Selected Professional Highlights

• Coordinator of NETsavvy, an online repository of best practices for new educational technologies.
• Co-editor of the Centre for Teaching Excellence blog.

Presentations

• "NETsavvy: Best Practices in New Educational Technologies." A poster presented at the 2009 Educause Learning Initiative (ELI) in Orlando, Florida.
• "Even Your Pillow Will Need a Pillow: The Extent to which Student Comments from RateMyProfessors.Com Map Against the Best Practices Proposed by Experts in Higher Education.” Presented at the 2006 McGraw-Hill Ryerson Conference in Ottawa. An article version of the presentation is available here under the title "RateMyHeuristic.Com."
• "Using Technology in the Classroom to increase student engagement." Presented atHuron College, University of Western Ontario, May 21, 2008.
• "Learning Technologies for Educators." Keynote presentation at the 2007 Canadian Art Gallery Educators Conference in Hamilton.
• "The T5 Learning Model." A day-long workshop presented to Centre for Professional Development at the University of California at Long Beach.
• "Students and Their Technologies: Assumptions, Attitudes, and Applications." Presented with Koorus Bookan at the 2008 Ontario Universities Computing Conference (OUCC).
• International Students in the University of Waterloo's Co-op Program: Their Unique Challenges and Opportunities." November 17, 2009. University of Waterloo.
• "Through the Eye of a Bagel: How the Intersection of Food and Language Reveals the World." April 24, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay.

Grants and Awards

• Recipient, with Svitlana Taraban-Gordon, of a WatCACE Grant for a research project pertaining to the unique challenges facing international students in UW's Co-op Program. ($13,000)
• Recipient of the 2005 Alexander Isbister Award for Nonfiction. ($3000)
• Manitoba Arts Council, Writers Grant C, 1995 ($2000)
• Manitoba Arts Countil, Writers Grant B, 2005 ($5000)
• Nominated for the 2005 Stephen Leacock Award
• Winner of the 1996 Julia Child Award for best Food Reference book.

Book Publications

• Cupboard Love: A Dictionary of Culinary Curiosities
• The End: Closing Words for a Millennium
• The Lover's Tongue: A Merry Romp Through the Language of Love and Sex
• Dirty Words: The Story of Sex Talk
• Cooking with Shakespeare
• Nadívaný Pštros

Other

• MP3s of language columns written for, and broadcast on, CBC Radio's Definitely Not the Opera.