Week 9 in review and a bit of nostalgia

Innovation Classroom:  We decided we had a bit more room in our budget to set up  two more classrooms with the WePresent and will try out a room configuration with two monitors on perpendicular walls, perhaps with one on a flexible arm. Our instructors are often moving the furniture around and using the rooms in different ways, so we think that giving more flexibility to the placement of the monitors will better reflect that and get away from a bowling alley set up.

SSHRC:  We submitted a SSHRC proposal and in true JIBC style it was pulled off in less than 2 weeks. Sincere kudos to my Dean for even attempting the impossible.

Praxis:  Since the Western Diversification funding announcement,we’ve been getting a lot of interest in our Praxis sim software.  Enbridge wrote a piece about it this week over here.

I had a short working week, having spent most of it at a hospice where my mom was battling lung cancer.  She left the world peacefully and quietly this week, which  is really all you can hope for with lung cancer.  My mom wasn’t a smoker–her cancer was second-hand smoke related–which is unfortunately not uncommon in women. Incidently, my mom is the third person we knew who died of lung cancer without ever being a smoker.

The hospice was located a short distance away from where I spent the first 7 years of my life, so I had the chance to walk around and snap some photos.  I’m kind of fascinated by how neighbourhoods change and evolve, and I was equally surprised at how good and how bad some parts of my old neighbourhood was.  My memories of it were of sunshine, and neighbourhood kids, and joy.

This was the house I lived in. It was a mid century trac house, and my parents went a bit crazy on the Danish teak furniture so basically it would be a East Van dream house.

This was Barry’s house. He was a friend of my brother’s and an only child. I remember that we loved playing over there because he was a bit spoiled and had a ton of toys. His mom was a super nice lady and used to pack us up in her camper and take us to Harrison Hot springs every year.  In true 70s style, she’d let us run around Harrison without a whole lot of supervision, and feed us peanut butter sandwiches on Wonder White, which I loved.

This was the Hippy House.  It looked a lot different so I had a hard time locating it.  I played with a girl at this house and I loved it because there were always tons of people at her house (I’m pretty sure there was a carport at the side where they’d all sit and hang out).  My dad wasn’t thrilled with me playing with the hippies – the town was pretty conservative and having a house of hippies was a  bit unusual. They didn’t stay for very long.

This was the corner store where we’d buy our candy. There was a shortcut through somebody’s yard to get there, and we would go there and buy chips and Popeye cigarette candies.

This was my school. I noticed it’s called a Traditional School now, but  I don’t remember it that way at all. In fact, my favourite teacher of all time (Grade 2) loved art and would periodically put aside all school work and have Art Weeks, where all we would do all day for an entire week is make art.  That is my best K-12 school memory, which is a bit sad and special at the same time.