Work

• had several meetings with instructors and dean-type-people in different faculties this week. Lots of interesting ideas for projects, and more interestingly, lots of interest in building up communities and communities-of-practice around many topics - including learning technologies, development, learning spaces, content creation, etc… Great stuff. Can’t wait to help support those communities (and more)!
• Met with a prof who has taught herself how to produce screencasts to create videos for use in her courses. Love it. Gave her some (very minor) tips, and set her up with a better mic and webcam to use. Can’t wait to see what she comes up with.
• getting lots of interest on campus, from people who are putting together proposals to present at the 2015 University of Calgary Conference on Learning and Teaching - which is shaping up to be a really fantastic event (again).
• mid-year reviews with my team. so good. best team ever.
• visited the video game collection at the TFDL to. um. research the history of interaction design. with the team. cough So good. Fired up an Intellivision, slid in the plastic controller sheets, and fired up Skiing.

intelligent television from D’Arcy Norman on Vimeo.

Read

• Michael Haggans: Future of Campus in a Digital World
• Jason Kottke on how to care for introverts
• UofC bracing for 5% cuts because apparently basing an economy on the volatile prices of oil and gas make it harder to forecast funds.
• Tony Bates on broadcasting vs. networking when teaching online
• Alan and Brian have a brilliant idea, to model improvement through a course and reflect it in the quality of media produced throughout a semester. Nice.
• The scientific evidence against spanking, timeouts, and sleep training.
• Autism linked to 3rd trimester pollution exposure. Interesting finding by researchers at Harvard.
• American college students prefer paper over eBooks.
• via Stephen Downes, this great overview of badge patterns

Other

• got to visit the ER on Friday. The Boy™ is OK, and it was thankfully nothing, but dang.
• no skiing this week. likely going 3 or 4 times in the next week, though. can’t wait.