Opening new doors ...

On August 1, I walk through a new door.   

In fact, it is a familiar portal, for I have been here before, yet at the same time I do not quite know where it leads this time.

I have accepted the position of Director of the Brock University Centre for Teaching, Learning and Educational Technologies.  This was the post that I held once before, from 1998-2003.  

Embracing the new means surrendering something of the old, closing one door to open another.

It is therefore with great regret that I must give up my full-time teaching appointment in Interactive Arts and Science, effective August 1, 2010 in order to discharge my responsibilities in teaching and learning on a full-time basis to the broader university community.

I am champing at the bit to engage the challenges of my new responsibilities, particularly in helping structure an institutional e-learning plan with a focus on pedagogical innovation.

At the same time, I leave the IASC classroom with great reluctance, but with wonderfully fond memories of my students and our invigorating, robust conversations about interactive digital media and life inside the digital bubble.

Small pleasures

Small pleasures add welcome piquancy to my routine, the way a tray of aromatic chutneys and hot lime pickle kicks up the flavours of a well-prepared bhoona beef, as a perfect background complement.

My latest little discovery has been at Lee Valley, a gardener's paradise. In their catalogue, I stumbled by wonderful accident upon an artful little tin of bronze book darts that point with understated dignity to the line one wishes to distinguish on any book page.

The tin is lined with a royal blue plush cushion and contains 50 bronze darts, each wafer thin, anxiously awaiting deployment for my referential pleasure.

What a delightful find!

Some will read this and scoff, "Get a life!"  Yet others, I would hope, will read this and murmur, "What a life!" 

Small pleasures, to be sure.