A professional development course on Blogging!

Blogging

Yes you read that title correctly. I just learned about this class through it’s instructor, Nancy Pera who’s blog “BlahBlahBlog” has the skinny on this class. Don’t you just love that name? BlahBlahBlog!

“…professional development course on blogging–The Reading-Writing Connection: Internet Publishing made SIMPLE with Weblogs. I teach in the second largest district in the nation, and as far as I know this will be the first blogging course offered. I wonder what will happen.“

The class is for teachers, though Nancy also works with elementary school students and they are learning about blogging as well.

Nancy is also a fan of tablets and has encouraged me to stop sleeping at night and get BLInk! finished so that I can share it with her students. (She did not put on that heavy pressure, that’s my own doing).

Not only can you read about the course as it progresses on Nancy’s blog (can I just say that title again? BlahBlahBlog!), but you can see the output from the class here which includes some pros and cons.

A .NET Poem

dotNET

I have been looking at the BCL a lot lately in preparation for a presentation on What’s new in the Base Class Library for Whidbey that I am doing at EdgeEast and at DevTeach.

Ever since K.C. pointed to this brilliant visualization of Tom Lehrer’s “The Elements“ song, I have been hoping someone with more talents than I would attack it from the CLR perspective. But alas. Here is my first crack at it:

System, data, SQL Client, Text and XML
Reflection and Collections, Port and Diagnostic hell
Windows Forms and Drawing, Web, U.I. and WebControl
and Timers, Threading, Logging. I.O., Ports and Protocols
Security, Cryptography, Discovery, Transactions
Configuration, Interop and Serial-i-zation
I don’t know what’s come over me, this constant revelation
It seems it’s from a lethal redpill/koolaid combination

ok – lame ending but hey, I gotta get back to work

[syndicated from Julia Lerman’s Don’t Be Iffy Blog. Please refer and comment here]

Massachusetts backs off on Open Source policy

Just Rambling

A few months ago there was a proposal in the works for the state of Massachusetts that looked like someone was trying to force Mass to use “Open Standards and Open Source” software only and not get locked into licensing etc. (my interpretation of lengthy legal document…) This is pretty scary for a LOT of people, developers, Microsoft, etc. Just out of curiosity, I checked over on that site again today and coincidentally, they posted their official policy yesterday. They have split “Open Standards and Open Source” into separate policies and renamed Open Source to Acquisition, where they now strongly encourage the consideratoin of open source and freeware, but they do still have proprietary software on the top of their list. Phew!

Read more here:

Boston.NET’s Longhorn Study Group

dotNET

Just got this meeting announcement from Boston.NET and couldn’t help notice the special part (bolding etc are mine)

The January meeting of the Boston .NET User Group will be held tomorrow at the usual time, 5-8:30 p.m. We will hold the first meeting of our Longhorn Study Group from 5-6:30 and then are please to have Rocky Lhotka, noted author and speaker, as our featured speaker. Please register at http://www.bostondotnet.org and view the details on these events.

Wow. Already!!?!

Coffee

Just Rambling

Too me the most indicative sign of my pace of late is that I now find myself drinking two cups of coffee in a row in the morning. I have ALWAYS had only one cup first thing and then MAYBE another one a few hours later. I have weaned myself from coffee twice in the past. It’s a bad thing for me because I have a very mild form of anemia (low blood pressure anemia) that is really just a condition, not a disease. But the coffee does not help. I have not been able to function well with more than two cups in me per day (getting the shakes and nervous) and I am right now looking at my empty cup at 11:10 a.m. and thinking about a 3rd. Calgon, take me away.