Animated GIFs

Saw some Animated GIFs in the lab today. This is an interesting YouTube video about animated GIFs.

Chooones

The song I'm humming all this week is Papaoutai by Stromae, currently the world's coolest Belgian.

SOFT6007 DWEB1 Class 31 & 32

We looked at position in CSS.

I spoke very briefly about Assignment 2.

SOFT6007 Class 29

We looked at JavaScript. We will return to JavaScript later in the module.

Colin out today. No classes

SOFT6008 Dropbox unshared

You may have noticed that you are no longer sharing a Dropbox folder with me.

We will use Blackboard for the assignment submissions.

SOFT6008 COM2B Class 27 & 28

Students worked on coding check digit calculations.  I advised students to revise HTML forms and to look at the built-in validation in HTML5 if they wanted a break from that.

Some students became distracted by an assignment due today for another module.  That's just the way of things.

SOFT6008 Recording of Exam Attendance

I was advised today by the head of department that I made a number of students uncomfortable last week when I used my mobile phone to record attendance at the exam.  I apologise for making anyone uncomfortable.

I was necessary to record who was at the exam so that in the event of an issue, like a script being lost or unidentified, I could establish who was there and who was not. A roll call would have eaten into the time we had available to the exam. Not all of the people there on the day were personally known to me. I did not want to interrupt students by asking those I did not know for ID. And there was no certainty that they would even have had ID.

It clear, however, that I made some students uncomfortable. I am sorry for that.

It was always my intent to keep the recordings for only a few days until after the results were published so that if there was an issue it might be a useful record.

The recordings were never actually viewed. They were never copied nor backed up.

I deleted them from my phone today immediately on discovering that their existence made some students uncomfortable. However, they would have been deleted over the next few days in any event because there were no issues.

It is clear that different people have different comfort levels when it comes to the recording of their images or voices, or indeed any data about them. It is always difficult to find the right balance between the convenience provided by technologies and the risks they pose. In fact, I think this is one of the big questions of our time. I clearly got it wrong, and, again, I apologize for this.

I have decided to err on the side of caution from now on and so will be more sensitive in future. I will also discontinue my practice of recording lectures and putting them on YouTube. There is a risk that this practice may prevent some students from asking questions or may make them uncomfortable for other reasons.  Since I never actually asked anyone's permission I will cease the practice and I have removed those recordings that were made in the past without permission.

SOFT6008 COM2B Class 26

Students worked on coding check digit algorithms for PPSNs and DNIs

SOFT6007 ITM1 Class 36

Students worked on forms

SOFT6008 CA Results

The results of the first assessment are available online at http://tinyurl.com/soft6008ca. They are sorted using the last 4 digits of student ID numbers.

SOFT6007 ITM1 Class 26 & 27

Students worked on coding forms.

SOFT6007 DWEB1 Class 27 & 28

Students worked on coding forms.

SOFT6007 Class 25

We looked at forms.

As I highlighted in class there was a mistake in the slides.  Checkboxes must have different names if they are all to be sent to the server correctly. So the hobbies example should show something like hobbies1, hobbies2, hobbies3. [There is a solution involving arrays. But you guys know nothing of arrays just yet]

SOFT6008 COM2B Class 24

Students worked on code. I'm please with the progress students are making. Of course I have no idea how the missing students are doing.

SOFT6007 ITM1 Class 24

Students were interested in studying for exams they had today. No one was doing any web stuff, so I headed away after a few minutes.

SOFT6008 DWEB2 Class 23 & 24

Some students worked on code. But most spent time preparing their cheat sheets for the exam today.

SOFT6007 ITM1 Class 22 & 23

We had an exam.

SOFT6007 DWEB1 Class 23 & 24

We had an exam

SOFT6007 Class 21

Class was canceled. I wasn't feeling well.