Posts from 2012

I just noticed (because I haven’t used it seriously for a while) that Google Reader has gotten rid of the “star” which I used to use to share articles that I had read with my FriendFeed and my own Crispy Feeds feed. It’s been replaced by G+ and Share with Google+ buttons. I suppose it makes sense from Google’s point of view that the default way to share from its feed reader should be through it’s own social network, and to be fair, other sharing options are still available from Google Reader via the Send to option. But even so, now I have to find out how to add my G+ feed to my other aggregators … unless some kind soul can drop me a hint in the comments.

Stop Press¶

I just noticed that the star has not gone at all, it’s just fainter and to the left hand side. Still, let the post stand, this is after all a post, and posts have been few and far between of late, and the thing about identifying the feed for my G+ is still relevant.

With my daughter now staring her own blog, I feel guilty that my blog has been silent for so long. “I’ve been busy” is some kind of excuse, I suppose, but I know that I’ll be even busier next year. Perhaps I need some inspiration. Anyone got any ideas for me?

I’m registered to participate in BlendKit2012, the open, online course on blended learning. I thought you might be interested in joining me. If you haven’t heard about it already, it’s a five week opportunity to get ideas and develop materials for blended learning courses. There is no registration fee, and you can set your own goals for participation based on your existing time commitments.

For more information or to register, please visit: http://bit.ly/blendkit2012.

A series of talking heads discuss the move of the Bloomsbury Learning Environment to Moodle 2 from Blackboard 8. Videos provided on the ULCC Events Channel.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries?list=PL797550437607675C&hl=en_US]

Early on this term I decided that HTML5 had reached sufficient traction to make it worth changing the flavour of HTML to be covered in my two modules EG-146 and EG-259. Now it seems that the media is starting to support my decision. As reported in this week’s HTML5 Weekly (Issue #37 – May 9, 2012) the BBC had a Business News Report on the Rise of HTML5 and in the same issue, there’s a link to an article on why (newspaper and magazine) publishers don’t like apps which rather echoes my view expressed earlier this year. (Having tried and failed to tweet a link to that very article from the Google iPad App, my opinion has hardened.)

Postscript: EG-259 students should also checkout Polyfills for the Pragmatist.

• Guide to HTML5 Boilerplate for Rails Developers

This is a guide to HTML5 Boilerplate for Rails developers. Like Rails on the server side or “backend”, HTML5 Boilerplate provides structure and conventions for setting up HTML5, CSS3 styles, and Javascript for front-end development. It is a popular starting point for many front-end developers. However, some aspects of HTML5 Boilerplate are not useful for Rails projects. Sorting through the HTML5 Boilerplate documentation to find what’s useful for Rails can be confusing. This article lists each component of HTML5 Boilerplate and identifies its usefulness for Rails applications.

tags:tutorial railsapps html5 boilerplate html5 boilerplate web.development rails
- Rails Default Application Layout for HTML5

Rails Default Application Layout for HTML5. Shows how to set up a default application layout with navigation links, messages for alerts and notices, and CSS styling. Second in a series

tags:tutorial railsapps html5 boilerplate html5 boilerplate rails web.development
- Rails Tutorial for Devise with RSpec and Cucumber

First in a series

tags:tutorial railsapps web.development cucumber rspec devise

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Understanding The Password « family coding

@codecademy comes to the rescue when my son’s e-mail account is hacked! http://t.co/bQD7uYne #codeyear

tags:codeyear
- TEDxMuskegon — Maria Andersen — Recipe for Free Range Learning – YouTube

Carve out 20 minutes and listen to @busynessgirl’s TEDx talk on free range learning: http://t.co/sXHmlrWb #eLearning

tags:eLearning
- Assessment Marking and Feedback using iPad, iAnnotate, and Dropbox | ELEVATE@UCS

Assessment Marking and Feedback using iPad, iAnnotate, and Dropbox http://t.co/6ROdNUbY
- Forget the business case, open online courses are about learning | Higher Education Network | Guardian Professional

RT @GdnHigherEd: NEW: Forget the business case, open online courses are about learning http://t.co/4m0T9Wqi

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Beyond marks: new tools to visualise student engagement via social networks | Badge | Research in Learning Technology

RT @hopkinsdavid: Reading @jobadge and @ajcann : “New tools to visualise student engagement via social networks” http://t.co/mfqGzooU

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Here’s the thing. You take your tablet PC to lunch with the intention of reading the latest on the RSS feeds. You open your news reader, you like an article, you want to share. One option is twitter. You try it, but the embedded web browser doesn’t know your twitter password. You open the article in the browser, and it doesn’t either. The app that does, the official twitter app, is not available as an option for tweeting.

Compare this with the experience on a web browser. It remembers your twitter login details because there’s a cookie set. Sharing a link from Google Reader is simply a matter of pressing “tweet this”. Bang, it’s gone.

Am I the only one who thinks that having multiple, separate web browsers, each with their own cookie stores (the App Model) as opposed to the single ubiquitous web browser with a single shared cookie store and unlimited available apps, is a retrograde step?

Reminds me of the nightmare of cut-and-paste between applications on MS-DOS!

Why can’t tablet PCs do this? Is Google Chrome OS (apparently just a browser as operating system) better?

In my courses on Web Design, EG-146, EG-153, EG-259 and EG-253 I have long advocated the use of Firebug as must-install developer tool. Over recent years, Google’s Chrome Browser, Apple’s Safari, Opera and even the new Internet Explorer have built developer tools into their standard browser offering. In Firefox 10, released on 31st January 2012, Firefox has finally built-in developer tools too, and they look pretty slick. And more is to come in Firefox 11 to be released in March. Here’s a short video introduction and you can read more in Developer Tools in Firefox Aurora 10 and in An Overview of Firefox Developer Tools and Firefox 10 Arrives with New Dev Tools and Full-Screen API.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TnGE3yl8dI]