandry for building Web-based Action Mazes: Tutorial Examples.

This one I thought was particularly well done.

Quandry looks to me like an offshoot of the JMatch interface. I believe I made a couple of JMatch quizzes which contained pics related to the sign-on procedure for the First Class interface we use @ school (in some courses).

This semester I look forward to using the hotpotatoes line and its cousins it to produce "multimedia" to one's audience without alienating/overwhelming neither the technically nor technologically challenged in my audience.

A worthy challenge, I'd say. The "hook" comes from the fact that these applications are being developed at The Humanities Media and Computing Centre (HCMC), in Victoria, BC.

We're moving to Victoria in the morning -- how good is that?

Tuesday, January 06, 2004

Greetings from Independence (Cleveland), OH. Arrived safe and sound following the ~250 mile drive from Cincinnati.

Happy to report that cold winds were as bad as it got in terms of weather, no snow, so far; however, the forecast is for some flurries over the next couple of days.

The good news is the training sessions I'll be involved in over the next couple of days take place in the same hotel I'm staying at. Be nice to not have to worry about weather conditions and traffic in the morning ;-)

Monday, January 05, 2004

Greetings from Erlanger, KY.

I'm here over night ahead of a session tomorrow for the US Army Corps of Engineers in Cincinnati. Following that it's off to Cleveland for a couple of days to work with staff from Cleveland Corporate Services, one of our resellers.

It's snowing in Northern Kentucky tonight. Flurries that I'm hoping don't amount to much. Can't imagine what rush hour is like around here with anything in the way of snow accumulations. The roads are bad enough in Calgary in terms of "bumper cars" when it snows, and we're supposed to be used to it ;) As always, watch this space for updates.

Sunday, January 04, 2004

School starts up again for me tomorrow.

I've secured a seat in a Ph.D.-level seminar CTL1922H (Instructional Technology: Seminar in Interactive Video/Graphics with Chris Teplovs) which has me excited.

I'd like to use the course explore use of the SMART Education Object (SMARTeo) model as a template for building "do-it-yourself" interactive video/graphics-based objects with the tools of choice. These "tools" need to be free or shareware, at least to educators -- Windows Media Encoder is an example of such a tool.

The goal is to have a model anyone can use to make an "object" -- "tutorial" if you prefer -- on any topic. Special emphasis to be placed on the production of "accessible" and "usable" objects, especially in terms of bandwidth and "minimum system requirements."

Tomorrow also marks the second anniversary of this 'blog and I look forward to using it over the coming months to track progress on: metatagged, reusable "educational objects" [SMART Education Object -- SMARTeo] and "webMedia" ['net or web-based audiovisual media].