Wow -- it's been a busy week. School and work have kept me hoppin' and learning. I learned, among other things:

• It's a good idea to read all posts before making one of your own. We have two on-line interfaces we use for our course. First Class (client) and WebKF(web) provide opportunities to interact with course colleagues. I made a FC post a while back which contained some links to PPT viewers for PC and Mac as a response to a post of PPT > HTML by our prof. Last night I followed a thread of posts in WebKF with dealt with the issue of access to the PPT file in question quite fully. Guess I could argue that the post in FC provides access to some of the PPT-viewers mentioned in WebKF, if nothing else ;-)
  
  
• I also learned (reaffirmed?) that synchronous on-line communication fosters the dynamic in "dynamic knowledge bases." Last night I had a chat with colleagues from CTL 1799. Our team is currently working to define our "mission". We've posted chat transcripts from each of the last two evening's chats in our "Team View" in WebKF with the hope that team members will read them, post any comments or questions and "times of availability" for chats in the coming week.
  

More about my learning and the fact that blogger.com has changed my perception of the interfaces used at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT).

I'm studying on-line toward a Master's of Education in Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, with a specialization in Computer Applications. To this point I'd preferred the "installed client" interface of First Class over the "web-based" WebKF. (First Class can also be reached via the web through servers @ OISE/UT).

Being exposed to the evolution of blogger over the past year has meant that I've been able to track my "learning" and experiment with this interface. Last night I was able to post the pic I'd posted to this forum on the 15th. No big deal by any means, but I'm fairly convinced that I'd have only linked to the graphic in my "test" if I hadn't posted "inline" pics here first.

I also know that Dr. Karsten's direction to expand on existing knowledge got me started looking at posting pictures to blogger instead of my ISP in the first place, which in turn got me thinking in terms of accessibility. Posting pics over dialup connections all over North America also got me thinking a little more critically about file files sizes and ALT tags on graphics ;-)

Well I'm back with a post. I've been busy with school and work and haven't had time to make a post, although I did get out for a little shinny with some colleagues from SMART on the weekend, that was good, although my lower back and hip-flexors are still a little stiff ;-)

Before and after hockey, I spent much of the weekend working with SMART Ideas(R) concept-mapping software and am having a great time mapping out ideas.

Posting SVG/HTML pages to servers allows group collaboration on the same document. Users and owners view/download/modify/save/upload SMART Ideas(R) files from a common server. Date and time stamping -- embedded in the generated HTML -- provides version control for the shared document.

A recording feature provides a movie of how your concept map was produced, this allows design partners to catch-up if they've not been privy to changes.

The best part is . . . any design partner with a connection to the net can be granted access to actively participate in the design process -- in real time on the server.