I know, I know – yet another YouTube clip. But this one isn’t music, well, it is music… but it’s about technology, so it falls within the scope of this blog? I don’t care, it’s so good I just have to share it!
I’ve been meaning to post this for a loooooong while, but always forget. Below is a recording of a session I co-presented last spring (May 2006) about extending WebCT. When we initially put together the session, we were expecting to provide more coverage for blogs/wikis/web 2.0, but as it turns out, you can only fit so much content into an hour… lesson learned. I can only listen to the first 2 minutes because after that, I cringe at the sound of my own voice… and my laugh…. and my comments… and I’m learning why some people might be against recording their lectures. Hopefully I’ll have another crack at a similar session sometime in the future to cover *everything* that’s changed in less than a year – and to improve my presentation abilities.
Edit: I tried to embed my the video here, but WPMU appears to chop out object or embed tags. So instead, I’ll have to provide a link: Extending WebCT with Turnitin, Publisher Content, and Emerging Technologies
Ruby on Rails has been the hot topic for nearly a year, but I haven’t really looked at it any detail… until today when I noticed that Roumen has recorded two demos of Ruby support in Netbeans 6.0. I’m very impressed, at both RoR *and* Netbeans. RoR is everything that I’ve heard it is… but bringing it in under the Netbeans umbrella is the really great thing. I’ve been using Netbeans for years – early 3.x versions if I recall correctly. The product has evolved extensively over the last two years and I implore anyone frustrated with Eclipse to give Netbeans a spin. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed (or I hope you won’t be).
And… where else can you go to have a demo that sounds like it’s delivered by a CIA operative? Roumen is the best!
A small cat fight between Dave Tosh and Stephen Downes has erupted over some comments about open source.
Aside from the fact that this is a bit of a cat fight… My feelings on the topic are that open source software can succeed and work, but there’s no such thing as open source support – and this is what Curverider provides. (Well, in the general sense of the word there is open source support: mailing lists, discussions, etc. When I say support, I mean the type of support your director/manager will want to purchase.) None of this is any different than the slew of companies that provide consulting and support services for Moodle or Sakai.
Get over it gents. The mixed model works. Let’s get on with the real work at hand – making things better.
