Pages

Thursday, December 11, 2003

Greetings from Sacramento. I'm here after delivering a training session on the SMART Board(TM) interactive whiteboard. My trip to Northern California has been good. The weather hasn't been the best, but it is certainly much warmer here than in Calgary and surrounding area.

I'm making this post via a wireless connection from the Sacramento airport -- once again, thanks to Phil. Wireless connections are slick indeed.

On the school front, I've got an essay due by end of business tomorrow. The good news is that I have a substantial part of it already completed. CTL 1000 -- Foundations of Curriculum -- with Wayne Seller @ OISE/UT has been a great course. The subject matter, and the way Wayne presented it, has taught me a lot about the principles at work in curriculum development and how best to apply them.

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

Some reflections on this year's Winterstart World Cup @ Lake Louise.

It was an extremely interesting year for me in a number of ways. Personally, my involvement as a volunteer and as the "on-site" representative of my employer, SMART Technologies Inc. meant that I was a very busy individual over the course of the two weeks I spent in Lake Louise. That said, it was extremely gratifying for me to be involved in both capacities and I feel that I was truly involved in something special.

I had the good fortune to be able to use our hardware and software to perform the function of scribe for the World Cup Business Forum on Corporate Governance which was hosted by organizers on 28 November, 2003. Attendees and panelists represented a "who's who" of Canadian business and I learned a great deal by virtue of my involvement in the forum as scribe.

I used SMART Notebook software to capture my handwritten notes during the forum and make the conversion to text. Ultimately I used SMART Notebook software to export the contents of the file to PDF for delivery to session participants.

The Canada AM shoot was a lot of fun; notwithstanding the 0300 AM wake-up call participation required ;-)

I also enjoyed working with Kerrin Lee-Gartner to produce a segment whereby we used the SMART Board(TM) interactive whiteboard in the lobby of the Chateau Lake Louise to describe a section of the downhill course the Women were running at the Lake. Unfortunately, bad weather last Saturday meant that two feeds or versions of race coverage were produced -- one for European audiences, and one for domestic delivery.

The net result was that the segment we worked on "ended up on the cutting room floor" as was not aired. Nonetheless, staff at CBC was quite excited by our technology and I fully expect to see SMART Board(TM) interactive whiteboards, and related software, in use by CBC Sports in the future.