Something you will never see in Houston

Sitting in my office eating my lunch, I had this alert pop up in my email.  Seeing as it was an after the fact kind of thing, I am not sure what its function is.  I guess it is advising us that the moose didn’t in fact get shot as did another moose who wandered onto Calgary’s version of an Interstate earlier this week.  It took a police sniper to take down that moose.  My question, where the hell are these moose coming from?  I don’t remember ever seeing a moose in Calgary, elk occasionally, deer certainly, but multiple moose sightings?

Campus Community Advisory

Moose tranquilized and safely removed from campus

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Alberta Fish and Wildlife Officers successfully tranquilized and removed
a young moose from campus this morning.

The moose wandered onto campus at about 8:20 a.m. and broke through a window
in the link between Reeve Theatre and Craigie Hall. Fish and Wildlife Officers
had been in the area and were able to tranquilize the moose shortly after
8:30 a.m. 

Alberta Fish and Wildlife Officers were to monitor and then release the
moose.

Creative Commons crankiness

I was contacted on Flickr by someone developing a travel guide on Hawaii who wanted to make use of my picture. This picture is online with the assumption that if anyone likes it enough they can take it and use it themselves. However, I guess I would not have thought that anyone would want to use my pictures commercially. I realize that is does happen as in a well publicized case involving Virgin Mobile, that resulted in a lawsuit. Now, this group did contact me and did ask for permission so I suppose that they actually went above and beyond what they had to. I agreed that if they wanted to use it, they could with proper attribution of course. As a teacher and librarian if I use an image i try to always give credit to the creator, although on today’s internet it is sometimes hard to determine who precisely created the work. I appreciate that others will do the same.

Fairmont Orchid

Clickers and learning

As an instructor and professor I don’t believe in using technology in the classroom unless it serves a pedagogical purpose. Clickers when they were first introduced seemed to be a tool with limited functionality. Furthermore as at my previous institution, charging students a deposit for their required clickers seemed punitive.  I now have to determine for myself their usefulness in teaching as my new library has two sets.

In library instruction we always talk about assessment and how we can determine if students are learning what we think that they are learning.  I suppose clickers might provide a mode of doing this but I would want to try using it over a series of classes.  Knowing that my student base might skew a little older and that technology can possibly intimidate I might also want to try to provide other assessment criteria.  This might actually involve communicating with faculty about their goals for the instruction session.  I remain a skeptic but one who is willing to experiment.

Clickers in a classroom

Image Source:www.citl.ohiou.edu

Canada humour

Canada rocks!

Oh, how I have missed you extraneous letter u in random words.  I realized that I may not have sounded suitably appreciative about my return to Canada.  In one comic strip Diesel Sweeties managed to encapsulate my complex feelings about Calgary and Canada.

Re-acculturation

It might seem strange to some that I might have to be working at the process of making friends with my hometown again.  Like most relationships both parties have changed over the almost eight years since I lived here.  Calgary is booming, building cranes everywhere and traffic while not to Houston levels, is certainly  more congested.  People also seem to feel more cramped,  defending both their private and public spaces with an intensity I had not expected.  This seems to have led to a very small view of the world, their family, their jobs, and their immediate circle of friends.  I have heard statements from Calgarians on the news and in the newspaper that would not have seemed out of place in Texas.  There also seems to be a greater sense of materialism which is understandable considering the amount of money flowing through Calgary right now.

Perhaps it takes leaving your hometown to see it with clear eyes or perhaps I had always had an idealized perception of Calgary.  The Calgary that I remember had people who honestly cared about their neighbours and their city.  That Calgary, while more capitalistic than many other places, balanced it with a compassion and concern for all its citizens not just the ones with expense accounts and corner offices.

Home sweet home

Well I have been back in Calgary for just over a week now and I am stunned/shocked by the tremendous change that has occurred in my hometown. I am very glad that I didn’t move back in the winter as I am finding the temperatures here a tad bit chilly at 13 degrees celsius (55 degrees for my american friends). I am NOT missing Houston’s sticky climate so I will keep my complaining to this post. To be continued in the winter no doubt.

I have a window which looks out into the pit of the new Taylor Family Digital Library which is broadly advertised on campus. It also looks out to the Kinesiology building where I plan on spending a goodly amount of time. In time this view will probably disappear so I will try to capture it at various points. Did I mention I actually have natural light in my office? And not one but two windows? Having lived through a previous construction project I am somewhat amused by the concern about how disruptive it will be. It will be disruptive, noisy and dirty. However, the end product is worth it, I promise.

On a plus side, this library puts its money where its mouth is. The Library and Cultural Resources group is committed to Open Access and is offering faculty and graduate students a $100 000 Open Access Author Fund to pay for any author costs required for publishing in Open Access journals. This is even more significant as that represents a good chunk of change that would be welcome in other areas of the library. Off to a good start!