Here's a very interesting link to Low Threshold Applications (LTAs). Check out the "open" and "resource" links at the bottom of the page.

Check out the examples cited by Charles Ansorge and you'll see references to our old friend Hot Potatoes and other gems like this one.

I happened across LTA while exploring the site of this year's teachlearn. Our professor in CTL 1799, Selia Karsten, is presenting at this year's conference in Jacksonville. Thanks to Dr. Karsten for pointing me to these great resources.

A couple of pics from our trip to Mexico:



To get the picture below I "ducked down" behind a wave, took the pic and stood quickly to avoid dunking self and camera.

Made it back from Mexico. Today we experienced a 50 degree change in temperature -- +32 to -20 Celsius -- as we ventured back to the Great White North and left the tropics behind

We had a great time in Nuevo Vallarta. The weather was sunny and warm throughout our visit. The highlights of the trip, aside from the spectacular weather and hanging on the beach, were swimming with the dolphins and dinner -- seafood platter for two -- at the Palomar restaurant. Both highly recommended.

I'll post some pictures from our trip in the coming days.

!Hola from Mexico!

Nuevo Vallarta to be exact. Landed yesterday afternoon and the sand, sun, food and margueritas have been great. Spent today taking it easy and getting aclimatized. Nice to have to get used to daytime highs of ~85 degrees fahrenheit and bright sunshine, let me tell ya.

Along with this post, I've also had a chance to use the 'net cafe to check-in with classmates at OISE/UT. One of the posts I made had to do with my experience. In essence, the benefits of an interface that is entirely web-based, rather than requiring a client download, became obvious once again.

In essence, if I hadn't been able to connect via the web, I wouldn't have been "doing any school work" this week. Sure I brought my laptop (which has the client in question -- First Class -- installed) but phone rates from our hotel room of $3.50 USD/min mean I'll not be using dialup from the room. Another selling feature of web/HTML-based interfaces.

Picture posts will have to wait 'till we get home for the same reason.

It's been a busy week. Both work and school have been busy as I continue to explore how to apply the notion of "community" to both. As mentioned earlier in the week, I should "forget about on-line and focus on the social. Unfortunately I don't have the luxury of "forgetting" about on-line because that's where my grad school is and my work is going.

That said, I'm still having fun on-line. Today I had a NetMeeting with the gang at ADHS and attended a webcast from the KMDI at the University of Toronto. Both were a lot of fun and I managed to "attend" both at once. I listed to the talk by Steve Jones as I watched the shared desktop from Arnprior.

It was fun to be able to have the audio stream of the 'cast from Toronto in my headphones, while looking at the shared images from the desktop and chatting with James, Dan, Peter and Chris -- hope I've got everyone's name right and that I haven't missed anybody in Arnprior, as I sat at my desk in Calgary.