An internal conference today for the heads of departments and course leaders (plus others). (I'm most certainly an 'other').

Usual curious mix of things. One excellent presentation from someone with college and school experience explaining why students are so ill equipped for university. (Which then had a curious echo from someone presenting on very similar lines in the afternoon - but much more tediously. Which was a shame given she represented the government deparment involved!)

Highlight of the day though was sitting next to an academic who was taking notes in a notebook which appeared to have a big 'clip' at the top. Turns out he's using a special pen that interfaces with the 'clip' (ultrasound he said) and the two in tandem record all his writing and sketches or whatever. The clip then plugs into the USB port of a laptop (in his case the very natty and tiny Asus) and uploads his notes for storage or converting via OCR.

I had a go at the latter thinking - particularly with my handwriting - it would be poor. In fact it wasn't - and I wasn't even making an effort to write neatly and hadn't trained the system.

I was most impressed. A Zpen from DaneTech if you want one. Amazon had a pretty good price of just $120 which is ..... ALMOST ... tempting. If only I could convince myself it wasn't a toy!