I'M BACK....

...from my circumstance-induced Internet moratorium. The withdrawals were too much to bear!

SLanguages 2009 Information & Call for Papers is out!

Following on from last year's second (and again astounding) SLanguages conference, @dudeneyge and his group have announced a call for papers for this year's "bigger and better" event, to be held 8th May SL11:00 to 9th May SL11:00 on EduNation II and EduNation III. 

Submission deadline? April 10. (Phew!)

The Five Stages of Twitter Acceptance — @rohitbhargava

Twitterin' my Way to Heaven — @clifmims

I can think of a few professors who would LOVE to get this for the holidays!

LOL Exam Blunders

This was a welcome respite from the tech woes du jour. My favorites:


1) Classical Studies
Question: Name one of the early Romans' greatest achievements.
Answer: Learning to speak Latin

2) Biology
Question: What is a fibula?
Answer: A little lie

Question: What is a plasmid?
Answer: A high definition television

Question: In the Hawaiian Islands, there are around 500 different species of fruit fly. Give a reason for this
Answer: There are approximately 500 varieties of fruit

3) Math
Question: Change 7/8 to a decimal
Answer: 7.8

Question: Expand 2 (x + y)
Answer: 2 ( x + y )
2 ( x + y )
2 ( x + y )

4) Geography
Question: What does the term "lava" mean?
Answer: A pre-pubescent caterpillar

Question: The race of people known as Malays come from which country?
Answer: Malaria

Question: Where was the American Declaration of Independence signed?
Answer: At the bottom.


5) Business Studies
Question: Explain the word "wholesaler".
Answer: Someone who sells you whole items - eg, a whole cake

That's life today...

Well this day just got off to a LOVELY start!

All I had to go was go to a Wimba Classroom meeting with some folks to discuss metadata for an organization I'm in. Straightforward, right? Well, when we arrived, the room was still being prepared for us, so we were hanging out in the Lobby, the room is created, and everyone piles into it...except...the room does not appear in my list! Restarted everything, switched computers several times while I'm missing out on what I'm sure was a great discussion. I'm either cursed or obtuse this morning, and I'm not sure I like the implications of either!

Australian couple served with legal documents via Facebook

An Australian couple who defaulted on their mortgage have been served legally binding court documents via Facebook. Would that ever fly here?

Rockytop is calling...Blip.fm

SL Presentation

Here's footage of the presentation Dolly Young and I did on the SL project in her Spanish 111/112 courses. I might actually watch it in a few months myself.....

ROI says put it here...

I had this blog running via an instance of Wordpress on a now-defunct server. While that is less of a hassle for, say, classes once they are over, it's a pain for a blog with more longitudinal aspirations, so RTBS is officially moving to Blogger. Now to get it enmeshed with all of my other tools....

Wheat Community African Burial Ground

During Fall Break, got to take the kids to a slave cemetery not far from K-town.

Avoiding the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Using Blogs with Students

Interesting article in Campus Technology:

Avoiding the 5 Most Common Mistakes in Using Blogs with Students