I'm sitting in the Comox airport (it's actually quite a nice little airport, with wifi and everything) relaxing after the BCCampus ETUG 2006 workshop/session/mini-conference in Courtenay BC. North Island College was really gorgeous – lush, green, giant trees all over the place, and nicely designed buildings on campus. It even has a cool giant totem pole!
After the morning sessions today, I was arm-twisted into spending the afternoon in the beach (or was I the one doing the arm-twisting?) – had a blast hanging out with Keira and Harry, exploring Goose Spit beach in Comox (nice name, btw). I wound up taking something like 50 photographs, but culled that quite a bit. My faves are online of course…
Apparently, while we were frolicking on the beach, David Porter announced the tentative plan to potentially offer social software hosting for BCCampus members, with the BCIT Drupal initiative serving as the prototype or shakedown cruise.
Between that, and the apparently pending announcement that Drupal has been unanimously selected by the "web content management systems" group for recommendation to be adopted as the officially supported content management system at UCalgary, I'm going to be a very busy Drupal boy for the forseeable future…
I'm sitting in the Comox airport (it's actually quite a nice little airport, with wifi and everything) relaxing after the BCCampus ETUG 2006 workshop/session/mini-conference in Courtenay BC. North Island College was really gorgeous – lush, green, giant trees all over the place, and nicely designed buildings on campus. It even has a cool giant totem pole!
After the morning sessions today, I was arm-twisted into spending the afternoon in the beach (or was I the one doing the arm-twisting?) – had a blast hanging out with Keira and Harry, exploring Goose Spit beach in Comox (nice name, btw). I wound up taking something like 50 photographs, but culled that quite a bit. My faves are online of course…
Apparently, while we were frolicking on the beach, David Porter announced the tentative plan to potentially offer social software hosting for BCCampus members, with the BCIT Drupal initiative serving as the prototype or shakedown cruise.
Between that, and the apparently pending announcement that Drupal has been unanimously selected by the "web content management systems" group for recommendation to be adopted as the officially supported content management system at UCalgary, I'm going to be a very busy Drupal boy for the forseeable future…
Scott is demoing BCCampus ' SOLR application for sharing online learning resources in the province of BC. I'm really liking the tie-ins with Creative Commons licensing, making it easy for content creators to safely share their stuff.
Here's a screenshot of the cool "Browse All Creative Commons Resources" utility, ala Flickrlilli et. al.
BCCampus SOLR Creative Commons Browser: a screenshot taken of the SOLR BCCampus repository 's Creative Commons browsing interface.
They've put a lot of work into making it easy to safely share resources. Many lessons in this… The content submission process is kind of long – lots of linear steps. Some streamlining (maybe ajax loving?) would help. Still, it only takes a minute to submit something…
Scott is demoing BCCampus ' SOLR application for sharing online learning resources in the province of BC. I'm really liking the tie-ins with Creative Commons licensing, making it easy for content creators to safely share their stuff.
Here's a screenshot of the cool "Browse All Creative Commons Resources" utility, ala Flickrlilli et. al.
BCCampus SOLR Creative Commons Browser: a screenshot taken of the SOLR BCCampus repository 's Creative Commons browsing interface.
They've put a lot of work into making it easy to safely share resources. Many lessons in this… The content submission process is kind of long – lots of linear steps. Some streamlining (maybe ajax loving?) would help. Still, it only takes a minute to submit something…
Our session this morning went really well. I think we were able to walk the line between force-feeding the participants with the relentless firehose of super-cool social software stuff, and having a fun interactive session that served as a solid starting point for people wanting to play with Web 2.0™ toys.
The session was completely full, with Harry quietly jamming to the groovy vibes of Sesame Street. It was pretty cool having Harry in the session, and he was good enough to let Keira participate.
I think that Brian and I got into a pretty decent flow, and wound up demonstrating some cool apps and concepts, with participants doing as much hands-on activity as possible (tagging, blogging, playing with Flickr and Flickrlilli, etc…) SocialLearning.ca was used as a concrete example of social software, a tagging and blogging platform, and as a "client" app for a 3rd party tool (receiving photos from Flickr).
It was a blast, as always, riding on Brian's coat tails. I've got to find a way to invite him to UCalgary, assuming Keira is forgiving enough to let Brian keep travelling…
Our session this morning went really well. I think we were able to walk the line between force-feeding the participants with the relentless firehose of super-cool social software stuff, and having a fun interactive session that served as a solid starting point for people wanting to play with Web 2.0™ toys.
The session was completely full, with Harry quietly jamming to the groovy vibes of Sesame Street. It was pretty cool having Harry in the session, and he was good enough to let Keira participate.
I think that Brian and I got into a pretty decent flow, and wound up demonstrating some cool apps and concepts, with participants doing as much hands-on activity as possible (tagging, blogging, playing with Flickr and Flickrlilli, etc…) SocialLearning.ca was used as a concrete example of social software, a tagging and blogging platform, and as a "client" app for a 3rd party tool (receiving photos from Flickr).
It was a blast, as always, riding on Brian's coat tails. I've got to find a way to invite him to UCalgary, assuming Keira is forgiving enough to let Brian keep travelling…
