Educasting from Ireland

Flex and ActionScript 3

WE TEACH BOTH Adobe Flash and Adobe Actionscript in the multimedia degree programme at Tipperary Institute. I'm keen to integrate the Abobe Flex™ 2 product line and Adobe Flash® Player 9 into the four year multimedia degree programme, especially since Flex development uses tools based on Eclipse™ alongsinde the free Adobe Flex 2 Software Development Kit (SDK). The end result should be a class of students able to built a new class of rich Internet applications with improved usability and effectiveness.

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John Dowdell -- "Flex 2 Adoption"

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Moynihan Top Software Developer

At Tipperary Institute’s 2006 graduation ceremony today, Sean Moynihan walked away with more than a third level diploma. He won additional honours for producing the best software development project and for earning the highest results in the software development curriculum. Damien Mulligan, Iona's Tech Services Operations Manager for the EMEA region, attended the graduation events in Thurles and presented Moynihan with his two well-deserved awards. Moynihan’s highly-regarded embedded systems project provided him with a working understanding of web services which helped him qualify for his paid six-month placement in South Tipperary County Council in Clonmel last summer.

Greatest software ever written

CHARLES BABCOCK lists the greatest software ever written:

1. UNIX
2. IBM's System R
3. Gene-sequencing software at the Institute for Genomic Research
4. IBM System 360 OS
5. Java language
6. Mosaic browser
7. Sabre system
8. Macintosh OS
9. Excel spreadsheet
10. Apollo guidance system
11. Google search rank
12. The Morris worm

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Charles Babcock -- "What's the greatest software ever written?"

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Rate My Professors

IRISH TIMES -- John Downes reports that third level academics now "face the prospect of having thie teaching performance anonymously rated by their students". The model follows on the highly successful RateMyTeachers.ie that opened for use in Ireland in early 2005.

The new site, ratemyprogessors.ie, is expected to be established in time for the start of the next academic year in September. It will be broadly similar to its US counterpart.

Gaming teaches

TIPPINST -- Both Tom Heffernan and Eanna McAteer completed separate third level projects incorporating a game element for primary school students. Their user testing told them that their pre-teen audience wanted to prove that they learned by testing themselves in a gaming situation. That is the same conclusion expressed on some Irishblogs and drawn by researchers at the University of London.

Search Engine for Code

KODERS -- If you're hunting for a code snippet, why not start with Koders, the search engine for code of all kinds? Its drop-down box searches for 15 different kinds of computer code.

UT Student Portal Rocks

UT -- One of the best student portals I have seen this term comes from the University of Toronto. From the MP3 jukebox to the various kinds of photo galleries, this mixed media site has to attract the dorm rats. It holds my attention because it offers so many ways to enjoy campus life.

Adding an RSS feed to UBB

CLONMEL -- One of the designs we study is adding function capability to Perl-based systems. In this case, we have the Perl libraries for UBB Classic to examine. With the Content Islands features, not only can you export content from your UBB.classic to your website, you can also syndicate your content so that RSS aware programs can pick it up. This allows people even more access to your site and makes them more attached to your community. Creating RSS feeds in the control panel is easy - the default options are set to reasonable limits for server resources and legibility in an RSS reader, and it takes very little time to set up. You can bolt on an RSS feed to UBB classic this way:

Applying UML and Patterns

CRAIG LARMAN -- We bring a renowned software expert into our multimedia programming classroom as we learn more about OOA/D, patterns, object technologies, and iterative agile development methods. Larman's seminal work¹ is the world's best-selling text on OOA/D.

Main points of the six lectures on patterns:

Using patterns in Web Design

37 SIGNALS -- An excellent place to introduce design patterns to multimedia developers is through the deconstruction of web pages. You take apart the complex pages in chunks, looking for widgets that might be versatile enough to reuse in other assignments.