I hate August

August in Brisbane is perhaps the most annoying time of the year.  It is dry, cold and I tend to get lots of static.  Everytime I touch things, I get a shock.  I’ve even managed to short out the touch pad on my laptop which isn’t as bad as it sounds, it just means I have to restart.

So, today, in the middle of a lecture, it was quite disconcerting to find the touchpad not working.  Luckily, I have a back up plan.  Actually I had two.  The first trick was to move to the Lecture room computer, then have a quick break, during which, I remembered that I had Salling Clicker installed on both my phone and my laptop.  Salling clicker allowed me to keep going even without the touchpad or a replacement mouse (which I how I generally deal with the weirding out of the touchpad).  It felt a bit funny using the phone to control the mac and I think I need much more practice, but it certainly was a bit different not having to run to the laptop just to click a link.

I’m starting to really enjoy this course.  I think the term ‘generative’ is apt for what occurs here.  Generativity is one of the concepts that Jonathan Zittrain discusses in The Future of the Internet.  I really have to finish reading that book.  I have a feeling it will be very important for the development of this course.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 6:31 pm and is filed under innovation, teaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.