Cutest Hotel Bathroom

I'm in glorious Montreal for a conference. What a beautiful city. After a cab ride that almost led to my demise (thank goodness for seatbelts and travel fatigue), we arrived at a boutique hotel called the Place D'Armes in old Montreal. The hotel was booked for me by someone else so imagine my suprise when I opened the door to the room and...gasp...it was beautiful. Certainly one of the nicest hotels that I've stayed in while on a conference.

Even the bathroom is cool.

That's all.


Photos by: rocketlass

Pen Envy

Ah, the art of writing. I've never been very good communicating on paper. I know, you're reading my writing at this very moment and I'm telling you it's crap. I am that bad.

My high school and university English courses were the lowest points of my education. By age 20, I had developed a firm dislike of all things grammar and style. For the next 5 years, I lived a blissful existence where no one noticed (or cared enough to notice) my dangling participles or my misplaced modifiers.

Then I started researching.

When my career shifted, writing became my full time job. Now I have pen envy. Specifically, I envy those that love writing and understand enough to do it well. In my envy, I'm scrambling to learn the art. However, I'm not without hope.

Courtesy of my research awards (bless you CIHR & MSFHR), I have a little cash to build my writing library. Combined with the advice of a couple of great writers, I'm getting on the right track. For starters, I now know about the UBC Writing Centre. I've also discovered Strunk & White's Elements of Style (a style guide) and The Canadian Writer's Handbook. To round things out, I've invested my hard earned $14 in a copy of William Zinsser's On Writing Well to learn that 'numerous' is an academic way of saying 'many'. Who knew?

Now, if I can find the time to read my style guide and use my handbook to write well, this research stuff will be a breeze. However, no one said reading the books was going to be the hardest part.

Photo by Gonzalo Barrientos

Is curiosity killing the classroom?

I'm curious. I'm curious about a lot of things but lately, I'm really curious about technology and the role it should play in my work and in my teaching.

There are so many 'things' to get caught up in right now. Facebook is old news but it helps me keep up with friends' expanding families and professional lives. I just got an iPhone and am rapidly losing any memory of life pre-phone. I set up my iGoogle page and have had an RSS reader for years. I started this blog to give me a creative outlet and to reflect on the intersection of my many lives (pharmacist, researcher, teacher, student). But where do I stop?

What about Twitter? Is there a role for Jaiku? Have you heard of Plaxo or Kyte? It seems as though I'm halfway down a slippery slope and wearing nothing but Teflon. Today, I attended a Teaching and Learning with Technology series seminar by at UBC's Teaching and Growth Centre. Titled "Both Sides Now: In Person and on the Web Slow Learning Communities for Fast Times", the session was presented by Barbara Ganley, an American professor who's used blogs in her classes since the early 2000's. During the session, she advocated for using some of these applications for both personal reflection and to engage students (the course content is available online).

In large part, I agree with the position that we need to introduce more technology and social networking apps into our classes. As the cusp of generation (what about) ME, I understand the frustration that students feel in today's universities. It's boring. It's hard. It's fast-paced. It's often unfair. Oh yeah, and teachers don't get it. But what do you do when you're the teacher and for you it's boring, hard, fast-paced, unfair and you feel like you don't get it (kids these days!)? Can technology address some of these issues and bring fun into the classroom? Certainly it's one way to engage both students and yourself.

With those questions and considerations - and at the risk of lost productivity - I'm going to dive head first into emerging social networking apps and explore their role in my own teaching. Wish me luck - and if you're on twitter - look me up - I don't have any friends to tweet to yet!

Photo by: bitzcelt