Tag: travel
Jasper
We drove up to Jasper National Park for a few days of relaxation in the mountains. I played around with shooting video on the iPhone, and wound up with this (shot on the iPhone, and edited in Mobile iMovie):
and a few photos:
happy travelers
well, the plane WAS headed to winnipeg…
Arrived in Logan
The Edtech krëw just wrapped up an epic day of travel to make the pilgrimage to Logan, Utah for the Open Education 2007 conference. So far, Utah’s been interesting. The people are all very nice, and the scenery is great. Unfortunately, most of the scenery we had the chance to actually spend time enjoying was the inside of SLC, and the almost-dark-moonlit-mountains on the drive north to Logan. The Good Reverend was decidedly quiet, and Scott was gracious enough to drag our freeloading carcasses along in his gigantor rented van. I tried to talk him into renting a Hummer, but nooooo, he got all “dude, that’s just wrong” on me. Whatever, dude. What’s the environment ever done for me? Let’s ride in STYLE! Yeah. Whatever. He didn’t go for it either.
I did manage to get a good shot of the mysterious Reverend Jim, while waiting for El Guapo in the SLC rental car terminal. It’s a long exposure, so he’s a bit hard to see. The Ghost of The Good Reverend is in there somewhere…
I’m going to Utah!
My travel for the 2007 Open Education conference in Logan, Utah was approved. I’ve never been to Open Education, but it sounds like an amazing event. And, to top it off, I get to present with Jim, hang out with Brian and Scott, and meet David in person.
I still need to figure out the logistics – there aren’t any direct flights from Calgary to Logan, so I guess I’ll fly to Salt Lake City and hitchhike the rest of the way.
Unfortunately, I need to leave on the last day of the conference because of family obligations. I’m hoping I can find a flight that means I won’t miss much of the conference.
Of course, this means that I need to buckle down and do some actual writing and work on the material and presentation…
I was given the choice between 2007 Open Content and EDUCAUSE in Seattle. It was a hard choice. Maybe I’ll go to EDUCAUSE 2008? I’ve never been to one of those, either.
Back in town
We got back into Calgary early this morning (possibly the last flight to land at YYC for the night). Maui is great. A little more developed than I'd have liked (CostCo™ and Wal-Mart™ don't fit into my ideal mental image of relaxing tropical islands) but we had a blast nonetheless. Photos are now on Flickr, and I will try to do a braindump about the trip so I don't forget the details.
Now that I'm getting my head back into the mainland side of things, instead of being a haole-wannabe-local with my head in the waves, I'm realizing how successfully I was able to ignore things back home. I did have the laptop, but internet connectivity was crappy enough to make it useful only for checking email for emergencies (of which there was only one, thankfully).
Next up is the Web 2.0 Online Learning Festival. I have been graciously allowed to put my name on the billing, which means that since I was away for the last 11 days, I'm really just riding on some coat-tails. Brian, Jim, Gardner and (at least nominally) myself will be hosting a session at the NMC Online Conference on the Convergence of Web Culture and Video – tomorrow (March 21). Nominations are open, so if there's some awesome web-2.0-ish video that should be featured, add it to The List, and it might make it into The Envelope.
We got back into Calgary early this morning (possibly the last flight to land at YYC for the night). Maui is great. A little more developed than I'd have liked (CostCo™ and Wal-Mart™ don't fit into my ideal mental image of relaxing tropical islands) but we had a blast nonetheless. Photos are now on Flickr, and I will try to do a braindump about the trip so I don't forget the details.
Now that I'm getting my head back into the mainland side of things, instead of being a haole-wannabe-local with my head in the waves, I'm realizing how successfully I was able to ignore things back home. I did have the laptop, but internet connectivity was crappy enough to make it useful only for checking email for emergencies (of which there was only one, thankfully).
Next up is the Web 2.0 Online Learning Festival. I have been graciously allowed to put my name on the billing, which means that since I was away for the last 11 days, I'm really just riding on some coat-tails. Brian, Jim, Gardner and (at least nominally) myself will be hosting a session at the NMC Online Conference on the Convergence of Web Culture and Video – tomorrow (March 21). Nominations are open, so if there's some awesome web-2.0-ish video that should be featured, add it to The List, and it might make it into The Envelope.
… and back online
Got back from Peachland last night. Had a great week relaxing in Okanogan wine country – even though the lake was too cold to actually go into the water. That was a bit tortuous for Evan, but he adapted OK. Thankfully, there were LOTS of rocks to throw into the water…
I wound up taking way too many photographs – probably took 1000 shots, nuking 90% of them and really liking only about half of the survivors. I was driving Janice nuts by dragging my “camera purse” everywhere. But I got some shots that I’m really happy with. I’m not going to write a long, boring (especially to me) post recapping the week. That’s why I took pictures.
I will say that the drivers along the BC Highway 97 between Kelowna and Pentiction are evil, aggressive, and just plain mean. Worse even than the psychos frequenting Calgary’s Deerfoot Trail. This is Wine Country, in small lakeside communities. Chill out already. We saw 2 fatality accidents as a result of these maniacs.
Then, the morning after we get back to Calgary, I get this:
Got back from Peachland last night. Had a great week relaxing in Okanogan wine country – even though the lake was too cold to actually go into the water. That was a bit tortuous for Evan, but he adapted OK. Thankfully, there were LOTS of rocks to throw into the water…
I wound up taking way too many photographs – probably took 1000 shots, nuking 90% of them and really liking only about half of the survivors. I was driving Janice nuts by dragging my “camera purse” everywhere. But I got some shots that I’m really happy with. I’m not going to write a long, boring (especially to me) post recapping the week. That’s why I took pictures.
I will say that the drivers along the BC Highway 97 between Kelowna and Pentiction are evil, aggressive, and just plain mean. Worse even than the psychos frequenting Calgary’s Deerfoot Trail. This is Wine Country, in small lakeside communities. Chill out already. We saw 2 fatality accidents as a result of these maniacs.
Then, the morning after we get back to Calgary, I get this:
BCCampus ETUG 2006 Windup
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…
ETUG Social Software Workshop Debriefing
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…
Ready for our Social Software workshop for BCCampus
Brian managed to swing me an invite to co-host his Social Software session at the BCCampus Spring Workshop on Educational Technologies 2006, which will be held at North Island College in beautiful downtown Courtenay BC. (actually, I’ve never been to Courtenay/Comox, so am looking forward to seeing the area – I’m flying in on a Beech 1900D, so that leg of the trip should be interesting).
The session should be fun. Brian and I are going to demo a few concepts of social software (Web 2.0 *gack*) and then turn the reigns over to the participants. We’ll be using SocialLearning.ca as the “hub” to bring together activities like tagging, bookmarking, blogging, and commenting. I really like the approach, especially with a concrete piece of the web bringing it together. It should make the freaky concepts of decentralized social aggregate tag clouds a bit easier to grok.
I spent some time this week pimping the SocialLearning.ca instance of Drupal – opening up the tag clouds, tweaking a few bits here and there, so it should work really nicely as a platform for a workshop – as well as supporting the BCCampus community afterwards.
The SocialLearning.ca tag cloud will be on centre stage for the workshop, so the participants can see how their contributions affect it (hopefully in quasi-realtime).
As always, I’m so totally looking forward to working with Brian (and his planted ringers). This should be a great workshop. I’m also really curious to see what the participants come up with…
Brian managed to swing me an invite to co-host his Social Software session at the BCCampus Spring Workshop on Educational Technologies 2006, which will be held at North Island College in beautiful downtown Courtenay BC. (actually, I’ve never been to Courtenay/Comox, so am looking forward to seeing the area – I’m flying in on a Beech 1900D, so that leg of the trip should be interesting).
The session should be fun. Brian and I are going to demo a few concepts of social software (Web 2.0 *gack*) and then turn the reigns over to the participants. We’ll be using SocialLearning.ca as the “hub” to bring together activities like tagging, bookmarking, blogging, and commenting. I really like the approach, especially with a concrete piece of the web bringing it together. It should make the freaky concepts of decentralized social aggregate tag clouds a bit easier to grok.
I spent some time this week pimping the SocialLearning.ca instance of Drupal – opening up the tag clouds, tweaking a few bits here and there, so it should work really nicely as a platform for a workshop – as well as supporting the BCCampus community afterwards.
The SocialLearning.ca tag cloud will be on centre stage for the workshop, so the participants can see how their contributions affect it (hopefully in quasi-realtime).
As always, I’m so totally looking forward to working with Brian (and his planted ringers). This should be a great workshop. I’m also really curious to see what the participants come up with…