Y’all know how patient I am. Sorry, gone a bit Southern there, I will start again. One of the things that is guaranteed to drive me crazy is when you are talking to academic staff about, say Blackboard or PebblePad or whatever, and they tell you that they’ve heard it is crap/ that such and such is better/ that another institution has stopped using it/ or that it must be good as the University of Blah Blah has adopted it and it is turning out to be fantastic. Sometimes these other people are fellow academics, sometimes just other people, sometimes the children of academics, sometimes brothers in law or whatever. Whoever they are, they drive me mad.
Some of you know I have a friend who teaches at a Certain Well Known University (CWKU) in the US…
So, the second person I talk to at the conference is Mary S. That’s all I can see of her badge and she is eyeing me curiously. Ever the gent, I introduce myself. “Uh huh” she says “I am Mary S****** from the e-learning team at CWKU.” Rather a heavy emphasis on the last few words. I get as far as saying “Oh I know CWKU quite well, as my friend…” She interjects – “Are you the famous Paul that Dr ex Scouser is constantly telling us about?” I own up. She says “I get to meet Blackboard Paul finally…”
CWKU has recently dropped Blackboard and gone to Sakai. So my mate goes from Bb to the joys of open source lash ups. I swear I have had two brief conversations with my chum about his e-learning ventures – he just asked me what I thought of Sakai - but clearly I have, as Jade Goody said, turned into the kind of person I don’t like.
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I had to change this post - to anonymise it - when Andrew informed me that this isnt a closed blog - I had been writing stuff that I thought only LTI people could see. Another lesson learned. I asked him why we didnt get comments from external readers and he said "they're too polite" - I will think about this, as if someone had a go about me in something like this, I would probably respond.
Where are you guys? Waiting for updates from the Tuesday morning sessions - having to rely on emails from Bryan to tell me what you are up to :-)
I don't know what was harder - attending the conference or trying to create a virtual reality for Louise...
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