This was my third year at the HighEdWeb Conference — forth, if you count its earlier incarnation as WebDevShare in Indiana — and this was probably my best experience at the conference yet. This was partially due to the variety of the sessions; they were slightly more techie than last year, and a bigger focus on project management.
The slides from my presentation, “Driving a Hybrid: The Basics of Adobe AIR,” are located here. The presentation included a demonstration of using Dreamweaver and regular HTML, CSS, and Ajax to build a simple AIR application that displays news headlines. The files for that application can be downloaded here.
I also presented “Adobe Flex: Flash for Coders and Programmers” as part of the poster session. A smaller version of my poster can be downloaded here.
One of the biggest differences between this conference and previous years was the active Twitter backchannel. There were several of us who became Twitter buddies a few months before the conference, so it was cool to already know a little about each other before meeting in “real life” (and a little strange to hear people whispering, “Hey, is that cdulude? Yeah, I think so!”) Twitter was also very useful for things like meeting up for dinner or impromptu discussions. People also carried on discussions during sessions using Twitter — someone referred to it as the electronic version of passing notes. There was the occasional “This guy sure is boring!” but for the most part, discussions were fairly constructive. Or at least, fun.
Twitter use at this conference reminded me of one of the arguments for using online forums and discussion boards in a classroom setting: they encourage quieter students to participate who might feel intimidated during the regular in-person classes. Similarly, I felt that Twitter allowed yet another way for people to contribute to the conference instead of sitting passively by.
And finally, I did manage to live-blog some of the sessions:
This is the second general session at HighEdWeb.Ning lets people create their own social networks about anything they want. It’s the largest “social network you’ve never heard of.” We had a demonstration of various Ning sites. Interesting educational uses of social networks:
- Posting video content
- Language immersion
- Video conferencing
- Social notes — Michael Wesch
Education should be a two-way street. We need to stop thinking of education as a product to be passed along, and more of a process. We participate therefore we are. Google/the internet is like the calculator metaphor — having the tool levels the playing field in terms of knowledge.Education should be more about training people to synthesize information, not just how to look it up.Big is the new small. Tools like private forums allow people to participate without it being completely public. Also allows quieter students to participate with less intimidation. Asynchronous participation people can contribute outside of class.
Ambient awareness — the idea that minutiae of people’s life gives a snapshot of people’s lives, even though each little snippet doens’t realy matter. Makes you feel looped in when you’re not there. And lets you get to know people even if you’ve never met them in real life.
This is a session in the Technical: Propeller Hats Required Track at HighEdWeb, presented by Brett Bieber at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Unit testing framework benefits over home brew: testing infrastructure is already built. Example: PHPUnit
Downsides: easy tests, easy input methods. Testing the right things at the right level? Hard to pinpoint causes of error.
Test small pieces, not applications. Don’t test against live data. If your test are PASS/FAIL, code appropriately. Benefits of unit testing: Ensure new features don’t break expected behavior. Code coverage analysis: graphical representation of where we need unit tests. Downsides: It’s possible to run tests that test incorrect logic.
Browser based testing with Selenium. From OpenQA: http://www.openqa.org . Easily record and playback actions. Automate acessiblity checks — cynthiasays.com .
Need continuous integration, not just tests. But: tests can be the foundation for CI. Tests can serve as secondary documentation. Ensure that all developers are working with the latest code, adn everyone can see that progress is being made.
Cruise Control: cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net . A framework for continuous build/integration process.
Joel Spolsky: 12 Steps to Better code.
On the Effectiveness of Test-first Approach to Programming: Improves poductivity.
This is a session in the Technical: Propeller Hats Required Track at HighEdWeb, presented by C. Daniel Chase at the University of Colorado.
Principles behind the Agile Manifesto:
- Highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
- Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change.
- Deliver working software frequently, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
Business people must work together, rather than being isolated in silos. Also physical proximity and face-to-face communcation. Not keeping everyone in their own offices.
Agile processes promote sustainable development. Keeping sponsors, developers, users involved should be able to maintain a constance pace on the project. Agile methodologies include: Agile modeling, Extreme programming, Scrum.
Source code management: Version control, release tracking, development vs. production code lines.
Test driven development: What does this section of code do? Write a test first. Write code to pass the test
- Unit testing: Component level, which finds basic logic and syntax errors.
- Functional testing: Application level.
Continuous integration includes automated check-out, automated build, automated testing, immediate feedback for failures. Refactoring improves readability of code, but does not fix bugs or add new functionality. Test first.
Design patterns: Most problems have been solved before and solutions optimized. Using standard constructs make it easier to maintain code.
This is the fouth session in the Marketing, Management, and Professional Development Track at HighEdWeb. Presented by:
- Bob Crisler, University of Nebraska
- Rachel Stewart, University of Iowa
- Doug Tschopp, Augustana College
- Luke Robinson, Calvin College
- Sri Giridharan, Seton Hall University
- Doug Ruschman, Xavier University
We talked about web/style policy guides. Policy guides, as well as their implementation and/enforcement, vary from institution to institution, if they exist at all.
How to account for social media? Xavier has its own social network for accepted students. Calvin picks up accounts on Flickr, Facebook, Flickr. If we keep adding social networks, who’s going to maintain them? Nebraska has its own social network, and is looking into Elgg for a social platform.
Some schools (such as Augustana) are shifting to Gmail for email service. Many have an email newsletter, at least for faculty/staff.
Calvin College has a lot of video production; on Vimeo, YouTube, etc. Xavier has BlueTube, where students can upload their own video (this was presented as a poster last year, if I remember correctly?) Alumni love seeing what students are doing on campus.
How do you handle rogue departments? Mention “talking to the chancellor.” It’s a big help to have allies in the upper levels of administration. U of Iowa College of Business used to be under Communications and IT, now wholly under IT.
Experiences with student workers seem to run the gamut.