Whew.  I'm worn out.  Spent the last 2.5 days in Saskatoon at the TLt2006 Conference hosted by the University of Saskatchewan and sponsored by Campus Saskatchewan and its partner institutions. The energy and enthusiasm that was brought to the event by both participants and presenters was infectuous.

We enjoyed the high energy input of Dr. Curtis Bonk of Indiana University at Sunday evening's kickoff event. Curtis talked about four "emerging storms": emerging technologies, escalating demands, erased budgets, and enhanced teaching. He showed us countless examples of the ways in which educators are exploring and appropriating technologies to support their work - everything from podcasts, to vodcasts, to high end simulations.

Bonk continued with his high energy pace, complete with wigs and props, at Monday's presentation on blended learning.  I had a hard time keeping up as I jotted down one cool idea after another. It was indeed a treat to have two doses from Dr. Bonk's Traveling Medicine Show in such close proximity. I was drained but happy and strangely enlightened by the experience.

The concurrent sessions that I had the opportunity to attend were all interactive treats for me.

Highlights included a session on live podcasting by Richard Schwier, Alec Couros, Dean Shareski, and Rob Wall. These guys did a great job of engaging the audience in a discussion on the power of social neworking while simultaneously, recording, editing, and sweetening the digital input from the audience, and then producing a live podcast on their EdTech Posse blog site at the conclusion of the session - a masterful demo for educators on the power of the possible.

A second session on leadership by Diane Janes focused on the theme of community bridges: building an e-learning stratgey from the ground up. What could have been a dry presentation was turned into an engaging interactive event by Diane who did a quick overview on the discovery process necessary in order to build a systemic e-learning strategy.  With the participants quickly acquainted with a common baseline of information, she proceeded in smart teacherlike fashion to assign a group breakout process that we would use to do the discovery process ourselves.  The result was a room full of diverse opinion expressed in an orderly fashion within the groups, then culled and sorted into categories, and presented for all of us to consider.  We got more work done in 40 minutes than I'm sure many similar committees get done in a month of meetings.

Even the luncheon was jam packed with activity. Over a 1.5h lunch period we ate, met in cracker barrel thematic discussion groups, switched tables to join other discussions, and literally underscored the conference theme of building community by our group discussion activities.  I felt that by the end of the morning I met just about every participant at the conference, and that this was an intentional design of the conference organizers.

A banquet and awards ceremony closed day one of the conference. During the meal, individuals and groups from Sasktachewan's colleges and universities were recognized by their peers with awards for the innovation and creativity with which they support distance learning students. Lots of stellar projects were recognized.

On day two my own keynote, Lessons from the web 2.0: building contemporary online communities, was my own contribution to the conference. After presenting my work for almost 1.5h, I got a chance to interact directly with lots of the participants who had questions or comments they wished to make.  Throughout the day I had plenty of other one-on-one sessions with conference participants in reaction to my preso and it was heartening to hear their reactions and compliments.

By mid-morning, I was on my way to the computer science building where Jim Greer and his colleagues Gord McCalla and Terry Roebuck demonstrated the University of Saskatchewan's iHelp system. This is an open source content management and contextualized help system knitted together in a manner that provides a wonderful peer managed support system for the university's computer science students. It was clear to me that iHelp has lots of power as well as analytical tools that could be used manage a state-of-the-art peer support system in just about any online situation.  I was very impressed by the work of Greer et al. and by the energy that grad students and TAs at USask have brought to adding features and services to iHelp in response to student or situational needs.  I'm now trying to figure out how best to incorporate iHelp into my own projects in  British Columbia.

The question remaining for me at the end of the TLt2006 event on Tuesday was how the conference organizers planned to capture and nurture all the energy and enthusiasm shown by participants until the the 2007 version of TLt.  In my wrap up summary I suggested to the audience that they react in blogs that a number of conference participants were putting up, or that the organizers quickly invest in a community of practice online support system.  Somebody needs to bottle the latent energy that these Saskatchewan educators showed and pour it into an online support system that would benefit the larger Saskatchewan educator community going forward.

Whew.  I'm worn out.  Spent the last 2.5 days in Saskatoon at the TLt2006 Conference hosted by the University of Saskatchewan and sponsored by Campus Saskatchewan and its partner institutions. The energy and enthusiasm that was brought to the event by both participants and presenters was infectuous.

We enjoyed the high energy input of Dr. Curtis Bonk of Indiana University at Sunday evening's kickoff event. Curtis talked about four "emerging storms": emerging technologies, escalating demands, erased budgets, and enhanced teaching. He showed us countless examples of the ways in which educators are exploring and appropriating technologies to support their work - everything from podcasts, to vodcasts, to high end simulations.

Bonk continued with his high energy pace, complete with wigs and props, at Monday's presentation on blended learning.  I had a hard time keeping up as I jotted down one cool idea after another. It was indeed a treat to have two doses from Dr. Bonk's Traveling Medicine Show in such close proximity. I was drained but happy and strangely enlightened by the experience.

The concurrent sessions that I had the opportunity to attend were all interactive treats for me.

Highlights included a session on live podcasting by Richard Schwier, Alec Couros, Dean Shareski, and Rob Wall. These guys did a great job of engaging the audience in a discussion on the power of social neworking while simultaneously, recording, editing, and sweetening the digital input from the audience, and then producing a live podcast on their EdTech Posse blog site at the conclusion of the session - a masterful demo for educators on the power of the possible.

A second session on leadership by Diane Janes focused on the theme of community bridges: building an e-learning stratgey from the ground up. What could have been a dry presentation was turned into an engaging interactive event by Diane who did a quick overview on the discovery process necessary in order to build a systemic e-learning strategy.  With the participants quickly acquainted with a common baseline of information, she proceeded in smart teacherlike fashion to assign a group breakout process that we would use to do the discovery process ourselves.  The result was a room full of diverse opinion expressed in an orderly fashion within the groups, then culled and sorted into categories, and presented for all of us to consider.  We got more work done in 40 minutes than I'm sure many similar committees get done in a month of meetings.

Even the luncheon was jam packed with activity. Over a 1.5h lunch period we ate, met in cracker barrel thematic discussion groups, switched tables to join other discussions, and literally underscored the conference theme of building community by our group discussion activities.  I felt that by the end of the morning I met just about every participant at the conference, and that this was an intentional design of the conference organizers.

A banquet and awards ceremony closed day one of the conference. During the meal, individuals and groups from Sasktachewan's colleges and universities were recognized by their peers with awards for the innovation and creativity with which they support distance learning students. Lots of stellar projects were recognized.

On day two my own keynote, Lessons from the web 2.0: building contemporary online communities, was my own contribution to the conference. After presenting my work for almost 1.5h, I got a chance to interact directly with lots of the participants who had questions or comments they wished to make.  Throughout the day I had plenty of other one-on-one sessions with conference participants in reaction to my preso and it was heartening to hear their reactions and compliments.

By mid-morning, I was on my way to the computer science building where Jim Greer and his colleagues Gord McCalla and Terry Roebuck demonstrated the University of Saskatchewan's iHelp system. This is an open source content management and contextualized help system knitted together in a manner that provides a wonderful peer managed support system for the university's computer science students. It was clear to me that iHelp has lots of power as well as analytical tools that could be used manage a state-of-the-art peer support system in just about any online situation.  I was very impressed by the work of Greer et al. and by the energy that grad students and TAs at USask have brought to adding features and services to iHelp in response to student or situational needs.  I'm now trying to figure out how best to incorporate iHelp into my own projects in  British Columbia.

The question remaining for me at the end of the TLt2006 event on Tuesday was how the conference organizers planned to capture and nurture all the energy and enthusiasm shown by participants until the the 2007 version of TLt.  In my wrap up summary I suggested to the audience that they react in blogs that a number of conference participants were putting up, or that the organizers quickly invest in a community of practice online support system.  Somebody needs to bottle the latent energy that these Saskatchewan educators showed and pour it into an online support system that would benefit the larger Saskatchewan educator community going forward.

Whew.  I'm worn out.  Spent the last 2.5 days in Saskatoon at the TLt2006 Conference hosted by the University of Saskatchewan and sponsored by Campus Saskatchewan and its partner institutions. The energy and enthusiasm that was brought to the event by both participants and presenters was infectuous.

We enjoyed the high energy input of Dr. Curtis Bonk of Indiana University at Sunday evening's kickoff event. Curtis talked about four "emerging storms": emerging technologies, escalating demands, erased budgets, and enhanced teaching. He showed us countless examples of the ways in which educators are exploring and appropriating technologies to support their work - everything from podcasts, to vodcasts, to high end simulations.

Bonk continued with his high energy pace, complete with wigs and props, at Monday's presentation on blended learning.  I had a hard time keeping up as I jotted down one cool idea after another. It was indeed a treat to have two doses from Dr. Bonk's Traveling Medicine Show in such close proximity. I was drained but happy and strangely enlightened by the experience.

The concurrent sessions that I had the opportunity to attend were all interactive treats for me.

Highlights included a session on live podcasting by Richard Schwier, Alec Couros, Dean Shareski, and Rob Wall. These guys did a great job of engaging the audience in a discussion on the power of social neworking while simultaneously, recording, editing, and sweetening the digital input from the audience, and then producing a live podcast on their EdTech Posse blog site at the conclusion of the session - a masterful demo for educators on the power of the possible.

A second session on leadership by Diane Janes focused on the theme of community bridges: building an e-learning stratgey from the ground up. What could have been a dry presentation was turned into an engaging interactive event by Diane who did a quick overview on the discovery process necessary in order to build a systemic e-learning strategy.  With the participants quickly acquainted with a common baseline of information, she proceeded in smart teacherlike fashion to assign a group breakout process that we would use to do the discovery process ourselves.  The result was a room full of diverse opinion expressed in an orderly fashion within the groups, then culled and sorted into categories, and presented for all of us to consider.  We got more work done in 40 minutes than I'm sure many similar committees get done in a month of meetings.

Even the luncheon was jam packed with activity. Over a 1.5h lunch period we ate, met in cracker barrel thematic discussion groups, switched tables to join other discussions, and literally underscored the conference theme of building community by our group discussion activities.  I felt that by the end of the morning I met just about every participant at the conference, and that this was an intentional design of the conference organizers.

A banquet and awards ceremony closed day one of the conference. During the meal, individuals and groups from Sasktachewan's colleges and universities were recognized by their peers with awards for the innovation and creativity with which they support distance learning students. Lots of stellar projects were recognized.

On day two my own keynote, Lessons from the web 2.0: building contemporary online communities, was my own contribution to the conference. After presenting my work for almost 1.5h, I got a chance to interact directly with lots of the participants who had questions or comments they wished to make.  Throughout the day I had plenty of other one-on-one sessions with conference participants in reaction to my preso and it was heartening to hear their reactions and compliments.

By mid-morning, I was on my way to the computer science building where Jim Greer and his colleagues Gord McCalla and Terry Roebuck demonstrated the University of Saskatchewan's iHelp system. This is an open source content management and contextualized help system knitted together in a manner that provides a wonderful peer managed support system for the university's computer science students. It was clear to me that iHelp has lots of power as well as analytical tools that could be used manage a state-of-the-art peer support system in just about any online situation.  I was very impressed by the work of Greer et al. and by the energy that grad students and TAs at USask have brought to adding features and services to iHelp in response to student or situational needs.  I'm now trying to figure out how best to incorporate iHelp into my own projects in  British Columbia.

The question remaining for me at the end of the TLt2006 event on Tuesday was how the conference organizers planned to capture and nurture all the energy and enthusiasm shown by participants until the the 2007 version of TLt.  In my wrap up summary I suggested to the audience that they react in blogs that a number of conference participants were putting up, or that the organizers quickly invest in a community of practice online support system.  Somebody needs to bottle the latent energy that these Saskatchewan educators showed and pour it into an online support system that would benefit the larger Saskatchewan educator community going forward.

Whew.  I'm worn out.  Spent the last 2.5 days in Saskatoon at the TLt2006 Conference hosted by the University of Saskatchewan and sponsored by Campus Saskatchewan and its partner institutions. The energy and enthusiasm that was brought to the event by both participants and presenters was infectuous.

We enjoyed the high energy input of Dr. Curtis Bonk of Indiana University at Sunday evening's kickoff event. Curtis talked about four "emerging storms": emerging technologies, escalating demands, erased budgets, and enhanced teaching. He showed us countless examples of the ways in which educators are exploring and appropriating technologies to support their work - everything from podcasts, to vodcasts, to high end simulations.

Bonk continued with his high energy pace, complete with wigs and props, at Monday's presentation on blended learning.  I had a hard time keeping up as I jotted down one cool idea after another. It was indeed a treat to have two doses from Dr. Bonk's Traveling Medicine Show in such close proximity. I was drained but happy and strangely enlightened by the experience.

The concurrent sessions that I had the opportunity to attend were all interactive treats for me.

Highlights included a session on live podcasting by Richard Schwier, Alec Couros, Dean Shareski, and Rob Wall. These guys did a great job of engaging the audience in a discussion on the power of social neworking while simultaneously, recording, editing, and sweetening the digital input from the audience, and then producing a live podcast on their EdTech Posse blog site at the conclusion of the session - a masterful demo for educators on the power of the possible.

A second session on leadership by Diane Janes focused on the theme of community bridges: building an e-learning stratgey from the ground up. What could have been a dry presentation was turned into an engaging interactive event by Diane who did a quick overview on the discovery process necessary in order to build a systemic e-learning strategy.  With the participants quickly acquainted with a common baseline of information, she proceeded in smart teacherlike fashion to assign a group breakout process that we would use to do the discovery process ourselves.  The result was a room full of diverse opinion expressed in an orderly fashion within the groups, then culled and sorted into categories, and presented for all of us to consider.  We got more work done in 40 minutes than I'm sure many similar committees get done in a month of meetings.

Even the luncheon was jam packed with activity. Over a 1.5h lunch period we ate, met in cracker barrel thematic discussion groups, switched tables to join other discussions, and literally underscored the conference theme of building community by our group discussion activities.  I felt that by the end of the morning I met just about every participant at the conference, and that this was an intentional design of the conference organizers.

A banquet and awards ceremony closed day one of the conference. During the meal, individuals and groups from Sasktachewan's colleges and universities were recognized by their peers with awards for the innovation and creativity with which they support distance learning students. Lots of stellar projects were recognized.

On day two my own keynote, Lessons from the web 2.0: building contemporary online communities, was my own contribution to the conference. After presenting my work for almost 1.5h, I got a chance to interact directly with lots of the participants who had questions or comments they wished to make.  Throughout the day I had plenty of other one-on-one sessions with conference participants in reaction to my preso and it was heartening to hear their reactions and compliments.

By mid-morning, I was on my way to the computer science building where Jim Greer and his colleagues Gord McCalla and Terry Roebuck demonstrated the University of Saskatchewan's iHelp system. This is an open source content management and contextualized help system knitted together in a manner that provides a wonderful peer managed support system for the university's computer science students. It was clear to me that iHelp has lots of power as well as analytical tools that could be used manage a state-of-the-art peer support system in just about any online situation.  I was very impressed by the work of Greer et al. and by the energy that grad students and TAs at USask have brought to adding features and services to iHelp in response to student or situational needs.  I'm now trying to figure out how best to incorporate iHelp into my own projects in  British Columbia.

The question remaining for me at the end of the TLt2006 event on Tuesday was how the conference organizers planned to capture and nurture all the energy and enthusiasm shown by participants until the the 2007 version of TLt.  In my wrap up summary I suggested to the audience that they react in blogs that a number of conference participants were putting up, or that the organizers quickly invest in a community of practice online support system.  Somebody needs to bottle the latent energy that these Saskatchewan educators showed and pour it into an online support system that would benefit the larger Saskatchewan educator community going forward.

Whew.  I'm worn out.  Spent the last 2.5 days in Saskatoon at the TLt2006 Conference hosted by the University of Saskatchewan and sponsored by Campus Saskatchewan and its partner institutions. The energy and enthusiasm that was brought to the event by both participants and presenters was infectuous.

We enjoyed the high energy input of Dr. Curtis Bonk of Indiana University at Sunday evening's kickoff event. Curtis talked about four "emerging storms": emerging technologies, escalating demands, erased budgets, and enhanced teaching. He showed us countless examples of the ways in which educators are exploring and appropriating technologies to support their work - everything from podcasts, to vodcasts, to high end simulations.

Bonk continued with his high energy pace, complete with wigs and props, at Monday's presentation on blended learning.  I had a hard time keeping up as I jotted down one cool idea after another. It was indeed a treat to have two doses from Dr. Bonk's Traveling Medicine Show in such close proximity. I was drained but happy and strangely enlightened by the experience.

The concurrent sessions that I had the opportunity to attend were all interactive treats for me.

Highlights included a session on live podcasting by Richard Schwier, Alec Couros, Dean Shareski, and Rob Wall. These guys did a great job of engaging the audience in a discussion on the power of social neworking while simultaneously, recording, editing, and sweetening the digital input from the audience, and then producing a live podcast on their EdTech Posse blog site at the conclusion of the session - a masterful demo for educators on the power of the possible.

A second session on leadership by Diane Janes focused on the theme of community bridges: building an e-learning stratgey from the ground up. What could have been a dry presentation was turned into an engaging interactive event by Diane who did a quick overview on the discovery process necessary in order to build a systemic e-learning strategy.  With the participants quickly acquainted with a common baseline of information, she proceeded in smart teacherlike fashion to assign a group breakout process that we would use to do the discovery process ourselves.  The result was a room full of diverse opinion expressed in an orderly fashion within the groups, then culled and sorted into categories, and presented for all of us to consider.  We got more work done in 40 minutes than I'm sure many similar committees get done in a month of meetings.

Even the luncheon was jam packed with activity. Over a 1.5h lunch period we ate, met in cracker barrel thematic discussion groups, switched tables to join other discussions, and literally underscored the conference theme of building community by our group discussion activities.  I felt that by the end of the morning I met just about every participant at the conference, and that this was an intentional design of the conference organizers.

A banquet and awards ceremony closed day one of the conference. During the meal, individuals and groups from Sasktachewan's colleges and universities were recognized by their peers with awards for the innovation and creativity with which they support distance learning students. Lots of stellar projects were recognized.

On day two my own keynote, Lessons from the web 2.0: building contemporary online communities, was my own contribution to the conference. After presenting my work for almost 1.5h, I got a chance to interact directly with lots of the participants who had questions or comments they wished to make.  Throughout the day I had plenty of other one-on-one sessions with conference participants in reaction to my preso and it was heartening to hear their reactions and compliments.

By mid-morning, I was on my way to the computer science building where Jim Greer and his colleagues Gord McCalla and Terry Roebuck demonstrated the University of Saskatchewan's iHelp system. This is an open source content management and contextualized help system knitted together in a manner that provides a wonderful peer managed support system for the university's computer science students. It was clear to me that iHelp has lots of power as well as analytical tools that could be used manage a state-of-the-art peer support system in just about any online situation.  I was very impressed by the work of Greer et al. and by the energy that grad students and TAs at USask have brought to adding features and services to iHelp in response to student or situational needs.  I'm now trying to figure out how best to incorporate iHelp into my own projects in  British Columbia.

The question remaining for me at the end of the TLt2006 event on Tuesday was how the conference organizers planned to capture and nurture all the energy and enthusiasm shown by participants until the the 2007 version of TLt.  In my wrap up summary I suggested to the audience that they react in blogs that a number of conference participants were putting up, or that the organizers quickly invest in a community of practice online support system.  Somebody needs to bottle the latent energy that these Saskatchewan educators showed and pour it into an online support system that would benefit the larger Saskatchewan educator community going forward.

Whew.  I'm worn out.  Spent the last 2.5 days in Saskatoon at the TLt2006 Conference hosted by the University of Saskatchewan and sponsored by Campus Saskatchewan and its partner institutions. The energy and enthusiasm that was brought to the event by both participants and presenters was infectuous.

We enjoyed the high energy input of Dr. Curtis Bonk of Indiana University at Sunday evening's kickoff event. Curtis talked about four "emerging storms": emerging technologies, escalating demands, erased budgets, and enhanced teaching. He showed us countless examples of the ways in which educators are exploring and appropriating technologies to support their work - everything from podcasts, to vodcasts, to high end simulations.

Bonk continued with his high energy pace, complete with wigs and props, at Monday's presentation on blended learning.  I had a hard time keeping up as I jotted down one cool idea after another. It was indeed a treat to have two doses from Dr. Bonk's Traveling Medicine Show in such close proximity. I was drained but happy and strangely enlightened by the experience.

The concurrent sessions that I had the opportunity to attend were all interactive treats for me.

Highlights included a session on live podcasting by Richard Schwier, Alec Couros, Dean Shareski, and Rob Wall. These guys did a great job of engaging the audience in a discussion on the power of social neworking while simultaneously, recording, editing, and sweetening the digital input from the audience, and then producing a live podcast on their EdTech Posse blog site at the conclusion of the session - a masterful demo for educators on the power of the possible.

A second session on leadership by Diane Janes focused on the theme of community bridges: building an e-learning stratgey from the ground up. What could have been a dry presentation was turned into an engaging interactive event by Diane who did a quick overview on the discovery process necessary in order to build a systemic e-learning strategy.  With the participants quickly acquainted with a common baseline of information, she proceeded in smart teacherlike fashion to assign a group breakout process that we would use to do the discovery process ourselves.  The result was a room full of diverse opinion expressed in an orderly fashion within the groups, then culled and sorted into categories, and presented for all of us to consider.  We got more work done in 40 minutes than I'm sure many similar committees get done in a month of meetings.

Even the luncheon was jam packed with activity. Over a 1.5h lunch period we ate, met in cracker barrel thematic discussion groups, switched tables to join other discussions, and literally underscored the conference theme of building community by our group discussion activities.  I felt that by the end of the morning I met just about every participant at the conference, and that this was an intentional design of the conference organizers.

A banquet and awards ceremony closed day one of the conference. During the meal, individuals and groups from Sasktachewan's colleges and universities were recognized by their peers with awards for the innovation and creativity with which they support distance learning students. Lots of stellar projects were recognized.

On day two my own keynote, Lessons from the web 2.0: building contemporary online communities, was my own contribution to the conference. After presenting my work for almost 1.5h, I got a chance to interact directly with lots of the participants who had questions or comments they wished to make.  Throughout the day I had plenty of other one-on-one sessions with conference participants in reaction to my preso and it was heartening to hear their reactions and compliments.

By mid-morning, I was on my way to the computer science building where Jim Greer and his colleagues Gord McCalla and Terry Roebuck demonstrated the University of Saskatchewan's iHelp system. This is an open source content management and contextualized help system knitted together in a manner that provides a wonderful peer managed support system for the university's computer science students. It was clear to me that iHelp has lots of power as well as analytical tools that could be used manage a state-of-the-art peer support system in just about any online situation.  I was very impressed by the work of Greer et al. and by the energy that grad students and TAs at USask have brought to adding features and services to iHelp in response to student or situational needs.  I'm now trying to figure out how best to incorporate iHelp into my own projects in  British Columbia.

The question remaining for me at the end of the TLt2006 event on Tuesday was how the conference organizers planned to capture and nurture all the energy and enthusiasm shown by participants until the the 2007 version of TLt.  In my wrap up summary I suggested to the audience that they react in blogs that a number of conference participants were putting up, or that the organizers quickly invest in a community of practice online support system.  Somebody needs to bottle the latent energy that these Saskatchewan educators showed and pour it into an online support system that would benefit the larger Saskatchewan educator community going forward.

Whew.  I'm worn out.  Spent the last 2.5 days in Saskatoon at the TLt2006 Conference hosted by the University of Saskatchewan and sponsored by Campus Saskatchewan and its partner institutions. The energy and enthusiasm that was brought to the event by both participants and presenters was infectuous.

We enjoyed the high energy input of Dr. Curtis Bonk of Indiana University at Sunday evening's kickoff event. Curtis talked about four "emerging storms": emerging technologies, escalating demands, erased budgets, and enhanced teaching. He showed us countless examples of the ways in which educators are exploring and appropriating technologies to support their work - everything from podcasts, to vodcasts, to high end simulations.

Bonk continued with his high energy pace, complete with wigs and props, at Monday's presentation on blended learning.  I had a hard time keeping up as I jotted down one cool idea after another. It was indeed a treat to have two doses from Dr. Bonk's Traveling Medicine Show in such close proximity. I was drained but happy and strangely enlightened by the experience.

The concurrent sessions that I had the opportunity to attend were all interactive treats for me.

Highlights included a session on live podcasting by Richard Schwier, Alec Couros, Dean Shareski, and Rob Wall. These guys did a great job of engaging the audience in a discussion on the power of social neworking while simultaneously, recording, editing, and sweetening the digital input from the audience, and then producing a live podcast on their EdTech Posse blog site at the conclusion of the session - a masterful demo for educators on the power of the possible.

A second session on leadership by Diane Janes focused on the theme of community bridges: building an e-learning stratgey from the ground up. What could have been a dry presentation was turned into an engaging interactive event by Diane who did a quick overview on the discovery process necessary in order to build a systemic e-learning strategy.  With the participants quickly acquainted with a common baseline of information, she proceeded in smart teacherlike fashion to assign a group breakout process that we would use to do the discovery process ourselves.  The result was a room full of diverse opinion expressed in an orderly fashion within the groups, then culled and sorted into categories, and presented for all of us to consider.  We got more work done in 40 minutes than I'm sure many similar committees get done in a month of meetings.

Even the luncheon was jam packed with activity. Over a 1.5h lunch period we ate, met in cracker barrel thematic discussion groups, switched tables to join other discussions, and literally underscored the conference theme of building community by our group discussion activities.  I felt that by the end of the morning I met just about every participant at the conference, and that this was an intentional design of the conference organizers.

A banquet and awards ceremony closed day one of the conference. During the meal, individuals and groups from Sasktachewan's colleges and universities were recognized by their peers with awards for the innovation and creativity with which they support distance learning students. Lots of stellar projects were recognized.

On day two my own keynote, Lessons from the web 2.0: building contemporary online communities, was my own contribution to the conference. After presenting my work for almost 1.5h, I got a chance to interact directly with lots of the participants who had questions or comments they wished to make.  Throughout the day I had plenty of other one-on-one sessions with conference participants in reaction to my preso and it was heartening to hear their reactions and compliments.

By mid-morning, I was on my way to the computer science building where Jim Greer and his colleagues Gord McCalla and Terry Roebuck demonstrated the University of Saskatchewan's iHelp system. This is an open source content management and contextualized help system knitted together in a manner that provides a wonderful peer managed support system for the university's computer science students. It was clear to me that iHelp has lots of power as well as analytical tools that could be used manage a state-of-the-art peer support system in just about any online situation.  I was very impressed by the work of Greer et al. and by the energy that grad students and TAs at USask have brought to adding features and services to iHelp in response to student or situational needs.  I'm now trying to figure out how best to incorporate iHelp into my own projects in  British Columbia.

The question remaining for me at the end of the TLt2006 event on Tuesday was how the conference organizers planned to capture and nurture all the energy and enthusiasm shown by participants until the the 2007 version of TLt.  In my wrap up summary I suggested to the audience that they react in blogs that a number of conference participants were putting up, or that the organizers quickly invest in a community of practice online support system.  Somebody needs to bottle the latent energy that these Saskatchewan educators showed and pour it into an online support system that would benefit the larger Saskatchewan educator community going forward.

Whew.  I'm worn out.  Spent the last 2.5 days in Saskatoon at the TLt2006 Conference hosted by the University of Saskatchewan and sponsored by Campus Saskatchewan and its partner institutions. The energy and enthusiasm that was brought to the event by both participants and presenters was infectuous.

We enjoyed the high energy input of Dr. Curtis Bonk of Indiana University at Sunday evening's kickoff event. Curtis talked about four "emerging storms": emerging technologies, escalating demands, erased budgets, and enhanced teaching. He showed us countless examples of the ways in which educators are exploring and appropriating technologies to support their work - everything from podcasts, to vodcasts, to high end simulations.

Bonk continued with his high energy pace, complete with wigs and props, at Monday's presentation on blended learning.  I had a hard time keeping up as I jotted down one cool idea after another. It was indeed a treat to have two doses from Dr. Bonk's Traveling Medicine Show in such close proximity. I was drained but happy and strangely enlightened by the experience.

The concurrent sessions that I had the opportunity to attend were all interactive treats for me.

Highlights included a session on live podcasting by Richard Schwier, Alec Couros, Dean Shareski, and Rob Wall. These guys did a great job of engaging the audience in a discussion on the power of social neworking while simultaneously, recording, editing, and sweetening the digital input from the audience, and then producing a live podcast on their EdTech Posse blog site at the conclusion of the session - a masterful demo for educators on the power of the possible.

A second session on leadership by Diane Janes focused on the theme of community bridges: building an e-learning stratgey from the ground up. What could have been a dry presentation was turned into an engaging interactive event by Diane who did a quick overview on the discovery process necessary in order to build a systemic e-learning strategy.  With the participants quickly acquainted with a common baseline of information, she proceeded in smart teacherlike fashion to assign a group breakout process that we would use to do the discovery process ourselves.  The result was a room full of diverse opinion expressed in an orderly fashion within the groups, then culled and sorted into categories, and presented for all of us to consider.  We got more work done in 40 minutes than I'm sure many similar committees get done in a month of meetings.

Even the luncheon was jam packed with activity. Over a 1.5h lunch period we ate, met in cracker barrel thematic discussion groups, switched tables to join other discussions, and literally underscored the conference theme of building community by our group discussion activities.  I felt that by the end of the morning I met just about every participant at the conference, and that this was an intentional design of the conference organizers.

A banquet and awards ceremony closed day one of the conference. During the meal, individuals and groups from Sasktachewan's colleges and universities were recognized by their peers with awards for the innovation and creativity with which they support distance learning students. Lots of stellar projects were recognized.

On day two my own keynote, Lessons from the web 2.0: building contemporary online communities, was my own contribution to the conference. After presenting my work for almost 1.5h, I got a chance to interact directly with lots of the participants who had questions or comments they wished to make.  Throughout the day I had plenty of other one-on-one sessions with conference participants in reaction to my preso and it was heartening to hear their reactions and compliments.

By mid-morning, I was on my way to the computer science building where Jim Greer and his colleagues Gord McCalla and Terry Roebuck demonstrated the University of Saskatchewan's iHelp system. This is an open source content management and contextualized help system knitted together in a manner that provides a wonderful peer managed support system for the university's computer science students. It was clear to me that iHelp has lots of power as well as analytical tools that could be used manage a state-of-the-art peer support system in just about any online situation.  I was very impressed by the work of Greer et al. and by the energy that grad students and TAs at USask have brought to adding features and services to iHelp in response to student or situational needs.  I'm now trying to figure out how best to incorporate iHelp into my own projects in  British Columbia.

The question remaining for me at the end of the TLt2006 event on Tuesday was how the conference organizers planned to capture and nurture all the energy and enthusiasm shown by participants until the the 2007 version of TLt.  In my wrap up summary I suggested to the audience that they react in blogs that a number of conference participants were putting up, or that the organizers quickly invest in a community of practice online support system.  Somebody needs to bottle the latent energy that these Saskatchewan educators showed and pour it into an online support system that would benefit the larger Saskatchewan educator community going forward.

Whew.  I'm worn out.  Spent the last 2.5 days in Saskatoon at the TLt2006 Conference hosted by the University of Saskatchewan and sponsored by Campus Saskatchewan and its partner institutions. The energy and enthusiasm that was brought to the event by both participants and presenters was infectuous.

We enjoyed the high energy input of Dr. Curtis Bonk of Indiana University at Sunday evening's kickoff event. Curtis talked about four "emerging storms": emerging technologies, escalating demands, erased budgets, and enhanced teaching. He showed us countless examples of the ways in which educators are exploring and appropriating technologies to support their work - everything from podcasts, to vodcasts, to high end simulations.

Bonk continued with his high energy pace, complete with wigs and props, at Monday's presentation on blended learning.  I had a hard time keeping up as I jotted down one cool idea after another. It was indeed a treat to have two doses from Dr. Bonk's Traveling Medicine Show in such close proximity. I was drained but happy and strangely enlightened by the experience.

The concurrent sessions that I had the opportunity to attend were all interactive treats for me.

Highlights included a session on live podcasting by Richard Schwier, Alec Couros, Dean Shareski, and Rob Wall. These guys did a great job of engaging the audience in a discussion on the power of social neworking while simultaneously, recording, editing, and sweetening the digital input from the audience, and then producing a live podcast on their EdTech Posse blog site at the conclusion of the session - a masterful demo for educators on the power of the possible.

A second session on leadership by Diane Janes focused on the theme of community bridges: building an e-learning stratgey from the ground up. What could have been a dry presentation was turned into an engaging interactive event by Diane who did a quick overview on the discovery process necessary in order to build a systemic e-learning strategy.  With the participants quickly acquainted with a common baseline of information, she proceeded in smart teacherlike fashion to assign a group breakout process that we would use to do the discovery process ourselves.  The result was a room full of diverse opinion expressed in an orderly fashion within the groups, then culled and sorted into categories, and presented for all of us to consider.  We got more work done in 40 minutes than I'm sure many similar committees get done in a month of meetings.

Even the luncheon was jam packed with activity. Over a 1.5h lunch period we ate, met in cracker barrel thematic discussion groups, switched tables to join other discussions, and literally underscored the conference theme of building community by our group discussion activities.  I felt that by the end of the morning I met just about every participant at the conference, and that this was an intentional design of the conference organizers.

A banquet and awards ceremony closed day one of the conference. During the meal, individuals and groups from Sasktachewan's colleges and universities were recognized by their peers with awards for the innovation and creativity with which they support distance learning students. Lots of stellar projects were recognized.

On day two my own keynote, Lessons from the web 2.0: building contemporary online communities, was my own contribution to the conference. After presenting my work for almost 1.5h, I got a chance to interact directly with lots of the participants who had questions or comments they wished to make.  Throughout the day I had plenty of other one-on-one sessions with conference participants in reaction to my preso and it was heartening to hear their reactions and compliments.

By mid-morning, I was on my way to the computer science building where Jim Greer and his colleagues Gord McCalla and Terry Roebuck demonstrated the University of Saskatchewan's iHelp system. This is an open source content management and contextualized help system knitted together in a manner that provides a wonderful peer managed support system for the university's computer science students. It was clear to me that iHelp has lots of power as well as analytical tools that could be used manage a state-of-the-art peer support system in just about any online situation.  I was very impressed by the work of Greer et al. and by the energy that grad students and TAs at USask have brought to adding features and services to iHelp in response to student or situational needs.  I'm now trying to figure out how best to incorporate iHelp into my own projects in  British Columbia.

The question remaining for me at the end of the TLt2006 event on Tuesday was how the conference organizers planned to capture and nurture all the energy and enthusiasm shown by participants until the the 2007 version of TLt.  In my wrap up summary I suggested to the audience that they react in blogs that a number of conference participants were putting up, or that the organizers quickly invest in a community of practice online support system.  Somebody needs to bottle the latent energy that these Saskatchewan educators showed and pour it into an online support system that would benefit the larger Saskatchewan educator community going forward.

Whew.  I'm worn out.  Spent the last 2.5 days in Saskatoon at the TLt2006 Conference hosted by the University of Saskatchewan and sponsored by Campus Saskatchewan and its partner institutions. The energy and enthusiasm that was brought to the event by both participants and presenters was infectuous.

We enjoyed the high energy input of Dr. Curtis Bonk of Indiana University at Sunday evening's kickoff event. Curtis talked about four "emerging storms": emerging technologies, escalating demands, erased budgets, and enhanced teaching. He showed us countless examples of the ways in which educators are exploring and appropriating technologies to support their work - everything from podcasts, to vodcasts, to high end simulations.

Bonk continued with his high energy pace, complete with wigs and props, at Monday's presentation on blended learning.  I had a hard time keeping up as I jotted down one cool idea after another. It was indeed a treat to have two doses from Dr. Bonk's Traveling Medicine Show in such close proximity. I was drained but happy and strangely enlightened by the experience.

The concurrent sessions that I had the opportunity to attend were all interactive treats for me.

Highlights included a session on live podcasting by Richard Schwier, Alec Couros, Dean Shareski, and Rob Wall. These guys did a great job of engaging the audience in a discussion on the power of social neworking while simultaneously, recording, editing, and sweetening the digital input from the audience, and then producing a live podcast on their EdTech Posse blog site at the conclusion of the session - a masterful demo for educators on the power of the possible.

A second session on leadership by Diane Janes focused on the theme of community bridges: building an e-learning stratgey from the ground up. What could have been a dry presentation was turned into an engaging interactive event by Diane who did a quick overview on the discovery process necessary in order to build a systemic e-learning strategy.  With the participants quickly acquainted with a common baseline of information, she proceeded in smart teacherlike fashion to assign a group breakout process that we would use to do the discovery process ourselves.  The result was a room full of diverse opinion expressed in an orderly fashion within the groups, then culled and sorted into categories, and presented for all of us to consider.  We got more work done in 40 minutes than I'm sure many similar committees get done in a month of meetings.

Even the luncheon was jam packed with activity. Over a 1.5h lunch period we ate, met in cracker barrel thematic discussion groups, switched tables to join other discussions, and literally underscored the conference theme of building community by our group discussion activities.  I felt that by the end of the morning I met just about every participant at the conference, and that this was an intentional design of the conference organizers.

A banquet and awards ceremony closed day one of the conference. During the meal, individuals and groups from Sasktachewan's colleges and universities were recognized by their peers with awards for the innovation and creativity with which they support distance learning students. Lots of stellar projects were recognized.

On day two my own keynote, Lessons from the web 2.0: building contemporary online communities, was my own contribution to the conference. After presenting my work for almost 1.5h, I got a chance to interact directly with lots of the participants who had questions or comments they wished to make.  Throughout the day I had plenty of other one-on-one sessions with conference participants in reaction to my preso and it was heartening to hear their reactions and compliments.

By mid-morning, I was on my way to the computer science building where Jim Greer and his colleagues Gord McCalla and Terry Roebuck demonstrated the University of Saskatchewan's iHelp system. This is an open source content management and contextualized help system knitted together in a manner that provides a wonderful peer managed support system for the university's computer science students. It was clear to me that iHelp has lots of power as well as analytical tools that could be used manage a state-of-the-art peer support system in just about any online situation.  I was very impressed by the work of Greer et al. and by the energy that grad students and TAs at USask have brought to adding features and services to iHelp in response to student or situational needs.  I'm now trying to figure out how best to incorporate iHelp into my own projects in  British Columbia.

The question remaining for me at the end of the TLt2006 event on Tuesday was how the conference organizers planned to capture and nurture all the energy and enthusiasm shown by participants until the the 2007 version of TLt.  In my wrap up summary I suggested to the audience that they react in blogs that a number of conference participants were putting up, or that the organizers quickly invest in a community of practice online support system.  Somebody needs to bottle the latent energy that these Saskatchewan educators showed and pour it into an online support system that would benefit the larger Saskatchewan educator community going forward.