Multilitteratus Incognitus

It's the winter break, and now that I have some actual downtime, I decided to do some Microsoft training. I think the last time I had the mental space to do any of this on the Microsoft Education was sometime in 2021 (if the last badge earned is any indication). Anyway, I went through the course offerings to see what's on tap at Microsoft, and I came upon a whole load of AI-related things. Cool. While I've been paying attention to this whole AI thing, I haven't really paid that  much attention to what corporate training is saying about their products (and how they might be used).  I've seen some colleagues post their badges on LinkedIn, so I thought I'd also follow the AI for Educators  learning path on Microsoft Education to get conversant with what others on my campus are experiencing through these trainings. Now, AI has been touted as a time saver on a variety of fronts, a claim that I think has yet to pan out.  As I was going through the AI for Educators ...

OK, now some of my fellow Apple people, and some of you Android fanbois will scoff at me for going to a Windows Phone 7 development workshop, sponsored by Microsoft, but I'll tell you it was fun!  I think that as much as I like the iOS , Windows Phone 7 , with the MetroUI  seems interesting as platform and with the backing of Nokia I think we'll see it rise up and be viable competition to Android and iPhone (if apps come out that is...) In any case, the workshop was pretty interesting and it gave me an opportunity to mess around with Visual Studio, something I haven't done in three or four years, since I was a student in the MSIT program.  I have to say that  developing for WinPhone7 seems to be quite comparable to designing iPhone apps. From the top level, and from the quite limited exposure I've had to them, the IDEs ( Visual Studio and XCode) seem pretty comparable at this point. The one thing I noticed is that both Microsoft peeps (hey, I actually met Edwin...

Can we install one of these in each of our classrooms? Also, can we have dev-tools that are easy for students and faculty to use to create their learning content for these? ;-)

I saw this article on Inside Higher Ed recently. It's an interesting concept, but I don't really buy into it. Blackboard it toxic at the moment. Many people who use it absolutely despise it. Microsoft already has image problems, having one more image problem is not something that they need to fix their brand. If Microsoft were to buy Blackboard, they would probably buy them and end-of-life all current Blackboard products with the exception of Angel - that product seems to be loved by the people who use it, however this is unlikely. Many customers would probably prefer to see upgrades to BlackBoard Vista and CE to make them more intuitive rather than switch to another product altogether since there are course conversion costs (converting existing templates, training people, training faculty, troubleshooting, etc.), and if Microsoft were to kill off the troubled children of Blackboard this could compound on their existing image problems. If Microsoft were to enter the LMS/CMS ar...

Now, don't get me wrong. At work I use Microsoft Office for the Mac and for Windows on a daily basis. It's a necessary evil. People just send me attachments in the all too familiar doc, xls and ppt formats. When the clock strikes 5 and I get off work, that's where MS Office and I part ways. As a student it just doesn't make sense to pay $150 for the student edition of Microsoft Office! If you're a non-student this price balloons to $317 if you want all the trimmings. I still have papers to write, presentations to prepare and spreadsheets to crunch. What is a student to do? Well, In the past year I've found the perfect solution to my office troubles. This solution is a combination of free and for-pay tools. OpenOffice - this is completely free. It has programs that do essentially what Microsoft office does, for free! And, it's quite compatible with Microsoft Office files, so you don't have to worry (much) about opening files that your friends and colleag...