Thursday, 14 February 2013

Microsoft Books for FREE on Amazon (Kindle) - Hot UK Deals #yam

Introducing Windows Server 2012
Introducing Windows SQL Server 2012
Introducing Windows 8 - An Overview for IT Professionals
Moving to MS Visual Studio 2010
Programming Windows 8 apps
Security and privacy for MS Office 2010 users
Introducing Windows Server 2012 RTM edition
First Look: Microsoft Office 2010
Microsoft® Office 365

Grammar and punctuation test: take our quiz | Teacher Network | Guardian Professional #yam

In June, year 6 pupils will sit a National Test in spelling, grammar and punctuation. But how good is your knowledge? Take our quiz for students, teachers and grammar fans

Microsoft Security Newsletter for IT Professionals - @Microsoft Security Blog

Are you an Information Technology (IT) Professional or developer looking for a resource to stay up to date with Microsoft security?  If so, I strongly encourage you to check out our Microsoft Security Newsletter.  This monthly newsletter delivered to your inbox in either HTML or Plain Text covers a wide range of Microsoft security topics from leading experts

Make your own eBooks with Inkling's free digital publishing kit | ITProPortal.com #yam

San Francisco eBook publishing startup Inkling has released a new set of collaborative online digital publishing tools to try and coax book publishers to fully move their content into the Internet age.

The new software suite, called Inkling Habitat, will be the first online, collaborate, free, and open digital publishing environment for professionals.

Matt McInnis, CEO of Inkling, showed off some of Habitat's capabilities at an event in New York this week. The online software appears to compete with the likes of Adobe's Digital Publishing Suite and even Apple's iBooks Author. Like Apple's product, Habitat is free, although it sounds slightly more geared toward professional publishing houses, particularly those in education.

Wednesday, 13 February 2013

COBOL will outlive us all | ITworld #yam

In the early 1980s, I was told that COBOL was going away and that I should quickly move toward other programming languages. Well, thirty years later, COBOL is alive and well and living in large companies everywhere.

Yes, most of the smaller COBOL programs written in the 1970s, 1980s, and even 1990s have been replaced with newer systems and newer technologies. However, the big mission critical systems written long ago in COBOL and modified and enhanced for the past thirty to forty years are still driving very large, very prestigious companies around the country and around the world. These companies include banks, insurance companies, manufacturing companies, retail chains, health care organizations, and every other type of company you can imagine.

Friday, 25 January 2013

If We Profs Don't Reform Higher Ed, We'll Be Re-Formed (and we won't like it) | HASTAC #yam

Although normally a pretty upbeat and optimistic person, I end a lot of my different talks these days with a pretty scary, even dystopic slide:    "IF WE PROFS CAN BE REPLACED BY A COMPUTER SCREEN, WE SHOULD BE.”

 

That gets people’s attention.   And it makes people mad.   My meaning is often misunderstood at first—and that’s what I want.  I want profs in the audience to be outraged that I’m saying they can be replaced by a computer screen.   And, if they think they are not replaceable by a computer screen, I want them to articulate why. 

 

If they can make a good case for what they add, then my conditional statement is answered negatively:   No, I cannot be replaced by a computer screen because of . . .       Making that case accurately and persuasively (to the public, to legislators, to donors, and mostly to our students)  is the single most important thing any professor can do because, if we don’t, it will be made for us.  And we won't like the result.

Flipped Classroom Successes in Higher Education | Emerging Education Technology #yam

Colleges and University Professors are Improving Learning Outcomes, and Lowering Costs, with Flipped Classroom Techniques.