I'm working my way through an e-learning course through DSA (the Course Developer Workshop), which is giving me the opportunity to analyze how they're delivering e-learning. What I'm finding rather surprised me:

• They use reference-based training: the reference material to be used on the job is delivered in a binder, along with the course elements (objectives, examples, exercises, summaries).
• The course is advanced by a slideshow, which the instructor drives throughout the multi-day course.
• The course was delivered as instructor-led training, which was audio-recorded.
• The 3-day course was divided into 6 lessons with 4 video segments, all hosted on their site (no CDs or downloads).
• The live-course audio was edited down, stripping out all student questions, discussion periods, and dead time for students to complete tasks.
• The trimmed audio was laid on top of the slideshow, as if the instructor were narrating it in real time. (This was probably the trickiest part.)
• The slideshow was enhanced with circles, markup, and highlighting, such as the instructor would do.
• The slideshow added pauses, with "Click to continue" buttons, when exercises were to be completed first.

So, the experience is that the e-learning student follows along very much like a classroom student, glancing between binder and slideshow, completing exercises, and following the instructor's voice. At the end of each lesson, e-learning students complete and email homework to a designated instructor. Instead of 3 days, students have 30 days of server access, during which to finish the course. The video segments must be completed or else homework assignments will be missed. Course completion includes testing some of the output with a volunteer subject; when I get that far, I'll know how well that works, compared to a live class.

They've opened voting on proposed SXSW Interactive panels, so folks can influence the conference. It's a cool way read the tea leaves.

panelpicker.sxsw.com (use the categories at right to run the picker)

Some things I noticed:

• A theme of last year was the growing cry for a nonprofit track; so far, there are 16 panels proposed for the category Nonprofit.
• Enterprise has 37 hits, Cloud has 19, Javascript has 21, and Programming and .NET both have 23 each.
• RIA (rich internet applications) has 147. Yes, really.

Save the date! March 13-17, 2009, Austin Convention Center; easy access to "The Brightest Minds in Emerging Technology".

I'm trying to figure out how to call IQA Queries. Just for a test I'm trying to call a standard IQA query, pass a value, and read the results or dump into a data set etc...

I can't seem to find even a basic sample on this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

A bit of help please? Questions would be:
- Am I even on the right track?
- Am I creating the container correctly?
- Does the container need to be further initialized?
- Am I using the QueryBuilder correctly?
- How do I add the parameter to this querybuilder? I see just one key
- Am I executing the QueryBuilder correctly?

SAMPLE CODE,

    public void callIQA()
    {
        //Create the container using a common standard query anyone with iMIS should have
        Asi.Business.BusinessContainer myContainer;
        myContainer = new Asi.Business.BusinessContainer("$.Common.Queries.Search.CsContact.Name");

        //Does something else need to be done to finish initializing the container?


        //Make a querybuilder to be able to execute the query?
        Asi.QueryBuilder.Query myQuery = Asi.QueryBuilder.Query.NewQuery(myContainer);


        //If everything so far is correct, how is the string key formatted for adding parameters? 
        //Example, the above built in container has a possible 'Name' that can be added.  What would
        //be entered to pass the query a   [Last First]=DOE
        //NOTE: the above CsContact.Name sample requires [Last First] to be provided at least one value

        //myQuery.Parameters.Clear();
        //myQuery.Parameters.Add("string key");


        //Execute the query, and see what we get, which is nothing, something's wrong
        System.Data.OleDb.OleDbDataReader myReader;
        myReader = myQuery.GetList();

        if (myReader != null)
        {
            while (myReader.Read())
            {
                Response.Write("  

Built on the Gecko engine, "Pencil" is a Firefox 3 plug-in that has a light, 400 KB installation. Its goal is to be a forever free and open source tool for making diagrams and doing GUI prototyping, yet also easy enough that everyone can use it. For mock-ups, Pencil makes it easy to spin the look you want, then output PNG for record-keeping and distribution:

http://www.evolus.vn/Pencil 

A webinar given jointly by MarkLogic, Aberdeen Group (research), and empolis summarized where the industry stands on the move toward offering users dynamic technical content -- dynamic in the sense of filtered for their needs and assembled into useful printables. The dimensions for filtering are the usual suspects: user skill/type, context (such as a specific product), and task type (setup vs. operation vs. troubleshooting). Aberdeen's research on current industry practices (albeit focused on the needs of manufacturers) showed they are being driven by these factors (most to least): speed to market, market segmentation, customizability, precision (need to cut irrelevant doc), and globalization (localization needs). Those organizations found to be "best in class" are pursuing these types of initiatives:

I noticed that the web.config of iMIS 15 has the Membership and Profile providers setup along with the corresponding tables in the database. How much are these providers used in native iMIS? Are these providers that we, as developers, can use? If so, what features are supported and what are not.

Thanks,

Neil