End Of The Road

Well, we've come to the end of the semester and most likely the end of my blogging days.  I must say that this has been a very interesting and thought provoking assignment.  Creating these blog entries basically forced us students to reflect on readings, activities, tech news, e-learning news and anything else that we may have experienced.

I'm still currently working on my Final Course Portfolio.  That's been kind of cool too.  Especially since it's in the place of taking an actual final exam.  It's very time consuming, but gives us a chance to work on Google sites and revisit what we learned in this course.  So I guess it is a final exam after all.

After my post about the IT-ology Career Fair, I received a call about an internship.  It wasn't a result of the Career Fair, but it just so happened to occur after that post.  Anyway, keep your fingers crossed!!!

So I've enjoyed blogging with you, but now it's over.  Dr. Keane if you're reading this, thanks for an interesting semester!

Goodbye all!

And I Thought I'd Seen It All...

Hey, guys.  While checking out the PC World website, I found this article about some obscenely priced PCs and gadgets.  Some of the items are very cool I must admit, but look at the price tag on them.

I personally love the Emperor 200 workstation.  Considering how much time I sit in front of my computer, I do believe this is a necessity.  OK, I'm exaggerating a little bit.  But how cool would it be to do your homework (or anything for that matter) at this workstation?  And it's only $49,150.  I do believe I'm asking Santa for this one!

So check out the website at the link below and feel free to leave a comment about which one you would choose.

Coolest PC gadgets and gifts

Girl On Fire!!!

Came across a blog that led me to a website about a group of awesome women.  It's called the Executive Women's Forum.  It's a community of over 750 of the world's most influential female executives in the Information Security, Privacy, and Risk fields.

The EWF provides a way for female executives to build trusting relationships, sharing leadership ideas, empowering success, be recognized and awarded for accomplishments, attend conferences, and recruit.

I just thought this community of women was pretty cool and I wanted to share it.

Check out their website:  Executive Women's Forum

White House Involvement in Open Source

So I was perusing my Twitter news feed to find something interesting to blog about and I came across a tweet from my instructor telling us students to check out this cool article about the White House and open source and community.  I was interested to see how the White House was involved in open source so I followed the link she provided.

The White House has now joined the Drupal.org community!!  Corny?  I know, but it's still interesting.  Anyway,  they actually use Drupal  for the WhiteHouse.gov website. They have released the source code for  modules before, but now they are working with the community on the We The People petitions system.  They are hoping to release a "white label" theme that will help others reuse the code to set up their own petition systems.  They have also been active in the GitHub community.

I have summarized the article, but you can check it out here.  Click

How cool is that?  The White House has gone nerd!

Master the Mainframe Update

So guess what...I did not Master the Mainframe.  That contest was murder!!!  I was doing pretty good until I reached the C programming in Task 9 of Part 2.  After that it was horrible!!  Thankfully, I have some really great classmates.  Some of the students who understood how to do it didn't mind helping others so it all worked out.

As far as how I feel about the contest...I think it was pretty cool.  It was just a lot of pressure since my instructor used it as our actual homework assignments.  Which were the only assignments we had.  Now do you understand why my stress level was so high!!??

So no, I'm not a Master Mainframer, but I did win a t-shirt (haven't received it yet), will get a good grade in the class, and I'm actually still interested in the Mainframe.  Surprise Surprise!!!  I think I need to work on learning C code and Java though.  Problem is, I hate programming.  I think I will research the different types of mainframe positions out there.

Oh yeah, I will not be doing Part 3 of the competition.

Final Course Portfolio

So we've come to the end of the semester and now it's time to create a portfolio of all the work I've done in my ITEC 544 Training Systems course.  It serves as a way to connect everything we've learn in the course with current training systems technology and learning theory.  We have to discuss the work we've done and relate it to the instructional design cycle.  So I will be displaying/discussing my Wikipedia, E-Learning Module, and Social Media assignments as well as the professional activities in which I have participated.  So basically everything that I have blogged about the last few months.

This is due by tomorrow.  Wish I had started on this earlier, but time is something that I am short on.  Needless to say I will be working on this all day and night.  I will be using Google sites to create the portfolio.

I will be back to let my readers know how this went.  Oh yeah, once again I think this is a great assignment for this class (even though I'll be up all night working on it).  Coffee through an IV...

I'll be back (in my Arnold Schwarzenegger voice)...

IT-ology Career Fair

I just attended the IT-ology Career Fair.  It wasn't your typical Career Fair, where you have tons of employers looking for candidates.  There were probably a total of 17 companies there and they were looking for applicants in a variety of fields.

I went in search of an internship for the Spring, but I'm not sure how useful it was.  It seems that most companies are only conducting Summer internships, so this pretty much sucks for my hopes of graduating in May.  Fingers still crossed though.

I visited a few of the tables for companies that I am interested in.  SC.GOV was my first stop.  I spoke with one of their representatives and she gave me helpful information about another company that wasn't at the Career Fair that may have Spring internships available.  That was really nice of her.  I hope it leads to an opportunity.  I also spoke with AgFirst Farm Credit Bank.  He had just filled a position for an internship for the Spring.  That sucked!!!  But he did tell me to check out their website and keep checking to see if he posts anything more.  I will definitely be doing that.  I've heard that AgFirst is a good company to work for.  The Verizon table was very entertaining.  Tom was one of the representatives there and it seemed he was trying to make it a relaxed and informative meeting.  He made a lot of jokes that were actually funny.  Turns out though, that they are looking to hire a lot of Customer Service type positions.  I am so not interested in that.  Been there done that.  Let's see, who else did I speak with?  Oh yeah, BCBS and SCE&G.  Two of the largest companies in Columbia.  I don't really hold any hope out with SCE&G because I have applied to numerous positions with them without any good results.  BCBS has an awesome Entry Level Training Program, but I would have to graduate in May to make that happen.  Which means I NEED my internship to be completed in the Spring.  I'm starting to really hate this internship requirement.  TM Floyd and Company was also there, but they aren't doing any internships.  Their rep stated that their clients are looking for more well seasoned employees.  This is understandable and I kind of knew that already, but what the heck.  I gave her a resume to put on file.

I'm so sick of Career Fairs that I didn't even bother to pick up any of their free merchandise.  A pen is a pen.    An internship is what I want.

So, did I find the Career Fair worth my while? That remains to be seen.

Until next time...

My Experience With Moodle

This semester we have also been working in teams to develop an E-Learning Module on an open source application of our choice and then host it on a Learning Management System.  The LMS that we used was Moodle.  Remember I blogged earlier about a speaker, Felicia Collins, coming to our class to show us the many benefits of Moodle and how it worked.  She came twice to show us some things, but for the most part, we had to figure it out on our own, with some help from Dr. Keane.  This wasn't too bad though because it's pretty easy to figure things out if you take the time to play with it and explore the many options.

Anyway, we decided the topic of our module would be Drupal.  Drupal is an open source content management system that allows users to create their own websites.  Specifically, we taught them how to use Drupal Gardens.  Again I also blogged about a Drupal workshop that I attended at IT-ology.  Two other members of my team also attended that workshop.  That's why it was chosen as our topic.

We split the module into four topics:  Introduction, Basic Web Development, Form Development, and Website Maintenance.

Here's a screenshot of what our module Home Screen looked like (with editing options turned on) once we added our topics to it.

Within each section we covered different areas.  I did the majority of the Basic Web Development topic so that's what I will talk about.  I instructed the user on how to create and edit block elements and website content.  We used blog form to give step by step instructions on how to accomplish the tasks.  We tried to make in fun and interesting so a lot of the verbiage is very corny.  For example:  "Now it’s time to get busy on the fun part!  Excited?  You should be.  Let’s start by changing your site title."  Very corny huh..., but fun.  Here's what the blogs looked like.

As I was creating the instructions I also did the tasks step by step in Drupal Gardens.  That allowed me to use my Snipping Tool  to get screen images so the user would know they were on the right track.  

So after the user completed each task, they had to submit the URL to their site for grading.  We also set up various Discussion Forums, so students can communicate and help each other.  They could also share ideas that would help their sites look better.  

In addition to the screenshots, we also wanted to give additional resources.  We added links to videos that would also demonstrate how to complete these tasks.

Creating this module was pretty fun and quite relevant to this course.  The bad part is that our site is only available on the university server so we only have access to it on campus in the ITEC labs.  This sort of sucks of you want to share it with potential employers,but hey, what can you do.  

Ok, so that's it for Moodle.  Oh yeah, I prefer Blackboard over Moodle.  It has a much better appearance, but maybe there's some ways to customize Moodle that I don't know about.  Plus Moodle is FREE!!  

Until next time...

  

JAM with Chrome

In my last post, I stated that I would visit my Twitter account and see if I could find anything interesting from some of the E-Learning professionals that I'm following.  Guess what...I did!

This comes from a tweet from Jane Bozarth, an E-Learning professional and also the author of one of the books for this Training Systems course.  Anyway, she tweeted about a way to play music with your friends online and live.  She said "MUSIC = great way to help global workers/learners connect."

So let me introduce you to JAM with Chrome.  Its an interactive web application that allows you to play music on your Chrome browser with people in different locations.  All you have to do is go to the site and you can choose from 19 different instruments.  The instruments range from acoustic guitars to keyboards.  You can play in "easy mode" where the computer does most of the work or "pro mode" where you play the instruments using your keyboard.  How cool is that?!?!

Now that's some fun E-Learning!  Thanks Ms. Bozarth for that tip on how to learn and connect with friends via Chrome.

If you would like to check it out, click here.  JAM with Chrome

Until next time...

Twitter World

I figured I'll let my readers in on my experiences with the world of Twitter.  As part of my ITEC 544 Training Systems course,  we had to create a Twitter account and follow people in the Tech and E-Learning professions in order to be exposed to some of their knowledge and the advantages of Twitter.  The Twitter posts could also be a useful source for these blog posts.  Of course I already had a Twitter account, but I created another one for the course.  I say this to let you guys know that I already had experience with Twitter and was aware of its advantages.

So did I get anything out of this exercise, you ask.  Hmm, let's see... Yes, I did.  Initially, I really didn't see the big deal of E-Learning.  No, I take that back.  I do see the importance in it, I just didn't realize that it garnered as much attention as it does.  I'm following so many people in that profession that I didn't realize existed.  Dr. Keane (the professor of this course) frequently retweets  posts from other professionals that are mostly pretty interesting. I also use this Twitter account to follow more tech folks than what I follow on my first Twitter account.  Great source for the latest tech news.  Also faster access to tech news because I have the Twitter app on all my mobile devices.

Now let me visit that Twitter account and see if I can find some material for my next blog post.

Until next time...
 

Wikipedia Experience Follow Up

So about a week ago I blogged about a Wikipedia assignment that's part of the same class that requires me to do this blog.  So we posted our suggestions to the Talk page on the Skype article and we ended up getting feedback a couple of days later.

Here's what the guy said:

"Hi KMobley, you are welcome to expand this article. However, consider the following:
The phrase "beyond its potential frivolous use" is from a subjective point of view. Make sure you write in a neutral style.  I like th exisiting paragraph on educational use, because it is very easy to understand. (e.g.: "Students in different parts of the world are paired off, each is a native speaker of the language that the other wishes to learn. In conversations over Skype they alternate between the two languages"). Your rephrasing might make the paired learning aspect harder to understand.The second paragraph is written like an advertisement. Make sure you avoid ad-style writing"

My team member and myself thought it was hilarious.  These Wiki people really take this stuff seriously!!   And it wasn't just us.  We were discussing our Wiki results with other classmates and they had similar experiences.  They were reading comments that Wiki people had made on other suggestions and they were quite harsh.  People would actually argue on the Talk page.  Whatever happened to the Be Polite guidelines on Wikipedia. Anyway, the feedback that we received seemed to not want us to make any changes to the original article.  Of course we did it anyway (we have to for the course), but we did make a few changes based on his suggestions.  I wouldn't be surprised to see if our additions have been removed.  Let's pause for a second while I check...  Amazing!!!  It's still there!  I'll give it a week.

By the way, all those spelling errors in that quote are all his.

And yes, I refer to the Wikipedia contributors as Wiki people.  It's funny and on point.  LOL

Another E-Learning experience complete.  Until next time...