Kathy Sierra is perhaps one of my greatest inspirations, next to my wife and children of course!

For those of you who are not familiar, Kathy Sierra is the author of a number of Head First books from O’Reilly Press but what really impresses me is her blog, Creating Passionate Users. I’ve referenced a number of her posts in my Web Expressions course and have tried to incorporate her learning and teaching philosophies into my own practice. Her latest entries as of this post are: Mediocrity by "areas of improvement", a fresh look at re-engineering the dreaded performance review, and Brain death by dull cubicle - her take on new developments in brain theory as they apply to our work environments.

These are a few of my favorite Kathy Sierra posts:

Crafting a user experience

Keeping users engaged

Blowing your own mind

Think sexy

The importance of seduction and curiosity

Creating a passionate…You

The user’s journey

Transparency v. seduction

and perhaps my own guiding text,  

Ten tips for new trainers/teachers 

 Thanks for the inspiration Kathy and keep up the great work!

technorati tags: kathy, sierra, creating, passionate, users, passion, creativity, inspiration, wow

In our last class we spoke of the resources available to you as students at Plymouth State University participating in this course. For
the purposes of this class you have two web resources at your disposal, your Oz account and your Turing account. The Oz account has a current quota of 180MB for students and is yours as long as you remain an active student with the University. The Turing account has a larger capacity as it is designed to meet the needs of students majoring in Computer and Information Technologies and is yours for the duration of this class, longer if you apply for special dispensation from the department (meaning you will be actively updating and maintaining your web-based resource).

Access to these accounts varies. Your Oz drive, also known as your M: drive, is mapped automatically on cluster computers. The Turing drive must be mapped separately. If you are on campus (and using a PC) you may map either of these drives yourself using the following directions:

• Right-click on My Computer and click on Map Network Drive
  
  
• Select the drive letter you prefer from the drop down menu in the Drive: field
• Type the following into the Folder: field
  For Oz: \\logon.plymouth.edu\username replacing username with your own PSU username
  For Turing: \\turing.plymouth.edu\username replacing username with your own PSU username

• To ensure that this drive remains mapped, check the box to Reconnect at Logon
• Now click on the Connect using a different user name link and type \\logon\username in the username box (again replacing username with your own PSU username) and type your password in the password field.
• Click OK, then click Finish

A window should open at this point displaying the contents of your mapped drive.