Just a quick post to let people know about new training videos available. I am making it my focus for this month to produce a lot more tutorials to answer common questions and especially to help developers get started with custom development. I still have a ways to go with the developer tutorials, but thought I would go ahead an post links to videos I've completed so far.
I've begun a series of clips where I plan to implement a simple Guestbook feature as a way to cover important concepts.
Just getting started so far, lots more clips to produce to complete the Guestbook tutorial. I'm planning to cover development of business and data access classes and how to add supporting pages to your feature as well as how to make your feature searchable. I'm working only from an outline not a script, so the videos are mostly improvised and I stumble on a few things here and there, but rather than edit them out, I think it is helpful since you may also stumble a little bit, so learning to work through the stumbles is part of the process.
Each clip will be less than 10 minutes in order to fit them on YouTube, but they are in high definition so the video quality should be pretty decent.
UPDATE 2010-03-08 -added items 8 - 17 to the list above.
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Imagine the University Freshman majoring in Education. Now imagine the teacher job market when they graduate. What do you think the job market for teachers will look like? Has the job market for teachers changed for you?
If you think the job market for teachers has changed in the last 5 years, fasten your seat belts, because online learning is going to change teaching jobs even more dramatically. The market for online teaching jobs will bring new opportunities and with them the requirement that teachers change the way the find online teaching jobs and the way they teach.
Online Marketplaces, virtual learning environments, collaborative course development and instant aggregated feedback will open a new world to teachers. The best online teachers will understand and learn how to use these new tools to deliver learning experiences that are miles above those found in traditional classrooms.
The way your earn money teaching online will change. You will have more control over your income but will need to be more effective to be successful.
Are you ready for this shift? It can be either exciting or terrifying. Which emotion do you want to feel?
Keep up with the trends on our Industry Info page and be excited!
I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.3.9, available now on our download page.
This is a significant release, the most exciting thing is we are introducing support for easily using html templates generated by Artisteer to make skins for mojoPortal. We've include 2 new skins made with Artisteer templates as well.
Thanks to all community members for providing bug reports and feedback, especially Alexander aka SkySandy for his work in diagnosing bugs and suggesting fixes.
Just as we had to make changes in mojoPortal to support Artisteer templates, we also made corresponding changes in our add on products Event Calendar Pro and Form Wizard Pro. If you are an existing customer who already purchased these products, you should upgrade them at the same time as you upgrade mojoPortal. You can download the latest version by signing into this site as the same user who made the purchase, then visit the "My Account" link at the top of the page and look under the Order History tab where you will see links for your products.
Late Entrant Oracle has officially joined the fray by announcing a 50 date Cloud Computing Road Show.
The interesting thing here is not the announcement in and of itself. The interesting thing is that Oracle has decided to do it anyway.
Cloud Computing really goes against the standard Oracle pricing models and definately against the Oracle Sales approach. If you own any enterprise Oracle systems, you'll know what I mean.
I think the entire company, driven from the top, does not have a culture that would support Cloud Computing. Will they have to? They will have to support virutualization technologies and are to a point. Even that model is a big culture shift.
I think Oracle is one to the companies to watch. Along with Microsoft, they may provide the most interesting drama as they try to shift to their culture to support cloud computing and virtual models.
Should be fun to watch.
The next in my series of articles that show how I follow the process outlined earlier in this blog on Cloud Computing RFP's and SaaS RFP's.
This should give you a practicle example of how to implement the process.
I have refined the vendor selection criteria I will use to pick our cloud computing vendor. The list I developed is below.
Criteria
Next up, weighting my criteria.
Cloud Slam '10, the world's premier cloud computing event, covering technology, business models, industry experiences, legal aspects, research, development and innovations in the world of cloud computing.
This is a virtual conference and the cost is nominal. Enjoy.
I'm happy to announce the first major upgrade for my Form Wizard Pro product.
This release is a free upgrade for existing customers who bought Form Wizard Pro previously and starts at $99 for new customers.
Note: This new release requires mojoPortal 2.3.3.6 which was just released a few days ago.
See how easy it is to create custom forms and surveys using mojoPortal and Form Wizard Pro
I'm happy to announce the release of mojoPortal 2.3.3.6, available now on our download page.
This release fixes a few bugs reported in our forums since the last release, adds a few minor improvements to some features and lots of minor fit and finish improvements based on feedback from our community.
In the previous release I added a hideable toolbar for administration links in most of the included skins, this release I took a queue from Joe Davis and added icons to the toolbar. Also based on community feedback, I made it remember your preference for open/closed across pages. Previously if you closed it and went to a different page it would open again on the new page, now it remembers your preference.
Contact Form - added a setting for BCC email, added a setting in case you don't want to store messages in the database, added a setting allowing you to use the email address entered by the user as the from address in the form notification.
Shared Files - added a setting for the Default Sort, when shared files are returned as search results in the search page, the download link now opens a new window.
Upgrade to NeatUpload 1.3.21
I am currently using CKeditor as my main editor and it is also now the default for new installations of mojoPortal. The only thing I like better about TinyMCE at the moment is the spell checker which works much nicer than the one in CKeditor or FCKeditor. Since CKeditor is the successor to FCKeditor and no new development is being done on FCKeditor, I'm considering not including FCKeditor in mojoPortal going forward to reduce our footprint on disk a little as each editor is a lot of javascript. We could reduce 3 or 4 MB of disk footprint leaving it out. I could still make it available as a separate download for anyone who wants to continue using it. So, if you have a strong opinion about whether we should or should not continue to package FCKeditor with mojoPortal, please post in the comments.
Casual Learning is learning for the sake of personal improvement or personal enjoyment. Although it can lead to a better job, it is undertaken to better oneself without institutional objectives.
Casual Learning is non-accredited, non-certification learning. Any time you go to a dictionary or use your Kindle to look up the definition of a word, this is an example of casual learning. When you use Google to find out how something works, it's casual learning.
The other day we had a discussion about if it's better to maintain your house at a temperature throughout the night because many believe that it can cost more to bring the house back up to a certain temperature after it falls. Nobody participating in the discussion really knew the answer. So afterwards I searched on Google and found that it does not take more to bring the house back up to a certain temperature. You are actually better off letting it drop to the lowest level, and then bring it up when you want to. This is a simple example of casual learning.
More substantial examples of casual learning include continuing education. If you take a course at your local high school continuing education program, and do it just for the enjoyment of learning a subject. That is casual learning.
The internet is all about casual learning. We do it every day. Although I don't have hard numbers, common sense tells me that casual learning occurs exponentially more often than institutionalized learning. I also believe that ultimately, it has more value as well.
When you think about teaching online or learning online you should considered casual learning as well as accredited or certification based learning. You may find that you can teach what you love rather than what society has deemed necessary. You may also find that people may embrace your casual, non-accredited learning because they are doing it out of a stronger personal motivation. The learning is the goal, not the job, the recoginition or whatever.
When you think about what you will teach online, keep this in mind.
Earlier in this blog, I outlined the process for creating a Cloud Computing or SaaS RFP (you can find these posts in the archive). Since I am about to undertake a process to determine the right Cloud Computing solution for my growing business, I'm going to take a pause to follow the process I outlined to ensure that I go about this in the right way.
Step One of the Cloud Computing selection process is to make sure that you are solving the right problem. Even though I wrote the process, I was already jumping to a solution. I need to thoughtfully outline the issues that I am having (and in this case, anticipate having) that have lead me to a cloud computing solution. Maybe this isn't even the right solution.
The high level issues that I am trying to solve include:
Ensure that my site can have enough capacity to handle 5000 concurrent users
Switch to a provider that allows me to have load balancing at the network, web server and database layers.
I would like low level control over application and operating system settings to monitor, tweak, solve and updated issues.
Keep costs to a minimum.
Be able to handle spikes in traffic.
Be able to create production, staging, QA, and Integration environments that can be put up and down quickly. Paying only when they are in use.
That's my initial high-level list. Next, I'll develop a set of selection criteria and then start creating a vendor long list.