Welcome to the New Year

I am excited for this new year to start. I have had a great 2007 and look forward to this year as well. I am archived all of my previous blog entries as I am starting fresh looking into the new year. I have previously used this blog to jot down events in my life, particularly in relation to my health and fitness. As I start this New Year, one of the things that I am going to use this blog for is to communicate happening in my life as well as things that I see that may be of use to others. I am hoping that more people will start to read this as a result. Now I just have to add entries on a regular basis!

This week I am mostly in an organizing mode. I have spent a little time in the office and have tried to slowly get prepared for the new semester but I have a lot of work to do to feel prepared for Spring.

The classes I am teaching for the Spring are as follows:

IT260 - Data Management (2 Sections)
IT312 - Systems Administration
IT410 - IT Project (Capstone)

I am particularly excited to teach the capstone course this semester. This will be my first time to take this course and hope that it will be a successful one. This class is basically a project from start to finish for the students where they utilize many of the skills that have acquired to solve a "real world" problem. These are projects that they will be completing this term.

• Website - Creating and enhancing a website for a local dental office.
• Networking project - Students will build a Windows 2003 forest that spans a WAN connected by Cisco routers. This forest will have MS Sharepoint 2007, Exchange 2007, and SQL installed and configured as part of the project as well.
• Database project #1 - Creating a database and website for the MSDNAA software that is available for all IT students.
• Database project #2 - Database for a local landscaping company.

This class will be a lot of work so I am glad that I have taught the other courses previously. I have more to work on today before leaving so I will stop for now. Welcome to 2008.