New Semester = New Modules

The end of 2007 saw the first semester of the academic year draw to a close. So, I've been frantically marking assignments from the Beginning Java module and the VB.Net module. Again, the start to the year has exploded with the amount of work afoot.

The new semester has seen 3 more distance learning modules begin, Talking Technology: my new face to face module and M257: Putting Java to work, with the OU. ECDL has also begun and then there's the History of Education online bibliography project which involves entering the data from 3000 postcards into a MySQL database and producing a front end worthy of the School of Education. Other institutions have attempted this before but the outcome has always seemed rather basic and amateurish in my opioion. With the new Web 2.0 ideas of user collaboration we are using tagclouds where users can enter there own tags and so build up a tag cloud of there own. You see the site is about journal articles that the heads of school has categorised themselves. But what if the users disagreee with the categorisation? Then they can make there own = Web 2.0.

It's like a wiki really...hurrah, I've finally found a use for one!

I've also got plans to look further into the use of JSP and speech recognition, plus using one of the flat 'tablet' PCs which you can write on. A couple of my colleagues use these and seem to get on with them quite well, especially in meetings when you want to record notes easily and safely.

So, that's what I'm up to at the moment. Back soon.

Ian