A post from Lexington, KY.

I'm here following the sessions this week in Morehead and ahead of my trek to YYC, via Houston, in the morning. I'm happy that I'll be in Calgary in the early afternoon tomorrow -- not so enthused with the 0630 hrs departure time though.

Had a good week working with faculty and staff at Morehead State University and I'm looking forward to keeoing in touch regarding the good things they're doing with their SMART Board(TM) interactive whiteboards.

I got to Kentucky last Sunday and as much as I've enjoyed my visit, I'm looking forward to getting home for a while.

Greetings from Morehead, Kentucky. I'm here to conduct a series of Master's sessions on the SMART Board(TM) interactive whiteboard at Morehead State University.

Once again I'm excited by the prospect of conducting workshops for educators interested in leveraging interactive whiteboards in the classroom.

This week also marks the beginning of CTL 1000 -- Curriculum Foundations with Wayne Seller at OISE/UT. I'm really enjoying the courses I'm taking at OISE/UT. They amount to a lot of work -- especially given my travel schedule -- but I'm learning a lot and like the fact that I can apply my learning in the day-to-day work I do for SMART.

Nice to have the ability to apply theory to the "real world" on a continuing basis.

Today I prepared for a trip to Kentucky, Morehead University specifically, for a full week of "SMART Board(TM) interactive whiteboard Master's sessions" with faculty, graduates, staff and students of the school.

I'm really looking forward to having the opportunity to dialog with such a diverse group for an extended period of time. Being able to spend some time with users in their "natural habitat" is extremely valuable to me as I look for ways to connect with learners.

The reason I find this exposure is so valuable is that it permits the opportunity to "tweak" the curriculum. I'm really lucky to work for SMART Technologies Inc. We've got some really neat products for educators and I couldn't have better exposure to customers using our hardware and software.

I've got to thank Professor Lynn Davie for a great course this semester. I especially like what he has to say about active learning and constructivism. Whenever I can get learners to "buy in" I try to encourage them to implement both of these concepts.

We considered the role of the instructor as part of our learning this semester. To wit, what is the proper degree of "engagement" on the part of the instructor. Needs of learners to feel connected and supported as a member of a learning community versus the necessity to challenge them and encourage them to engage in the self-direction and discovery constructivist learning requires.

I submit that Dr. Davie has done an admirable job of balancing the course of CTL1611--Summer2003. I learned a ton this summer. I said I'd learn a lot about CGI scripts and Perl and I did. Also learned that I may be dyslexic where UNIX is concerned ;-)

The chats I had w/ colleagues James and Simone left the biggest impression on me. It was great to be on an academic project team that met synchronously daily. This might not be significant for most students, but it certainly was for this part-time graduate student who participated in these on-line chats over dialup connections all over North America. Doing what was necessary to "get connected" no matter where or what I was doing, or how slow the dialup connection was, gave me a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.

Over the Labour Day weekend I had a summerMaple Bridgit conference running which included a live video from a webcam, a *.wmv movie playing on a loop, and an electronic "sign in" sheet. I'll have to check with the software developers for the definitive word, but I don't think my "multimedia experiment" qualifies as "streaming"; nonetheless, it does approximate it. The future of computing is conferencing. Synchronous communication is king.

Thanks to those who took the time to sign-in during the summerMaple conference and to whomever erased all the names on Friday evening:

"What up with that?"

Yesterday I had the good fortune to work with staff from the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, AB. Staff from the museum made the trip from Drumheller to our offices in Calgary for training on the SMART Board(TM) interactive whiteboard. It was great to work with the group from the museum and to see what it is that they're doing with our hardware and software.

Things are looking up. I broke 90 on the golf course day for the first time in a long time. Got out in 42 which is pretty good for me these days, and at least gave myself a chance.

After we got back from golf I used SMART Notebook software to make a tutorial on Adobe Premier. Specifically, how to use it to export to *.MOV or Quick Time format from *.AVI files. I know, pretty heady stuff! It is when you're struggling to provide low-bandwidth versions of streaming video in Windows, Real and Quick Time formats.

There's no question in my mind that video will come to play a larger role in our on-line lives. Yesterday I had the good fortune to meet with Mike Laurence of Brock University, compliments of my buddy, and work colleague, Dan McMahon.

Dan's been working with Mike on some videoconferencing and integration projects at Brock and when Dan told me a while back that Mike was working on "objects" I was interested in hearing more, and had the good fortune to see some of the neat stuff Mike and his team are doing at Brock.

It was great to videoconference with Mike and some of his colleagues from Brock yesterday. It's neat when you finally get a chance to put not only a face, but a character or "persona" to an e-mail, name or voice. I look forward to working with Mike and his group into the future and think it's in connections like these were we find the true power of on-line communities, as well as another example of how "open philosophy" can be brought to bear on the dissemination of knowledge and educational resources.

Along those lines, Mike and others are looking for help.