This morning my web course had their 'final quiz' of the semester, a quiz only because it had neither the scope nor the weight of a final exam. Not sure the students were any less anxious about it, though.

I had set aside 90 minutes for the quiz (20 multiple-choice questions), which felt like a lot, but I thought I would err on the side of giving students more time.

I decided to track when students completed their quizes. Here are the results:

As you can see, the quiz finished with quite a bit of time left over. I probably could have set the duration at 60 minutes, and the two outliers would have finished in time anyway. I spoke with a few students who noted that having more time increased the chance of them going back and second-guessing their results.

After the quiz, a few of us regrouped and watched Helvetica, which I thought was good but a bit long, esp for a non-designer group of people. I'm hoping to find other web-related video to show in class in future semesters.

Now, on with the correcting!

Disabled boy to lose his tiny pony because the neighbours don't like the smell. The family, who live on a one-acre piece of land in the rural town of Caledon, Ontario, have the miniature pony as part of the three-year old boy's therapy (he suffers from spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy). The neighbors, who also happen to live next to a cattle farm, have complained to the city about the smell. The city is now using zoning restrictions to force them to get rid of the pony. Cold.

AIG receives $40 billion from government program. Clearly, the automakers are shaking the wrong trees in Washington. There's GOLD in them thar... uh... in that thar swamp!

Very busy at work yesterday and today, but I wanted to take a moment to thank Steph for dropping by SIS yesterday to deliver a guest lecture to my web design & mgmt class. Her description of web production provided a good balance to my higher-level, somewhat academic (read:abstract) description of the process.

While I'm sure it did made some of the students nervous, it is far better that they approach web development, and especially the role of project manager, with their eyes open, aware of the challenges they are likely to face.

I also appreciated Steph's emphasis on the human aspects of the web development process, something that is easy to forget when looking at process diagrams and flow charts. I made a note to myself to try to work more of this into future iterations of the course.

There is a *lot* of web talent in Montreal, and I'd like to find ways to form connections between students and the local web scene. Guest lecturing is one way of doing this, but I'm sure there are others. Something to work on in the coming months.

After a busy day at work yesterday followed by a late night out, we're taking today somewhat easy. Still chores to do: menus to plan, groceries to buy, bills to pay, correspondence to catch up on, and an apartment to clean. Let us not forget movies to watch, books to read, and libations to enjoy. But still, a lazy Saturday, just the two of us.

OCLC, the organization that sits at the center of the structured data that is the foundation of most of the libraries in existence, at least in North America, has revised the terms for licensing the data it has collected from libraries. Librarians everywhere are not amused. Stefano Mazzocchi has posted a good summary of the situation (via jessamyn).

OCLC has decided to try to maintain its relevance not by innovating or providing good/better service to librarians, but by asserting ownership over data. Any organization that relies on legal means to maintain its existence is not likely to be around for long. As Mazzocchi suggests, the opportunity for innovation is there: OCLC has arguably the most detailed and accurate collection of structured metadata on published materials. They have already done a good job (I think) of making that information available to the public. But I'm sure they could do more.

It was inevitable. Ars Technica covered it back in 2005. Apple has started to implement High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) in its products, something necessary for the viewing of DVDs and other hidef content that has been locked down by producers. The new MacBook Pro's seems to be the first place this is cropping up. Of course, users are not happy.

You might remember that MS got slammed for including HDPC in Vista, with arguments that it was extra code that would only make the system unstable, etc [deeper analysis]. Now, no one talks about it, and folks (at least those that have invested in the proper hardware) happily watch their HD content with no hassles.

So for Apple, this too shall pass. Mac users are just getting to the party a bit late.

Update: Boing Boing post on the subject