I recently visited an MIS department at Baylor University. Since my background is in engineering and development, I had to do a little homework to determine what functionality would be the right fit for this type of program. Here are some tools that I found really useful and presented to the faculty there.
High-tech companies and other businesses are centering their data-driven processes around Web Services. Exposing students to notions, examples, and experiences of consuming and creating web services is a key to their ability to discuss and apply these concepts in an industry environment.
Beginners: It's all about you : Learn how to use a web service in less than 1 hour by Creating a Vanity Search Page. Call the Windows Live Search service to create a vanity page that displays images, news articles, and websites about you.
Intermediate: Noah Coad runs through how to create and consume a web service. His blog post contains an overview, code, and a video example of how to pull web service data into Excel. This is a fast-paced video, perfect for the Visual Studio gurus but watch twice or pause if you're an intermediate programmer.
Connecting to Datasources. Combining programming with data is an important concept for MIS and IS students. I walked through an MSDN Example on Creating Database Connections from an ASP.NET Project. I presented an example using ADO.NET and ASP.NET and Access 2007 Databases. Here are the slides and the code that I used for this Project. I also found this great resource connectionstrings.com so you don't have remember all the strings for database connections.
Presentation: Connecting to Datasources Source Code: OLEDB connection to accdb
Data Mining in Excel. Cy Khormaee a colleague of of mine pointed me to this great data mining demo. Data Mining combines the power of SQL Server underneath Excel to examine your data an identify the key influencers affecting your market. Ever wonder whether Marital Status or US Region is influencing the purchase of your product? The Data Mining in Excel plug-in is for you. The Data Mining Home Page and the Data Mining Video are both great choices.
While I was visiting Baylor University, I discovered that students were having trouble accessing DreamSpark Software. At Baylor University, students can currently access DreamSpark Software through JourneyEd.
Step-by-step instructions for Baylor and a number of other university can be found here, in a Step-by-step Guide.
Thanks to Howard Huang at Baylor for bringing this to my attention and Adam Ogle at East Tennessee State University for providing this guide.
Additionally, the MIS Department at Baylor has access to much more software through the department's MSDN AA subscription. These products are administered and made available thanks to time dedicated by Dr. Willis.
These days, mobile devices are as common as chewing gum. Will your next application be ready to hit the streets?
I recently talked to a group of MIS majors at Baylor University about Windows Mobile Design. Here are some tips and tricks to help you with your User Interface (UI) Design.
Thanks to Dr. Willis for sparing his class time for this talk and Dr. Green for coordinating my visit.
Here are a few highlights:
•No popup menu on left soft key
•Single-word on left soft key
•Left soft key must not be “destructive”
•Minimize use of sub-menus
•Use separators between menu items
•No explicit ‘&’ or numbering
•Respect user’s color theme
•If must hard code colors, start with RGB
•Sample UI elements and how to determine their color (e.g. dialog box header, black line, UI text etc.)
Window Mobile Design Presentation
Mobile Devices. Mobile Devices put a fun spin on otherwise straight forward programming and now that you can get Visual Studio Professional in DreamSpark mobile programming is free. Download the Windows Mobile SDK. Other resources: Game Development on Mobile Devices Webcast Series, Four Steps to Getting Started with Windows Mobile 6.0, Full Library of Mobility Webcasts and Virtual Labs, Windows Mobile Team Blog
Visual Web Developer Express 2008 is a free web tool that allows you to build CSS, HTML ASP.NET, C#, VB, and JavaScript and supports additional frameworks like ASP.NET MVC, AJAX, Silverlight and jQuery.
ASP.NET is releasing a new series of how-to videos from beginner to intermediate. Now’s the time to take a half hour to brush up on web development with Visual Studio. Here are some videos you might start with:
Intro to Web Forms
Intro to Visual Web Developer 2008
Check out all the videos and access the software for free at their website: http://www.asp.net/vwd/
Microsoft DreamSpark launches today with a Key Note from BillG at Stanford University. Microsoft DreamSpark gives students around the world software for free to help them become tomorrow’s entrepreneurs, innovators and leaders. Whether interested in technology or design – Microsoft is offering something for every technically-inclined student. For verified students, Microsoft DreamSpark offers Visual Studio 2005/2008 Professional Edition, Expression Studio (includes FrontPage Web, Blend, Media and Design), SQL Server 2005 Express, SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition, Virtual PC, Windows Standard Server, XNA SDK, and a 12-month trial subscription to the XNA Creators Club.
Find out more by watching Max Zuckerman's interview with Bill Gates.