Written by Jade Nowland on January 24, 2012.
Some half-dozen years ago, I took part in building a “demo” course to showcase a learning / course management system (L/CMS) that was merely to be an exploratory space. This was mostly to show the various and full functions of the system for delivering various digital contents, supporting intercommunications, building learning communities, and maintaining student records. This demo course involved curriculum from K-12 and university because this was designed for a wide level of public usage.
Showcasing Quality E-Learning to a University Faculty Audience
Of late, another project involves creating an online showcase course, this time, for university faculty to see how others are building learning in the same L/CMS. This latter project assumes some varying levels of sophistication—from very low levels of sophistication to more complex ones. The overall structure of this course was based on an e-learning quality rubric. This course is being built to support training for faculty teaching online—to encourage more quality e-learning.
Beyond the audience differences and purpose, this latter project has been somewhat different from the initial one. First,
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Written by Jade Nowland on January 15, 2012.
Website redesigns are a fact of life in higher education. And, thats why our yearly Web Redesign Boot Camp webinar series (Feb 7-9, 2012) is always very well-attended as it provides practical tips and useful advice for web redesign projects in higher education as well as a good overview of the latest trends in our field.
Another great way to keep an eye on the state of web design in higher education is to follow EDU Checkup, Nick DeNardis video blog.
Every week or so, Nick selects a higher ed website, reviews and grades it. He has done it since October 2008 and thus has reviewed hundreds of websites from universities and colleges. Given the interest for the rankings of top higher ed websites by EDU Checkup scores I published last year, Im sure you will all be interested in this new edition of the rankings by overall EDU Checkup score combining grades for visual, information and code.
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Written by Jade Nowland on January 9, 2012.
President Obama with First Lady Michelle Obama in a dress by Jason Wu at the Inaugural Ball.
The 2012 Presidential campaigns are well under way, and it looks like President Obama will have the most fashionable campaign – EVER. Twenty-two designers have partnered with the Obama campaign initiative Runway to Win, for which designers will create merchandise to help raise funds for the President’s 2012 Reelection Campaign.
The Obamas have had a close relationship with the fashion community from the beginning, largely thanks to First Lady Michelle Obama’skeen fashion sense, which has catapulted several designers, such as Jason Wu and Rachel Roy, into the spotlight. Anna Wintour has also been a driving force behind this marriage of politics and fashion, having hosted several fundraising dinners for the Obamas in her West Village home.
And in true Vogue style, the editor-in-chief will co-host a shindig with Scarlett Johansson in February, which is expected to draw a very fashionable crowd including designers, models, actors, and other prominent celebrities. The e
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Written by Jade Nowland on December 30, 2011.
Honor rolls for the fall semester at Northwestern Oklahoma State University have been announced by the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs.
Those on the President’s Honor Roll earned all As, or a 4.0 grade point average (GPA), in a minimum of 12 undergraduate or nine graduate hours. Those on the Vice President’s list had grade averages of 3.5 or better in a minimum of 12 undergraduate or nine graduate hours.
Undergraduate students on the honorable mention lists had 4.0 or 3.5 GPAs, respectively, in a minimum of three to a maximum of 11 semester hours. Graduate students on those rolls were enrolled in a minimum of three to a maximum of eight semester hours.
To be listed on any of the rolls, students could not have any incomplete work.
Listed by hometowns, those students on the various honor rolls are as follows:
PRESIDENT’S HONOR ROLL Graduate & Post-Graduate Students
OKLAHOMA ALVA – Stephanie Marteney, Kendra Neilson. BLACKWELL – Jaimie Pryor. CHEROKEE – Jeremy Judd. CHICKASHA – Alecia Heath. ENID – Mark
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Written by Jade Nowland on December 5, 2011.
In my occasional free moments, I like to indulge in the Cigital Silver Bullet Security Podcasts simply because the field of security is so far from what I do and because Dr. Gary McGraw is so funny and because the people he brings on this program are such heavy hitters in their respective fields. While I use masses of software for work, the outputs are not anything that require super protections—just the usual securities around learning management systems and email and server access. The compromises that are discussed often seem to be around the privy information that companies and governments handle.
Types of Dependencies
I’ve been working my way back through the older podcasts, and one of the guests talked about how software is often built based on inherited libraries of code. Errors in those bases may be carried unwittingly into new products. Many who code apparently do not use secure practices because that just wasn’t on the radar of the developers back in the day. Certain computer languages were apparently prone to code insecurities. One p
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