Academic

At Dot Porter's request, I did a stripped-down version of our CASTA 2006 workshop on styling XML with CSS for the DHSI workshop group. Took a little while digging out handouts and printing ahead of time.

Reviewed technical docs and prepared outline of points specific to this audience's interest in interface design issues and in using graphical metaphors as front-ends to query a database of texts.
Then did presentation with Janelle for an hour, moving from the large photocopy through the static html through the xml database with plain images and with mapserver interface.

In and out of the DHSI workshop; meeting with Syd and Dot re TEI/image markup stuff; demonstrating the IMT to workshop attendees.

I'm registered for the Edition Production workshop at the DHSI, so I went to the opening session and then to the morning's workshop session.

Attended session on AskAway - the on-line chat service organized by reference librarians around the province. Also attended session on accessibility and session on what counts as unfair use of a/v material and how difficult that line is to draw with modern technology.

Presented session on Quandary. Tried to minimize time on mechanics of program and maximize time on pedagogical applications. Also tried to show both creating a simple tree and implementing assets. Next time I think I'll go through the mechanics of only one or two nodes and one or two transactions (in this example there were 5 nodes and about five transactions). Questions were on reporting results, timers and the ability to query or set time on the timers, pros anc cons of designing a maze where you want all the students to arrive at one end point after exploring options compared to creating a maze where the students arrive at various end points and then discuss how and why they got the results they did.

Attended presentation by Geoff Plant on his report to the provincial government on Campus2020. Recommends centralization of research to 3 or possibly 1 university, rest of universities to be teaching-focussed and community colleges to revert to historical role. Skeptical of government's ability to tune to market demands, and thinks university role should not simply be to create future workers in any case. Sees role for small, private universities as bleeding edge innovators.

Also went to session on basics of using Moodle as an instructor.

Third session on initiatives taken by post-secondary libraries, specifically shared instructional material on plagiarism and search techniques, and the AskAway chat with a librarian service.

Final session on Canadian copyright laws and issues. In particular the concept of "fair dealing" which covers research but does not cover teaching, and the idea that by posting to the internet, the author implies a licence to view the material, but not a licence to redistribute or copy the material.