Puerto Rico Trip

I don’t usually talk about work per se here, but so much time and effort has gone into this that I want to mention it.

It’s been a busy, international week for me and my staff. As I was getting back from San Salvador, one of my technologists was heading off to Puerto Rico to accompany one of our biology classes on a field trip to study tropical ecology. Trying to wrap up the details from a continent away was a bit of a logistical challenge, especially since equipment problems and arcane airline regulations (who knew you needed media credentials to travel with more than 100 lbs. of A/V equipment?) caused some last-minute panic; I really don’t know how we functioned before Skype. In the end, though, we got everything and everyone we needed down there in working order.

The goal was to do daily video podcasts starting last Sunday, but a hectic production schedule and unreliable network have meant we didn’t get the first episode up until today. It’s up now though, and the rest should be following soon, so you can follow the adventure at home at http://itac.edublogs.org/category/podcast/tropical_ecology/.

AJCU/AUSJAL/DACE San Salvador Postmortem

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Originally uploaded by daggerquill

I just finished organizing the photos from the San Salvador trip, and that seems as good an excuse as any to finally talk a little bit bit about the conference itself. The problem, of course, is that I really don’t have a lot to say about it, mostly because I spent the bulk of the weekend completely out of my depth.

I was expecting it to be heavily focused on professional development, best practices, and other practical aspects of distance learning, and that turned out not to be the case. Instead, it was really three conferences in one, all focused on how to leverage communication infrastructures to to improve the quality of life and education for students throughout the Americas. The discussion centered on things like the development of an international course on Central American poverty, opportunities for student and faculty exchange, and delivering education to remote an impoverished communities using radio and television. One session featured a coordinator from Australian Catholic university making a plea for faculty from the Americas to get involved with delivering a certificate in business to students in Burmese refugee camps in Thailand. The Friday afternoon schedule was essentially scrapped in favor of extending that discussion about organizing a social network to foster coordination of Social Justice initiatives among the organizations represented, and the Jesuit community at large. The entire conference left me dumbfounded, in a good way. It was a far cry from the discussions of Blackboard administration tricks and other shop talk I was expecting, and it really would have taken longer than the few days we had to wrap my head around it.

Attending the conference, though, was a tremendous experience. I met some amazing people who I won’t soon forget, and with whom I hope to work more closely in the future. Simply being around so many people actively dedicated to making the world a better place was inspiring and, I’d like to hope, motivating. And in the end, there were some good practical pedagogy chats, too.

(*The picture is from dinner the last night. It is the second half of a ham and cheese sandwich that came out of the kitchen as an unexpectedly battered, deep fried, and absolutely massive ham and cheese sandwich. In the hands of two of my fellow conference goers, it became first a piece of dorm furniture, then a volcano–that’s cole slaw spewing out the top–and then, with the addition of some strategically-placed sugar, a ski slope, and left be literally laughing so hard I was in tears. That so much was accomplished with so little material is, I think, a fitting metaphor for the entire weekend.)

GTD: Email in reverse

I’ve heard this email tip before, but I always forget to use it, even thought it’s probably the best single productivity enhancer I could implement on a daily basis. The advice? Write your email in reverse. If resist the temptation to just hit “reply all” and instead compose the body of the message, then write a descriptive subject, and then add the recipients, you’ll be less likely to hit send prematurely, and less likely to needlessly cc people who don’t really have a stake in the conversation. Making sure you get it right the first time, and don’t have to send a correction later or get bogged down in a long convo with people who don’t need to be involved will save both you and your readers time.  [via @steverubel] 

Volcano Movie

Volcano Movie

Not quite sure what happened, but YouTube only took :15 of video before. The full movie is above.

Last Day

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Originally uploaded by daggerquill

Last round of pics from San Salvador are up over at . We visited the volcano and the Mayan Ruins at Joyas de Cerén and San Andrés–as well as the chapel where Óscar Romero was killed, and his home–yesterday. The Volcano was stunning, the ruins were fantastic, and the Romero’s home was very moving, particularly the wall of plaques sent by people from all over the world thanking him for miracles.I also shot some video, below, of the volcano, which was absolutely breathtaking. It includes some shot of the small (farms? orchards? I’m not really sure what a small collection of coffee trees is) we passed on the way up where people grow coffee on the side of the volcano. The camera didn’t really capture what were were seeing–the street was too narrow and the lans angle wasn’t wide enough, but all I can say is this: the next time you’re in Startbucks, think about the people who grew that latte.

Birdsong

Birdsong

Short video (of nothing much) with the birdsong I was listening to outside at lunch today.Also posted a few pics

In San Salvador

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Originally uploaded by daggerquill

This will probably be of interest to about two people (Hi, mom!), but I’m in El Salvador at the moment for the Annual Distance and Continuing Education (DACE) conference hosted by the association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. Today was mostly travel, but I’ve posted a few things to the Flickr stream, along with a little video I shot on the way into town. It doesn’t really give a sense of what we were driving through, but there are some closeups of a great-tailed grackl, which they have here like we have pigeons in New York.I’ll probably have more to say as the Weekend progresses. But for now, just a few random pics.

Wanderlust

Watching Lee Lefever’s ignite presentation from last Feb. Every time I see something that came out of the year that went into The World Is Not Flat, I’m more amazed.

How I learned to stop worrying and love XSLT

With a little help from the folks on the Literature and Latte forums, I have been gently massaging Scrivener into something I might want to write a dissertation in. Or, rather something I can write a dissertation in. A big part of that has been learning XSLT, since Scrivener uses Fletcher Penny’s Multimarkdown for LaTeX export. I am agaog. I am aghast. I am a number of other descriptors that imply the combination of unpleasant surprise and simple stupefication.

Who designed this monstrosity? As a culture, programmers share two main features. We’re lazy, and we’re creatures of habit. Whence, then, XSLT? Just because it transforms XML doesn’t mean it has to look like XML. In what world does this:

            <xsl:with-param name="substring">

               <xsl:text>~</xsl:text>

            </xsl:with-param>

            <xsl:with-param name="replacement">

               <xsl:text>\ensuremath{\sim}</xsl:text>

           </xsl:with-param>

make sense? Most text processing (or, if you prefer, “transforming”) lanuages have an idiom for this, and usually it looks more like s/~/\\ensuremath{\\sim}/ or maybe sub('\ensuremath{\sim}', '~'). Where’s the laziness, XSLT? And why are you reinventing the wheel–and a square wheel at that?