Week 5 (June 12, 2006)
I spent most of week 5 working out of ITS. It was great to work amongst those with all that knowledge and information flying around. The focus of this week was organizing the content of 1 module and rough scripting the narration which took much longer than I expected.
I am seeing a pattern here. There are a lot of meetings and things in this field seem to take longer to get done than what I am used to in my organization. This is not a bad thing though, because in my organization, we often don’t take the time we need to think and process information to make sure we do things right the first time. A lot of what we do is on the spot and trial-and-error. That sometimes leads to unending frustration when you know there are better solutions, but are not provided the time to research them.
Once Marc and I had our modules scripted (we didn’t get to the 3rd one because we didn’t have access to it until the end of the week) we met with Dr. Allen to go over the narration and identify next steps. After making a few changes, it was decided that my module would be the first one narrated with a pre-production meeting scheduled for next week. Unfortunately I won’t be there because I will be in VA buying a house. But, I will be there the following week, which is when the recording is scheduled. So far, it looks like we are on schedule to complete phase 1 by the middle of August.
I attended a Horizon Wimba meeting to determine what support will be available for faculty and staff once everyone is online and using it. It looks pretty slim to none right now. This is something that concerns Suzanne and Jim a lot. ITS is deploying a new tool and not providing much support. Due to an impending support problem, the focus of the meeting was on Horizon Wimba workshops that the pICT and ITS would like to hold during the summer and what level of content would be appropriate. It was determined that an assessment to see what level of comfort faculty have using new technology would be important. Oh, the joys of new systems.
I also sat in on a few more Horizon Wimba practice sessions with faculty and staff. The focus of these sessions were to practice the use of polling. Because so many of us had high level access, the presenter was unable to fully run the show – so the lesson here is that for now, it is probably wise to minimize presenter capabilities to no more than 2 or three for a live classroom session. It was also decided that a good practice when pushing our pools or surveys is to have the students use the yes/no buttons when prompted by the teacher and that the teacher should also let the students know when polls are pushed out how long they have to answer the question before the teacher plans on moving on to the next question.
I really enjoyed this week. Working at ITS was a fun environment and I had opportunities to evaluate some of the projects they were working on such as Captivate movies for M/S Word tutorials and to engage in stimulating conversations related to this field. I also enjoyed spending a lot of time trouble shooting different features of Horizon Wimba and feel there are potential uses for this in my organization. Though it wouldn’t be useful for all the technical training we do, it would certainly be useful for annual organizational training, such as Ethics or Sexual Harassment, etc…Instead of squeezing everyone into a little room, or holding 10 sessions over two days, just have everyone sit at their computer. O.K., so not everyone has a computer in my organization (especially those assigned to boats), but for those ashore, this concept could certainly work.
I am seeing a pattern here. There are a lot of meetings and things in this field seem to take longer to get done than what I am used to in my organization. This is not a bad thing though, because in my organization, we often don’t take the time we need to think and process information to make sure we do things right the first time. A lot of what we do is on the spot and trial-and-error. That sometimes leads to unending frustration when you know there are better solutions, but are not provided the time to research them.
Once Marc and I had our modules scripted (we didn’t get to the 3rd one because we didn’t have access to it until the end of the week) we met with Dr. Allen to go over the narration and identify next steps. After making a few changes, it was decided that my module would be the first one narrated with a pre-production meeting scheduled for next week. Unfortunately I won’t be there because I will be in VA buying a house. But, I will be there the following week, which is when the recording is scheduled. So far, it looks like we are on schedule to complete phase 1 by the middle of August.
I attended a Horizon Wimba meeting to determine what support will be available for faculty and staff once everyone is online and using it. It looks pretty slim to none right now. This is something that concerns Suzanne and Jim a lot. ITS is deploying a new tool and not providing much support. Due to an impending support problem, the focus of the meeting was on Horizon Wimba workshops that the pICT and ITS would like to hold during the summer and what level of content would be appropriate. It was determined that an assessment to see what level of comfort faculty have using new technology would be important. Oh, the joys of new systems.
I also sat in on a few more Horizon Wimba practice sessions with faculty and staff. The focus of these sessions were to practice the use of polling. Because so many of us had high level access, the presenter was unable to fully run the show – so the lesson here is that for now, it is probably wise to minimize presenter capabilities to no more than 2 or three for a live classroom session. It was also decided that a good practice when pushing our pools or surveys is to have the students use the yes/no buttons when prompted by the teacher and that the teacher should also let the students know when polls are pushed out how long they have to answer the question before the teacher plans on moving on to the next question.
I really enjoyed this week. Working at ITS was a fun environment and I had opportunities to evaluate some of the projects they were working on such as Captivate movies for M/S Word tutorials and to engage in stimulating conversations related to this field. I also enjoyed spending a lot of time trouble shooting different features of Horizon Wimba and feel there are potential uses for this in my organization. Though it wouldn’t be useful for all the technical training we do, it would certainly be useful for annual organizational training, such as Ethics or Sexual Harassment, etc…Instead of squeezing everyone into a little room, or holding 10 sessions over two days, just have everyone sit at their computer. O.K., so not everyone has a computer in my organization (especially those assigned to boats), but for those ashore, this concept could certainly work.
posted by Deb and Kurt at 9:27 PM
1 Comments:
I'm so glad you've enjoyed the experience. Certainly the internship has more than met MY expections; you're working on a variety of projects, with an array of different people -- which means you've been constantly exposed to content, ideas, and practices that truly represent all aspects of the field. I really hadn't realized how rich an opportunity this would be!
OK -- I won't say it again -- but I'm still not clear on those darn PowerPoint modules (who'll use them and in what ways). Just seems like so much effort ... for pay-back that may, in the end, not fully justify all the time and energy spent. But I could be wrong, of course.
I, too, have VERY concerned about the HW rollout -- that ITS really isn't ready/able to provide the appropriate level of support. I don't know thsi happened---why the rollout is on such a shoestring budget. Students who don't have a good initial experience or likely to vote with their feet and mouths. A lot is at stake here ... which makes the support lags even more painful to watch from my safe perch on the sidelines!
Post a Comment
<< Home