Some technical stuff for those who really want to know

Some of these posts will document some of what's "behind the scenes" on the course. Part of course development is helped by a FIPSE grant to USF. A few days ago I found a free program that allows the creation of Flash-based tutorials. So I tried it to craft one tutorial. The tech help guru, Lara Westphal, gave me some kudos on the draft tutorial for the lightweight chat and some tips on improving it (i.e., give the user more control!). After some checking, I also think I'll advise students not to put their blog up on Helios, because then they'd have to give an outside entity their NetID password for USF -- not a good idea at all. We can keep it on Blogspot just fine for the course. And I think Open Office transfers PowerPoint slides into Flash SWF files just fine (never mind the gasps of horror I'd get from Edward Tufte fans -- I know, the horrors, the horrors).