Beyond Samarkand

My portfolio was approved, so that's one thing out of the way. I have submitted the last major project for my "creative designs" course. That is the "This is Islam" video drafted before. The final version is this: Chotu is now scheduled to fly out on the 2nd of May. Insh'Allah there will be no incident. I'll keep Shisha here in Saudi until I have a final date for leaving. Hopefully final word on that soon. I have a draft paper to submit tonight, and a final version due at the end of the week. Once that is submitted, the only thing left is "clean up" work on the two courses. It looks like a B in one and A in the other. Frustrated about the B, but not enough to go back and resubmit the projects and such. It was too much the first time around. But, once this paper is done, maybe there will be some space to at least resubmit one. I just want to be done at this point. Did not hear back from InfoPrints (IBM). I'm not surprised, I had a requiremen

The final months, weeks, days in a country all become a rush. I've put out a departure date from Saudi of June 7th. I don't know if that is it, but sometime in June, maybe the first week of July, I expect to leave. My current teaching semester ends June 6th. I'm trying to get everything in order by then as well. In the next week I turn in the third major project for my Creative Designs course. Final paper for the research project the week after that. The draft of "This is Islam" can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU0tIocwF2Y The cats are getting sorted. The first one ships out to Portugal next week. I'm waiting to getting a better idea about the possible job in Colorado before I ship the other. The interview is tonight. I suppose I'll have some idea after that, but if it goes well I would expect there to be more steps before they know if they want to hire me or not. We'll see. I'm taking the week off from work to relax a little as I f

For one of my current classes I have to make presentations. These presentations are supposed to be learning objects - they help the viewer learn something. For my last project I've decided to do something on Islam. The theme is "This is Islam". The intended audience would be high school or freshman college students. The people using the presentation would be teachers who present it to help drive discussion. The audio track for the presentation will be Adhan followed by Al Fatiha. The video portion needs to be slides and text. Using images of Muslims and quotes from the Koran and Hadith I want to make a presentation that would enable Western audiences with little exposure to Islam, or negative exposure from Western press, see Islam in a new light. This is where I need help - I'm hitting the Koran and Hadith for appropriate quotes. Still, my knowledge is weak in this area. I'm open and grateful to suggestions or pointers. Images - if you have images you are willing