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Blogs Quiet on the Western Front

The cogdog has been busy, and hopes to be back barking soon. As a reprieve of insane early heat and sun in Phoenix (97 in late March is a bit much, and early), we have enjoyed a rare outbreak of weather with a few days of major, very much needed rain. Up here in my mountain escape, we got more than 2 inches in 3 days, almost more than we have received since January 2004.

But enough weather blab. I am in a bind getting three presentations lined up for the April 20-22 Teaching in the Community Colleges 2004 Online Conference.

One is on using our simple web slide show template, the jClicker, for student art presentations, another on "photoblogging" (so in learning more I am having to bum colleague's mobile phones that have picture taking capability), and a roundup of some Maricopa faculty to "share stories around the digital campfire". More links coming soon (once I actually create the online presentations next week). Biff Cantrell might sneak back in somewhere too for a guest appearance.

Our office has sponsored institutional registration, so that any faculty, staff, or student in our system can register for free to attend the conference. Last year, we sent more than 100 people, so the fur was raised on my back when I got word that only 31 had signed up (and 1/3 were those in my online class where it was required). So I added a new tool to my repertoire of getting people to participate in our activities- "shaming by email". It actually worked.

The MLX Great Package Race ended with a flurry, with about 100 new packages flooding in the last 36 hours. On one hand this is good as we now have more than 900 items inside the warehouse, but I am hoping to get out of the incentive program as it really should not be necessary. Fortunately, some of my late, just before midnight posters were watching the scoreboard, as Lori and Laura both pointed to some problems in my database query logic (the perils of date/time comparisons).