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I love this video from the first lecture of [CS 106A Programming Methodology](http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs106a/) (Recorded in Fall 2008). Apart from the enthusiasm of the lecturer Mehran Sahami, which is infectious, it’s a great source of inspiration for learning and teaching: - Grading without numbers - The Stanford Honour Code (approach to Plagiarism) - Use of undergraduates for peer/mentor support (even grading!) - Use of sugary snacks as rewards for contribution - Use of continuous assessment with later work given more marks to encourage work to the end - Midterm tests - Personalized feedback via “interactive marking” - 2 Free days for late submission of coursework – avoids extensions....

This code snippet on calculating the first n Primes using the Python programming language fell into my RSS feed this morning. Very nice I thought, but then it occurred to me, what would be really fast would be to ask the internet. Or more specifically WolframAlpha. So I did: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=primes+less+than+1,000,000,000. The first 20 of 50,847,324 prime numbers less that 109 are displayed in the internet equivalent of a blink of an eye....

The O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON 2010) took place last week in Portland Oregon. Videos of the talks are being published on YouTube and Blip.TV. Taken with the convention site, the various related blog postings and twitter feed, there’s lots of useful information. What stood out for me in the video feed was Daniel Recordon’s talk “Today’s Lamp Stack” which describes how Facebook’s has been implemented on the LAMP stack. It’s a talk that will be useful as a learning resource for my course on Web Applications Technology....

I read a lot of blogs and I listen to a lot of podcasts, so I thought I’d use this blog to tell you about some of my favourites. Here’s the first of an occasional series of recommendations: It’s e-Learning Stuff and the associated e-Learning Stuff podcast from James Clay, ILT & Learning Resources Manager at Gloucestershire College, and 2009 winner of the ALT Learning Technologist of the Year. I am an early adopter and self-confessed geek....

I’ve just got back to work after breaking my ankle five weeks ago and I’ve just started catching up with things in e-learning and beyond. I thought I’d enumerate a few things that are on my radar. Just a list with links for now: - Blackboard 9 coming soon to Swansea U. - [Delicious Bookmark Browse feature](http://cogdogblog.com/2010/07/07/delicious-browsing/) (thanks to CogDogBlog). Useful for creating a presentation based on web sites. Try this one for resources I’ve collected on [plagiarism](http://delicious....