Susan Sharpless Smith

Announcing our Session Immediately upon finishing up at the Harvard Leadership Institute, I hopped on a plane and headed to Minneapolis to attend the Merlot International Conference. Lauren Pressley, Kevin Gilbertson and I were accepted to present on our library’s campus-wide blog and wiki services that we implemented in the last academic year. It was [...]

I just finished the first round of morning sessions and will be leaving shortly for the airport where I expect to find a bit of hassle before it’s all done. Watching all the news this morning about the “alleged” terrorist plot in England has been a bit like watching “The Perfect Storm” just prior to [...]

Today, conference sessions were sandwiched in between an early morning training run for the November OBX marathon and a late afternoon visit to the National Gallery of Canada. To make sure I didn’t miss any important conference happenings this morning, I was out on the Rideau Canal trail at 6 am this morning. To stay [...]

Tonight I took in the Light and Sound Show at Parliament Hill. This show, called Canada: The Spirit of a Country, is comprised of a combination of huge images projected on the entire front of the Parliament building, accompanied by colors, music and bilingual narration about the history of Canada (in 5 acts!). It was [...]

This morning the conference “proper” started with the obligatory general session speech. Today’s speaker was Dian Laurillard, Chair of Learning with Digital Technologies, London Knowledge Lab. Her presentation focused on JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) Design for Learning Programmes, a project designed to reduce barriers to innovation through development of a ‘pedagogy planner’. This planner [...]

After returning from the preconference yesterday, the afternoon was still too beautiful to head indoors. So I spent the rest of the day exploring the ByWard Market, one of Canada’s oldest and largest public markets. It was designed in 1826 by the builder of Rideau Canal, Lt-Col. John By. It’s more than an open air [...]

Today was devoted to preconference programs and I opted to attend “Using Games and Simulations in Higher Education.” We are using gaming as a way to attract new students into our library, but there is a whole world of education that is turning to gaming and simulations to enhance student learning in a variety of [...]

Since my preconference workshop didn’t start until afternoon, I took advantage of my free morning to explore parts of Ottawa, via exercise, of course! I started the day off with an 11K run along the Rideau Canal. It is directly across the street from the hotel. It was proposed following the War of 1812 to [...]

I arrived this evening after a mostly uneventful flight that had a layover at Dulles Airport. While there, a huge thunderstorm came through; unfortunately, right when we had to board the (small) plane by walking across the tarmac. Then the flight was delayed because the union rules force the baggage loaders off the tarmac during [...]

Had a nice easy trip to PTI and I am sitting at Gate 48 enjoying the PTI WiFi via the preset profile in our Access Connections. My luggage was only 45.2 lbs. (max 50) which leaves just a few lbs. for souvenirs… I thought I’d fill my wait time by giving a brief overview of [...]