We have an opening at the Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center at NIU for an Instructional Technology Coordinator. Below I’ve included the ad and link to download the complete position description. Come join our team or spread the word to others who might be qualified and interested!
I spent June 13-20th with my brother-in-law Justin and father-in-law Terry riding across Colorado on our motorcycles. We loaded the motorcycles on my trailer and left Friday evening, June 13th after work and towed them 18 hours to Colorado Springs where we spent the night at Justin’s cousin, Travis & Britta’s house. From there, we drove on the bikes to Pagosa Springs to spend a couple of days with Justin’s family and in-laws before hitting the road and spending 3 more days on the road en route back to Colorado Springs and then finally home. In total, we put on 1,027 miles on the motorcycles and another nearly 2,000 miles in the Explorer towing the motorcycles to Colorado and back. All in all, we had a great trip and many fond memories that will no double be talking about for years to come.
All the photos from our trip are available here. For the slideshow, click here.
Anyone interested in the route we took, here are the maps for our routes that Justin planned out using Google Maps:
I’ve put together a new, non-institutionally branded professional site using the free Google Pages tool at drjasonrhode.googlepages.com. I’m planning to maintain this new site along with my personal NIU site with my professional endeavors while keeping jasonrhode.com more personal.
Stop by and say hello!
I’m at Faculty Summer Institute at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign preparing for several sessions I will be leading over the next few days. I’m going to attempt to stream 4 sessions I’m leading live online via Ustream as well as record the audio to post to my podcast. This will be an interesting experiment and I look forward to seeing how the quality of the live streams and recordings turn out.
Here are the days/times for these upcoming sessions for anyone who might be interested in taking a peek at any of the sessions online:
No guarantees, but if all goes well, I’ll be streaming these sessions at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/fsi08
I’m experimenting with quite a few new social networking technologies during this week at FSI but will refrain from posting much more about them here. If interested in keeping posted on these adventures, you can follow me on Twitter.
One final reminder…you can join Dick Gruber and me for this first-of-its-kind 3 hour interactive online workshop where you’ll discover the practical steps to Cultivating a Cutting-Edge Children’s Church.
Despite the fact that my flight to Little Rock out of O’Hare today was canceled, we’ll still be offering a free webcast of the pre-conference session that is being offered conjunction with the National Children’s Ministries Leadership Conference, this pre-conference workshop offered face-to-face at the conference will be webcast live online on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 from 9:00am-12:00pm (CDT) and then repeated later that day from 1:00pm-4:00pm. View the FREE session online and interact with the presenters and other participants live online during the session!
Two identical sessions will be offered:
Both sessions will be webcast live online using Ustream. You can click here to register for a free Ustream account. Then, 10-15 minutes before the session begins, click here to login to participate live online!
For those unable to participate live, the sessions will be recorded and archives made available afterwards at www.cmuo.com/workshops/kidschurch. Links to additional resource materials and the slides referenced during the sessions will also be posted.
Join Dick Gruber and me for this first-of-its-kind 3 hour interactive online workshop where you’ll discover the practical steps to Cultivating a Cutting-Edge Children’s Church.
In conjunction with the National Children’s Ministries Leadership Conference, this pre-conference workshop offered face-to-face at the conference will be webcast live online on Tuesday, April 1, 2008 from 9:00am-12:00pm (CDT) and then repeated later that day from 1:00pm-4:00pm. View the FREE session online and interact with the presenters and other participants live online during the session!
Two identical sessions will be offered:
Both sessions will be webcast live online using Ustream. To participate in the chat room to ask questions and post comments during the workshop, you need to login to Ustream. If you do not have a Ustream account yet, click here to register for free. Then, 10-15 mins before the session begins, click here to login to participate live online!
For those unable to participate live, the sessions will be recorded and archives made available afterwards at www.cmuo.com/workshops/kidschurch. Links to additional resource materials and the slides referenced during the sessions will also be posted.
My wife and I are forward to heading to Atlanta this next week for my commencement ceremony on March 1st. We’ll be flying into Altanta Thu. afternoon, 2/28, with my in-laws and my dad. My brother who is currently stationed at Barksdale AFB in Shrevoport, LA is going to try to make it over as well if his schedule permits.
We’re going to try and get a bunch of sight-seeing in before the ceremony on Saturday afternoon. It should be a lot of fun! For those who are interested and want to try and sneek a peek at the commencement ceremony, it will be webcast live on Saturday, 3/1 at 2PM CDT. More details are at http://www.capella.edu/commencement
Biographies of the 5 fallen NIU students are now available on the NIU memorial site at http://www.niu.edu/tragedy/memorial/biographies.html
Apparently, the young man who died, Daniel Parmenter, was actually shielding his girlfriend from the attack. Click here to read the complete story.
As I posted earlier, the NIU campus is reeling from the recent shooting on campus. For those who are interested and weren’t able to watch it live, here’s a video of the press conference featuring comments from NIU President John Peters and NIU Police Chief Donald Grady responding to the tragic events.
In the press conference, Chief Grady discussed the rapid response of the NIU campus police force in response to first reports of the shooting. I can attest personally to the responsiveness of NIU police…they certainly are a highly trained and VERY responsive unit. There’s no doubt that police were on the scene within 29 seconds as Chief Grady noted.
Please continuing praying for the entire NIU community.
As you most likely have heard by now, yesterday afternoon (2/14) there was a tragic shooting at NIU where I work. If you’ve been watching the news, you likely know as many details at this point as I do. At the time of the shooting, I was in my office which was about 2 blocks away from Cole Hall, the building where the shooting took place.
Thanks to everyone who has called or emailed to check and make sure that I was ok. It was a chaotic scene on campus yesterday with media and emergency personnel flooding the scene. The news of what was happening on campus initially spread faster by word of mouth and cell phone text messages than any other means. It was a surreal experience to be watching events happening live on CNN while also watching it happen through an office window. Waking up the day after, it still is hard to believe that such a horrendous event could take place in DeKalb.
Here’s a video with a few photos from the past day at NIU:
For more details on the healing process on campus in the days ahead as well as any further news, you can check the NIU website at www.niu.edu. Please keep the campus administration, faculty, students, and most importantly the students and families of those directly affected by the shooting in your thoughts and prayers. The university community has a long road of healing ahead…
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