These are comments made by students either on formal evaluations or via informal channels. I’ve tried to leave these unedited, as much as possible, although I’ve removed identifying information and possibly line endings. Otherwise, these are as I received them. I’ll continue to add new comments as they come in.
Continue reading What Students are Saying About My Teaching (and Their Learning!)
Thoughts on Being Contingent
According to a recent AAUP report, 68% of all faculty appointments in American colleges and universities are non-tenure track; over 50% are part-time, so-called contingent faculty. I am one of them and, while I love teaching and, by many accounts, am pretty darned good at it, I’m still a part-time employee, subject to chance, and that causes problems both for me and my students.
Wordle.net Map of My Delicious.com Bookmarks
This image represents the frequency of tags I’ve used to bookmark resources using Delicious.com, a social bookmarking service that allows you (and others) to access your bookmarks from any web-connected computer. It was created using Wordle.net, an interesting visualization tool that will let you feed it a word list, a URL, or a delicious username in order to generate a tag cloud like this. Larger words represent tags used with greater frequency. Since I started using Delicious.com to share links with my students, the map is weighted in favor of course- and programming-related terms.
Continue reading Wordle.net Map of My Delicious.com Bookmarks
What Am I Saying?
Every once in a while, I manage to say something that resonates with people. They come up to me some time later or send me email and riff on how what I said inspired them in some way. Here are a few of the phrases that people accuse me of having uttered that they’ve felt compelled to comment on.
KUIT476: Web Marketing & eCommerce
Location: Kaplan University, Online
Terms: Summer 2009, Spring 2010
Class size: ~ 15 students/term
IT476 is a course designed to encourage students to prepare a business plan for an ecommerce venture. Students also create a website to support the business. Attention is given to the legal, advertising, financial, and operational aspects of the business with an eye toward preparation of a workable business proposal.
Reading Materials
- CIW (2009). eCommerce Strategies and Practices. Tempe, AZ.
What Educators Are Saying
These are evaluations of my teaching written by peers and supervisors. I’ve tried to leave them unedited, while removing identifying information wherever necessary and correcting grammar to match.
Continue reading What Educators Are Saying
IST673: School Library Media: Technology, Theory, Application & Assessment
Location: University at Albany, State University of New York
Terms: Spring 2010
Class size: ~ 15 students/term
IST673 is a capstone course in which graduate students collaborate with undergraduate students and in-service educators from local K12 school districts to design, develop, deploy, and assess Web sites developed for use in participating schools.
Reading Materials
- DiGiano, C., Goldman, S. V., & Chorost, M. (2008). Educating Learning Technology Designers: guiding and inspiring creators of innovative educational tools. New York, NY: Routledge.
IST301x: The Information Environment
Location: University at Albany, State University of New York
Terms: Spring 2009, Fall 2009, Spring 2010
Class size: ~ 80 students/term
IST 301x is an introduction to information studies including definitions and properties of information: creation, transfer, classification, encoding, evaluation, storage, retrieval, and use. The Role of information organizations including libraries, print and electronic publishing industries, and archives is discussed.
Reading Materials
- Lester, J., & Koehler, W. C. (2007). Fundamentals of information studies: Understanding information and its environment (2nd ed.). New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers.
iPhone Web App Development
This 4-week workshop, hosted by CreativeTechs and O’Reilly Media is an excellent introduction to how to create website-based applications for use on the iPhone. Website-based apps don’t need to go through the notorious Apple review process for applications, since they are essentially web pages built using standard HTML, CSS, and JavaScript tools and are accessed using Mobile Safari. Once on your app page, users can choose to add the page to their iPhone apps list as an icon, which allows the page to appear without the browser’s chrome (the standard widgets that appear in a web browser: address bar, back/forward buttons, etc.).
Led by Elisabeth Robson, coauthor of Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML, these sessions have been wonderful and are well worth your time. Until 2010 February 5, the entire set of recorded sessions + sample book chapters + sample code can be purchased either from Creative Techs or O’Reilly for just 35$.
KUIT255: eCommerce Development
Location: Kaplan University, Online
Terms: 2
Class size: ~ 5 students/term
In IT255, students prepare a business plan for an ecommerce business they wish to develop. During the class, students prepare sections of the plan including a market analysis and marketing plan, financial projections, and a comprehension operations plan. Students use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create a draft website for the business and enable payment processing using hosted shopping cart and payment processing services.
Reading Materials
- Schneider. (2007). New Directions in eCommerce. Thompson Course Technology.
KUIT245: Web Development
Location: Kaplan University, Online
Terms: 3
Class size: ~ 20 students/term
Students in IT245 create websites using standards-compliant technologies: XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Students learn about site planning, page design, site development, and workflow control. They also implement basic forms processing using hosted forms solutions.
Reading Materials
- Adobe Systems. (2009). Adobe Dreamweaver CS4: Classroom in a book. Berkeley, CA: Adobe Press.
CSI201: Introduction to Computer Science
Location: University at Albany, State University of New York
Terms: Fall 2008, Spring 2009
Class size: ~ 180-220 students/term
CSI201 is an introduction to computer science for majors using Java and the media computation framework developed by Mark Guzdial and Barbara Ericson. Students learn about core topics in computer science and programming (problem solving, iteration, recursion, search, sort, decomposition, etc.) while learning to manipulate digital media files (images, sounds, and videos) using the Java programming language.
Reading Materials
- Guzdial, M., & Ericson, B. (2007). Introduction to computing & programming with Java: a multimedia approach. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.
IST361: Web Development
Location: University at Albany, State University of New York
Terms: Fall 2005, Spring 2007, Fall 2007, Spring 2008, Spring 2009; Fall 2009
Class size: ~ 30 students/term plus an additional ~15 graduate student collaborators
IST 361 is capstone course applying HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to the creation of websites for use by K12 students in the Albany City School District, Albany, New York. Undergraduate students from IST361 work with graduate students in school library media, K12 educators (teachers and school library media specialists), and K12 students collaborate to establish the site design, or “look & feel,” of the final site. Graduate students provide their undergraduate teammates with details of the website’s goals, as negotiated with the K12 educators and students. Undergraduate students, in turn, develop several distinct user interface designs appropriate for the grade level and subject area involved.
Reading Materials
- Berkun, S. (2005). The Art Of Project Management: O’Reilly Media.
- Freeman, E., & Freeman, E. (2005). Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML: O’Reilly Media, Inc.
- Gerantabee, F., & AGI Creative Team. (2007). Dynamic learning, Dreamweaver CS3 : with video tutorials and lesson files (1st ed.). Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media.
- Lynch, P. J., & Horton, S. (2008). Web style guide: basic design principles for creating Web sites. 3rd. Retrieved January 1, 2010, from http://webstyleguide.com/
IST424: Hardware & Operating Systems
Location: University at Albany, State University of New York
Terms: Spring 2006, Fall 2009
Class size: ~ 35 students/term
IST424 introduces students to the fundamentals of computer hardware (transistors, integrated circuits, components, devices, interfaces), software (execution cycle, programming methodology), and operating systems (Windows, Macintosh, Linux).
Reading Materials
- Burd, S. D. (2006). Systems Architecture (5th ed.): Course Technology.
KUIT250: Enhancing Websites with PHP
Location: Kaplan University, Online
Terms: 1
Class size: ~ 10 students/term
Students in IT250 learn the fundamentals of programming in PHP to enhance websites. Topics covered include fundamentals of programming, processing HTML form data, database connections using MySQL, and using MySQL as a backend data store.
Reading Materials
- Meloni, J. C. (2004). PHP 5: Fast & Easy Web Development (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Thomson Course Technology.
Maya Angelou on Being of Use
You must not be misused, overused, or abused, but you must be of use to someone other than yourself.
— Maya Angelou
Derek Sivers on Taking Action
Ideas are worth nothing unless executed. Ideas are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.
–Derek Sivers of CDBaby
FCPS: Fundamentals of Computer Science
Location: Kaneohe, HI; Lancaster, PA; Saratoga Springs, NY
Terms: Summer 2003 – 2009
Class size: ~ 30 students/term
FCPS is an introductory computer science course offered by Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, a program serving talented & gifted teenagers. Students in FCPS study algorithms, Turing Machines, programming, recursion, data representation, digital copyright, digital ethics, artificial intelligence, and game design.
W3Schools for Web Developers
If you’re just beginning to learn about web development, W3School.com is an essential resource with examples and tutorials in HTML, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, jQuery, and many other technologies.
Web Style Guide
The Web Style Guide, 3rd edition, from Yale University Press is an essential read for any beginning web developer or designer.