To educate, inform, inspire

Technology Unconference September

September 25, 2013 - ICC , Learning , Technology - by Mark - No Comments

We held the first technology unconference at Illinois Central College on September 24, 2013. We had approximately 30 in attendance. Given the impact of technology on teaching and learning and the rapid pace of change, I thought it might be appropriate to share a few notes about this event. Here […]

Little Planets

September 11, 2013 - Adobe , Huh? , Technology - by Mark - No Comments

I am taking a class from Adobe this summer/ fall and I was inspired by a recent exercise dealing with “little planets.” Ok, I didn’t even know this capability existed (which is why I am enjoying the class so much). Based on this exercise, I wanted to duplicate the effects […]

Summer 2013 Reflections

September 4, 2013 - Adobe , Learning , Technology , Travel , Web , WOW - by Mark - No Comments

As the fall, 2013 semester begins, I thought it appropriate to reflect on what happened during the summer. As was the case last year, this was an incredibly busy time for me. Not only did I provide a number of “train the trainer” sessions throughout the country, I helped run […]

Badges and Moodle – part 3

August 21, 2013 - ICC , Learning , Technology , Web - by Mark - No Comments

This is the third (and final post) I have planned on badges. I may include a listing of badges oone can earn after the fall semester has concluded (this list will be a work in progress during the semester). I thought it might be helpful to see the actual process […]

Responsive Web Design Book

August 20, 2013 - Technology , Web - by Mark - No Comments

This arrived in the mail today (it is an interactive eBook). Many thanks to Matt Leach for the opportunity to review this book. I appreciate that many of my improvements were included. Thanks again for asking me to be the technical editor.

Badges and Moodle – Part 2

August 14, 2013 - ICC , Learning , Technology , Web - by Mark - No Comments

Perhaps the hardest part of working with badges was actually creating them. I decided to use Adobe Illustrator since it generates vector based images (and I haven’t used it that much in the past). I thought those reading this might like to see the process I went through. If you […]

Badges and Moodle

August 7, 2013 - ICC , Learning , Technology , Web - by Mark - 2 Comments

I spent some time this summer investigating the potential use of badges in my courses for the coming fall, 2013 semester. I realize that some students will embrace this concept and others will not. I thought it appropriate to provide an overview of the process of working with earned badges […]

Hashcat and WordPress

July 24, 2013 - Technology , Web - by Mark - No Comments

During this summer (2013), I taught a course on content management systems in various cities across the US. I focused on WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal. In San Francisco, Sam Bowne (@sambowne) participated in the class and focused on security aspects of these applications. He reported that he was able to […]

2013 National Web Design Contest

July 17, 2013 - Technology , Web - by Mark - No Comments

During the last week of June, I helped run the WebProfessionals.org national web design contest (held in Kansas City, Missouri under the auspices of SkillsUSA). Details of the contest (as well as past winners) can be found at WebDesignContest.org. Over 30 teams participated at the high school level (secondary) and […]

Book review – compiler design

May 25, 2013 - Learning , Technology - by Mark - No Comments

My review of the following book appeared in the June, 2013 issue of CHOICE. I thought I would provide a copy on this weblog for those who do not have ready access to the above resource. Compiler design: analysis and transformation, by Helmut Seidl, Reinhard Wilhelm, and Sebastian Hack. Springer, […]

Unicode characters

April 17, 2013 - Technology , Who knew? - by Mark - No Comments

Have you ever seen Twitter updates/ tweets with unusual characters included in them? Perhaps you have received an email message with an airplane in the subject line? Have you wondered how thus was done? Yes, these capabilities have been around for some time. However, I have been asked recently by […]

2013 Illinois Web Design Contest

April 15, 2013 - Technology , Web , WOW - by Mark - No Comments

Now that the 2013 Illinois Web Design Contest is history, I thought it might be appropriate to share some thoughts and observations. First, congratulations to everyone who participated (in either the secondary or post-secondary contest). You took the extra effort to grow and learn. Those who are taking classes in […]

Visual QR Codes

April 10, 2013 - Technology , Who knew? - by Mark - 5 Comments

I never cease to be amazed at how fast technology changes. I suspect this is mostly old news for most, but you can do some pretty impressive things including images in QR codes. Yes, you can generate default values within tools like Adobe Acrobat (I covered that in a previous […]

Adobe MUSE Fundamentals

April 5, 2013 - Adobe , Technology , Web - by Mark - 18 Comments

I am giving a webinar on April 9 covering the fundamentals of Adobe MUSE for educators and needed to prepare some slides and demonstration materials. In reviewing my weblog entries, I realized that I have not included a post on this tool. I thought it might be helpful to provide […]

Adobe Brackets Revisited

March 11, 2013 - Adobe , Technology , Web - by Mark - No Comments

Last July, I examined the Adobe Brackets tool (for editing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files). That version was Sprint 10. I am now working with Sprint 20 and think it is about time to review the tool again. A lot has changed. Many thanks to Ray Camden for recently providing […]