My sweet Jasper Dog died on July 4th. Jasper was an Australian Shepherd/Border Collie mix with the sweetest temperament possible. Jasper had a freckle belly, golden eyes, and a paw shake that could knock me over. Her best (and pretty much only) trick was shutting the back door… a trick we taught her because we got sick of getting up from the TV to close the door after she’d been outside. She knew the words “toy”, “trip”, “dinner”, “get down”, “Jasper”, and “Jolee”. Jasper’s breed are herders, and she could stop just about anything that moved… cows, soccer balls, you name it.

Rob called her “frog” because her perpetual happy pant left her tongue continuously drooping. Jasper was high energy so we got her a companion dog, Jolee. The two of them romped and played whenever they weren’t piled together napping. She would curl up at my feet every night, causing me to sleep in an awkward crouch, and shake her collar a million times in the morning to get me to wake up. After waking me, she’d lay on my lap (not a small dog, mind you) to get some attention and love before being fed.

If it wasn’t for Jasper, we probably would never have thought to move deeper into the country. She helped me break away from suburban life and plant myself firmly in the country. I am sad she will never get to herd the goats we intend to raise after moving.

She knew when I was sad. When I was home, she never left my side. She’d follow me from room to room thinking something exciting was about to happen. Jolee never did that until now…she was always content to stay on the couch or bed watching us. Now she follows me too. I haven’t been able to put her down. I can’t tell who is more clingy…Me or Jolee I had to put her down to go to church yesterday and it just about killed me. It was the first time she’d ever been alone.

I love my Jasper Dog and will miss her every day. We hope to find a new doggie soon. It’s just way too quiet around here.

Jasper was a year and a half old. She and Jolee were out in the Cutler Marsh, romping and playing. She’d just been swimming in the canal and was chasing the truck, one of her favorite things to do when she got caught under the wheel. She died instantly. She was buried under a cottonwood tree in a place where two rivers meet. She will always be the doggie I love the most.

Today mom and I went to the flower market that was just outside our hotel.  I’ve never seen so many lovely blooms in one place.  Did you know there are dark red hydrangeas?  And here, you can get an amazing arrangement of roses, lilies, and astilbe for 12 euro?  In the states, that same arrangement would cost nearly $60.  It was lovely.  We moved from there to the “clothing” market, which was just fabric… lots and lots of lovely lovely lovely fabric.  It was wonderful.  I found the fabric for my new kitchen curtains that my mom will likely have to make.  From there we went to the church where a choir and orchestra was practicing a Bach concert.  I’ve never heard lovlier music.

This morning I met with Paul Kirschner (a.k.a. angel of mercy) who has helped me come out of my dissertation writing funk.  In a true display of cognitive apprenticeship, he intends to help me actually wade through the last bits of my PhD work (or, if you want to look at things differently… through the REAL bits of my PhD work).  For the first time in months, I feel unblocked and free to write away.  I intend to start as soon as I get home.

A new study by MarketingVox found that 1 in every 4 online users are using social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, etc…  About half of those log on every day.  Let me repeat that… every day.  Now that is some “stickiness.”  These folks come back daily to engage with their friends and colleagues, by playing games, joining groups, finding and sharing resources, and build out their online identity and reputation.  If only educational software had such stickiness.  Really, can we please start leveraging these systems to support teaching and learning?  Please?

Let the fear of online predators in MySpace be gone, or at least be managed in a less reactive manner.  I can’t tell you how many teachers and administrators I’ve spoken to who just see these environments as the devil… unable to see their potential for teaching and learning.

I attended several sessions about wikis and gaming in education so far at ICLS.  I’ve noticed a couple of themes… First, I’m finally starting to see researchers using existing tools to support learning (second life, wiki software, etc).  Perhaps the tools are finally in a stable enough state for the kinds of projects researchers are trying to conduct.  Or, perhaps researchers decided to put their resources to better use and instead of building systems from scratch, modifying existing systems to fit their needs.  Several of the wiki projects I’ve heard about did just that… they like the idea of wikis, but needed to modify existing software before it was useful.

Vanessa Peters from the University of Toronto used wikis to facilitate collaborative knowledge building among high school students.  Two things were of most interest to me.

1)Students who participated in the wiki knowledge creation project scored significantly higher on assessments than students who did not - It’s nice to see an actual finding that supports what we’ve all believed since wikis came about.

2)On average there were 50 revisions before students got to the actual content creation on any given page.  Things like changing the title, formatting, etc… before any content was added.  This actually mirrors what it takes to get me working on any piece of formal writing.  I will spend an hour getting the font right, choosing just the right words for the title, setting up my page numbers, etc.  I’ve long since accepted this as an odd quirk I have, but maybe it’s not just me.  Perhaps there is some value in that time spent “setting things up” that I’ve overlooked or taken for granted.  Maybe I’m setting up the second stimulus that Yrjö Engeström talked about on Wednesday.

Really, you can disregard this message. Just testing to see if I’m going to be utterly humiliated or if this will work. 51Weeks was funded by soft money that has gone away. I’m relying on the charity of kind software engineers to see that this works for ICLS. Rock on soft money.

So the party has started. Tomorrow ICLS 2008 starts up, we’re planning on using 51Weeks to aggregate people’s blogs, photos, etc about the conference. This post is really just to test whether or not 51Weeks is aggregating posts. 51Weeks uses services like Technorati and Google Blog search to index the blogs, so popular blogs are indexed more quickly. I’m about to find out if I’m popular or not. If I am, my blog will be indexed quickly and show up on the site shortly. If not, it may be up to a week, I hear. I’m on pins and needles in anticipation.

Well, I’m finally back in Utrecht after a week in the Cinco Terra.  As we left the coast of Italy, I noticed something about how my mom and I are different.  On a slow train from Vernazza to Genova, my mom pointed out all of the ancient castles on the hills.  I was more interested in the bamboo.  I grows wild with the fig and olive trees.  I’m no naturalist, but I’d bet my right pinky finger that bamboo isn’t indigenous to that area.  It must have been brought over from traders to the Orient, perhaps at the time that Columbus was planning his voyage over the sea.  Those plants drew my mind back over the ages in ways that my mom’s castles didn’t.  I wonder why that is?  Maybe I identify more easily with the transient, nomadic plants.

So we arrived in Utrecht yesterday after 4 train rides, 2 metro rides, 3 buses and a plane.  I did my best to enjoy the journey so I wouldn’t be cranky… but really, it was a long way to go to still be in the same time zone.  We traveled 14 hours, and then were finally led to our lovely hotel in Utrecht.

Mom is off saving the world… she fould a tiny LDS branch in a town about 15 miles from here.  She wanted me to get up at 6 so I could go with her on a train, a bus, and then a 2 mile walk over the river and through the woods to try to find the church building.  This being Sunday, a day of rest, I declined, slept in, and read scriptures for an hour or so when I got up.  I’m going to start working on the article I have due at the end of this month and to lay on the beach later.

Tonight mom and I have reservations at this restaurant built into the remains of a castle on a cliff.  That will be a perfect ending to our trip to Vernazza.  We’re back to Holland tomorrow, with a stop in Milan (of course) because Mom wants to see the opera house.  She’s been really good about moving at my pace for the last week, so I figure I can induldge her the run around Milan.  There is a place where you can pay to store bags in the train station there, so it’s not bad at all.

We found the Madonna di Reggio Drignana today. Yesterday I bought an inexpensive necklace made by a local artist with a picture of her on it, and the shop girl said that this particular Madonna is very precious to the people of Vernazza. So, Mom and I set off to find her. Our landlady, Patrizia told us that to find her, we should go to the Pirate bar, then go “up and up and up” so we did. We walked for two hours. Uphill… past the clock tower, past the cemetery, until the road turned into an ancient path made from large cobblestones. Switchbacks led us through olive trees, fig trees, passion fruit, raspberries, and flowers galore. It was beautiful. and steep. and steep. and steep. At every curve of the trail, there was a small shrine with a marble carving of different scenes from the life of Christ. The views were spectacular, of course… the amazing vineyards on the sides of the mountains that ran to the sheer cliffs into the ocean. Specatular views and sweat dripping down my back. I could even feel sweat on the backs of my knees. Remind me to start taking long walks before I take another one of these trips with my mom.

And then… we turned the corner and ta da… the large shrine. A smallish building about 15 x 15 ft with plaster peeling from the walls. On the alter was a statue of some religious guy. He looked like a pope that had been sainted or some other important person… but no Madonna. And then I looked more closely… there was a picture above him. The picture was a drawing of the tiny room, complete with the guy. In that picture, above the saintly man was a teeny tiny picture of Mary holding a little baby Jesus (to quote Ricky Bobby). It was probably 3 inches square. The gate into the shrine was locked, so we had a hard time seeing her, but there she was. Little teeny tiny Mary and baby. A bit of a let down at first, to be honest. But then Mom and I just laughed and laughed. Will post pics when I get home.

So if you ever want to walk straight uphill for hours to see a teeny tiny Mary, let me know. I’ll point the way. Probably won’t go with you… but I can tell you how to get there.

After that, we spent the afternoon by the beach, then hopped on a train to Monterosso where they have a black and white striped church, and an Oratorio of the Dead… In the Oratorio, there are choir seats with skeletons in shrouds carved on them. It’s a bit creepy, but cool. I was going to buy a pretty tablecloth at a shop nearby, but a German lady busted in in front of me and grabbed it before I could. I have got to learn to be more aggressive shopping around here

Today Mom and I took the boat three towns down and then hiked along the coast on the cliff. It was very cool… well, hot. And I don’t think I’ve ever climbed so many stairs in one day. These little towns are all built in ravines with no streets, just alleyways that all go up up up. One thing that surprised me is how BIG the fruit and flowers are here. There are lemon trees with lemons bigger than most grapefruit in the US. And the hydrangeas are bigger than my mom’s head. It’s been nice. Mom has been awesome. She even agreed to just hang out at the beach tomorrow… until the afternoon when we’ll go visit another little town.

Today I found a little shop with art from a local Vernazzan artist. I bought a necklace with charms that had scenes from Vernazza… which is very cool. One of the charms has the Madonna and Child on it. The girl at the shop told me that this was “their” Madonna. She’s apparently at the sanctuary which is about a kilomoter away. Mom and I are going to try to find it tomorrow. The shop girl said that they are “very devoted” to their Madonna, so I’m excited to go meet her myself.

It’s about 8:00 pm and I’m planning on going back to the room and just read until I fall asleep. I found a somewhat lame detective novel in our room, and I’m enjoying the lack of brains it’s taking to read it.

I miss my husband and our puppies. There are a lot of people with dogs here. The dogs don’t speak English, though, so the don’t come when I call them. I need to learn to say “come” in Italian so the dogs will be my friends.

As always, if you want to read the real story about what actually happened today, visit my mom’s blog at http://redumbrellatours.blogspot.com

Oh, and no pics right now… too much trouble at the Internet Cafe. When I get back I’ll put a bunch up on flickr and link to them.