Work

• we met to start planning the LEED education program to support the new Taylor Institute Building. Some interesting ideas, and we're hoping to not do "LEED education" as a separate thing, but as a layer of context in the various resources to tell people about the Institute.
• I was invited to participate in a Dragon's Den style panel, as part of Dr. Reid's ASHA 421 course - what a fantastic experience. 3rd- and 4th-year Science and Arts students collaborating in strong interdisciplinary teams to come up with prototypes for inventions. Although I (almost) have the hairline for it, my Kevin O'Leary impression didn't work out. Thankfully.
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• we met with the Associate Deans to brainstorm how we can best implement some of the items in our Strategic Framework for Learning Technologies. Again, lots of great ideas, and lots of plans shaping up quickly as a result. This is going to be a fun year!
• gave a tour to a colleague visiting from the UofA. I take some things for granted, so it was eye opening to hear about how things are done elsewhere. With our team working so well together, and with the plans we're making for the next few years, I can't imagine working anywhere else.
• Eight Canada Research Chairs announced - including Sheelagh Carpendale, who is doing some interesting work in collaborative visualization.
• we picked up a campus license for the Magna Commons set of online resources. It's deployed in our "D2L Self-directed Training" course (which needs a better name) so all instructors have access to it now. Next, to make sure all instructors know it's there (along with the other resources gathered for them in that D2L course site)..

Read

• Michael Ullyot: Language Use and Cognition: Shakespeare's Gradatio in Context - and, his ENGL 205 students are absolutely rocking UCalgaryBlogs. I haven't seen a class this engaged and active. It looks like the class is 1 part Shakespeare, 1 part community, and 1 part DS106 media playtime. So good.
• via Stephen Downes - Michael Oman-Reagan: Your Nostalgia Isn't Helping Me Learn - nostalgia is nice because it's comfortable. that doesn't mean The Old Ways are better than The New Ones. We need to think critically about this stuff, and not just react to "but things were perfect when I was young. they just need to do it THAT way, and it'll be better again!"
• Tom Woodward: From "On the Internet" towards "Of the Internet" - being online isn't the same thing as being online.
• CBC: How Western Canada glaciers will melt away. I proposed to Janice on the Columbia Icefield almost 25 years ago. We went back in 2010, and it was amazing how far back the ice had melted. Crazy.
• Tony Bates: Teaching in a Digital Age - the best overview of educational technology integration I've seen. Fantastic work by Dr. Bates.
• Donald Clark: Sir Ken Robinson: ‘Creative' with the truth?. I think Robinson is a pop culture hack, spewing feel-good truthiness akin to Malcolm Gladwell. Uncritical sound byte regurgitation, rather than deep thinking. But it sounds like deep thinking, so it gets cited. A lot.
• via BoingBoing: Using Oculus Rift to sculpt virtual creatures - this is amazing. with some haptic feedback, this kind of visualization would be useful for interacting with and manipulating datasets, too.
• Student ingenuity on display at Schulich's Capstone Design Fair - these capstone design projects always blow me away.
• Tim Klapdor: Innovation and the Novelty Factory - innovation is more than just "HEY! SHINY!" and Tim nicely fleshes out Horace Dediu's taxonomy
• via Chris Lott: Paparazzi - a utility for making complete screenshots of long pages. Haven't tried it yet, but it looks useful.
• via Stephen Downes: Allison Littlejohn: Driving Disruptive Innovation: developing agile and responsive module production - how to design courses (and other things) in a more organic and iterative manner, rather than by top-down rigid waterfall design.

Other

• Kind of digging the Surface laptop thing now. I never thought I'd actually say that out loud. If this thing ran a better operating system, it'd be almost perfect.
• Spring finally hit Calgary. Holy blue skies. We made it.
• my stupid thumbs are recovering after stupid me wasn't paying attention and wiped out on the ski hill last weekend. explaining the thumb brace never gets old.