With FHU's Project Development, one of our objectives has been to promote/facilitate innovation in the classroom.

Sometimes it is difficult to put into words ways/means on how to do this and get "non-digital native" users on board with innovating their learning/teaching styles with and without the use of technology.

Here is an interesting article stating Google's 9 Principle's of Innovation:
http://fatagnus.com/googles-9-principles-of-innovation/

I can agree with and relate to several of these principles. It's great when you work for a company or institution that supports these ideals. In my opinion, FHU is quickly becoming such a place.

Innovation is not really a hobby.

Remember that famous quote by John Dewey? - "Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself."

Innovation is a habit and a lifestyle. Doesn't innovation by definition fall in line with one of the major philosophical tenets of most fields in academia?

What are you doing to help promote innovation?

Here is a brief overview of the project development items that we worked on/completed this past week:

• New content was added to a few areas of our website
• Dr. Kenan Casey continued work on our iPhone App - it's almost ready for launch...and looks sweet!
• Work continued on our Alumni website migration plan
• The Bell Tower site implementation is nearly complete
• Our fhu.edu/connect page is receiving a few updates: content and functionality
• Development plans for our backchannel app continues - our version one inclusions have been finalized

Next week, Lance will be back on campus and will begin work once again on the backchannel application. Look for a few updates on this in the near future. 

I found out this past week that our new web programmer, Michael Clark, will be starting on June 13. We all look forward to this new addition to IT Web Services.

This past week, we kicked off our summer development projects. We hit the ground running and were able to accomplish quite a bit this week.

Some of the highlights:

• Web Services gained a new Web Programmer (full-time)
• Core UX functionality work continued on our backchannel application
• Several new content areas of our website were implemented
• Refinement work continued on our iPhone App
• Initial approval for our emergency notification migration was given and plans are underway
• Our Blackboard learning management system received upgrades

We have an aggressive task list and timeline ahead of us. It's gonna be a great summer. Check back periodically for updates. Happy coding.

I became a web intern under Michael Plyler in the summer of 2010 and quickly began to see that web development was a very promising field for me. The internship has been a great blessing to me and it was highly rewarding to see things that I had worked on be used by people on campus. Here at the beginning of the summer of 2011, I look back at how life changing the previous summer was for me and can't help but be overflowing with excitement for what this summer holds.

Last summer, aside from listening (and singing along) to countless hours of Pandora Radio with Lance in BK13, I got to work on multiple projects ranging in complexity and involvement from simple forms to a light content management system for faculty. Once school time rolled back around, it was nice to not be rusty from not doing much field-related activity in the summer as would have been if I had not been in this internship. As I said, I'm excited to see how much more I can progress this summer and can't wait to dive into some of the projects we have lined up. We hope you enjoy and benefit from our creations too!

At FHU, we strive to be innovators. We are always looking for ways to integrate the latest technologies into collaborative and engaging learning experiences inside and outside of the classroom.

Our development team will use this blog to periodically post about projects that we are working on. This summer will be a busy one, with several new and exciting things being developed and deployed on our campus.

Our goal with this blog is to document and communicate our efforts in development and technology integration. 

Have suggestions, comments or general feedback?
Contact us or leave a comment below.