billso.com

On this date 38 years ago, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. It still boggles my mind that some people still believe thew moon landings did not happen.

Here’s a picture of Neil during the first lunar excursion. If you look at the visor, you’ll see a reflection of the photographer, who was Buzz Aldrin, of course.

I do remember watching the moon landings on my family’s Zenith black-and-white television. Last year I set up a Facebook group for people who watched one of the six Apollo landings on television when it happened. For the youngsters, there’s always the “When I was your age, Pluto was a planet” group. Maybe I should I start a “Skylab sucked” Facebook group, because Skylab really did suck.

My Spring 2007 course materials are no longer available on this web site. I’ve archived most of the PowerPoint and PDF files for my Spring 2007 IS 6100 and IS 7010 courses. Some of the old links are still active, but they will retrieve blank files.

I call this a spring cleaning

I usually make some changes to the syllabi and assignments between terms. Fall 2007 students would not benefit by seeing the old assignments, presentations and syllabi, even though both courses will use the same textbooks that I used earlier this year.

During the next few weeks, I will finish the syllabi, course schedules and web sites for the Fall 2007 courses. When these resources are available, I will post links in the IS 6100 and IS 7010 Fall 2007 course pages on this blog.

WebCT or TurnItIn.com? That’s the question I face

There is a very good chance that I will use WebCT instead of TurnItIn.com to manage the courses gradebooks and assignments. While TurnItIn.com is an excellent course management system, it cannot deliver multiple choice exams.

If I do use WebCT, I’ll include some short quizzes and objective exams in my courses. There will still be several written assignments that will be analyzed by TurnItIn.com. I’ll also build a dedicated page in each course that shows all of the relevant blog posts from this web site.

I’ve found a tool that lets me embed streaming videos in my blog articles.

I used it yesterday to add a 1994 industrial film about the Web to a post I had written earlier in the day.

Here’s a CBC report from the same era. It’s about Videotron, which wasn’t the Web. It was just butt ugly.