I know my colleague John Martin is reading this books so when I saw this link to an excerpt I followed my curiosity.    I don’t necessarily agree with the premise of his new book that IT as we know it will disappear, but as with his last book, “Does IT Matter?” Nicolas  Carr and can generate discussion.  I do agree that IT will change.  Always has been.    Just take a vacation .

I thought you might enjoy this quick read and kick back to give the future of IT some thought.

http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1540,2232402,00.asp

This line particularly caught my eye: 

“One of the key challenges for IT departments lies in making the right decisions about what to hold onto and what to let go.”

Yeah, I know,  that’s always been the case.   All one need do is look at the IT bone-yard,  CPM, OS2, VMS, et.al., and recognize that the shelf life of some technologies is more like a  banana then a redwood. 

Regardless,  looking forward I see a continued strong need for gatekeepers and key masters, i.e. those that control institutional knowledge.  Where the data resides though, is becoming less important.

Some materials gathering:

Moodle Presentation  -  little overview, meta numbers

Moodle Overview -  more of a how to

Upload PPT to Moodle 

Moodle versus Blackboard  - Humboldt State study

Moodle at SFSU

Issues surrounding migrating Blackboard courses to Moodle 

At one point this semester  my students and I reviewed Microsoft's new Surface Computing promotions available on youtube.  It was with pleasure that before the end of the semester an imaginative person developed this low-cost alternative.    We are also read Tom Friedman's "The World is Flat."  This example re-inforced the non-linear nature of technology innovation and that imagination is an essential skill in the flat world.

I am always impressed with the efforts of Middlebury,  here's something that was covered in The Chronicle about mapping where the food comes for their dinning services: