VIRGINIA BEACH: Left angry Wilma behind to enjoy the Baker family and Regent University

On Friday Oct 21, the last day of the Educause conference, one of the most popular gathering places in the lobby of the conference centre was the computers attached to a printer. People everywhere were changing their flights out of Orlando ... Wilma was coming! At the time we were not sure exactly when this Hurricane was going to hit Orlando and most people had decided to leave Florida as soon as possible. They were printing out their boarding passes. My flight was at the end of Friday and my next stopover was Virginia Beach via Charlotte NC. My host Jason Baker another online colleague and friend whom I hadn't met face to face until now, met me at the airport. Thus began four great days with the Bakers and visits to Regent University, where Jason is an Associate Professor. In the attached podcast Jason tells us about Regent University and an excting new concept in Learning Management Systems.

Before visting Regent University we had a weekend and at the end of week two I was beginning to miss my family so the time with the Baker family was just what I needed. Saturday turned into a totally different fun day. It was a photographers dream. We went to a Cub Scout Derby. When I was told of the rules I realised that being part of this was a must. The children have to wear the cardboard cut out cars their families had made for them and run around the prescribed track. That was straight forward enough but the real fun started when they were directed to the pits. It was a hoot. In car racing terms they had to change tires, clean the windscreen and refuel - in reality the pit crew (the parents) had to take off and replace the drivers shoes, squirt whipped cream on the drivers goggles and wash it off again and finally the driver had to drink through a straw an amount of liquid. What was it like? ... well to be honest most of the parents would never get a job in the pit area of the Indianopolis 500 ... . All families had a great time, the kids went home tired but excited and it definitely was a creative community building game.

On Sunday we visited Virginia Beach itself and I was surprised how far the actual beach went from end to end ... it was miles and miles. It was very much like Australian beaches except the sand was much darker and for the first time I saw the Atlantic ocean up close and personal. This playing on the beach with the kids was followed by a great meal of seafood at a restaurent close by - it felt like home. A wonderful end to a perfect weekend.

Monday morning and as we set off for Regent it began to rain. But it did not detract, in any way, from the impact and beauty of the campus buildings and grounds - more than 700 acres, nestled 15 miles from the Atlantic Oceanfront, with Georgian-style buildings reminiscent of a campus centuries-old. I will show you a photo of this young but elegant institution in the next blog entry. At the end of Monday Jason and I discussed the day and created the attached podcast.

Please listen to this podcast. Jason begins by talking about Regent Univeristy which is an interesting place with a great future. Regent University is just over 27 years old. It started with post graduate courses and only in the last 2 years have they commenced under graduate programs. All courses have professional orientation with no gap between what students learn at university and what they can use in the markletplace.

After talking about Regent, Jason describes an exciting new program a fellow colleague has ben developing. It is an extension of the concept of Social Networking - a student centric learning management system. A LMS that puts the student first? Now that I have your attention, please listen, enjoy and share any ideas it prompts. My ideas about LMS's have definitely changed.

Regards
Allan