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oct 30, 2000 CIT, Canberra, and sights seen ... (more)

oct 26, 2000 Landing in Oz, drive to Canberra, and a Kangaroo welcome ... (more)

oct 24, 2000 Train to Auckland- Parnell sites and Waiheke Island ... (more)

oct 21, 2000 City scenes and a run for rings in Wellington ... (more)

oct 19, 2000 Sunny in Abel Tasman and fine wine in Nelson ... (more)

oct 17, 2000 Hokitika, Punakaiti, beaches, pancakes, horses, and caves ... (more)

oct 15, 2000 Wanaka and rainy days at Franz Josef Glacier... (more)

november 02, 2000
Tuesday morning brought a threat of rain to Canberra. Today was an open slate on my schedule, meaning I had time to read and write email check out web sites, and work on some of my presentations for upcoming events on this trip.

After work, my host Allan had a class to teach, so his wife and daughter took me to one of their places for practicing a favorite hobby target shooting. This shooting range was a place for people to practice their shooting aim with air pistols. The range filled up quickly to 3/4 full, and was equally split between male and female shooters.

On my third round I had a very successful shoot, with all but one landing in the "money" area. If you look at the photo, you will notice that the hole in the top was deliberate on my part, so there would be place at the top to hang this trophy on a nail.

today's photos

- all photos   o o o o

o o Canberra starting after #38 o o CIT starting after #6

Wednesday was the start of the NET*Working 2000, a fully online educator's conference scheduled for November 1 to 14. The planners had forecast about 400 people participating, but the registration had rocketed to more than 1700, from all across Australia. Unfortunately on this first day the demand seemed to have exceeded the technology capacity and most of the conference web site was difficult or impossible to get into.

Certainly the social experience of a physical conference meeting is far different when the meeting place is online. On the other hand, the online conference provides the opportunity to pick and choose how much participation was reasonable. And it makes a ton of sense for a conference topic of online learning to meet... online!

I also met with lunch a group of faculty and staff in the CIT Community Development programs who have been working hard in integrating electronic resources for both teachers and learners in what are unique courses. They had an interest in some sort of collaboration with classes in our system that taught Drug and Alcohol content, as it could help their students understand the different social views and regulations in these areas.

On Thursday morning (that was today!) I was invited to a breakfast meeting of the CIT senior managers, an opportunity for them to plan and discuss institutional issues. They seemed eager to hear about the Maricopa system, online learning there, and the roles that our managers played in all of that. I let them know how important the Deans are in the work we do at MCLI. I hopefully gave them what they asked for via my ".az to .au" presentation. They were enthusiastic and asked a pile of questions.

For Friday, I had lined up a day off to visit the galleries and museums in downtown Canberra...