15/5 April 23, 2008

Well, this is it. Tomorrow is our Studio showcase and the final presentation of our project. It’s been a long road but I believe we have arrived at our destination pretty well intact. This week we worked on polishing up our lesson units as well as supervising our undergraduate students for the post-test, which is part of our formative evaluation.

We were in the company of about 31 of Dr. Powell’s students whom worked through the module and provided us feedback regarding the navigation, learning activities and interactivity. I think they did a very good job letting us know what issues they perceived. Much of it were bugs we already were aware of but it was good to see that our feedback is consistent.

Tomorrow is also my portfolio defense and I am looking forward to being behind that experience also. I’ve been talking quite a bit about the Instructional Technology program with a few of my co-workers. Since being in the program I have had one person begin the program and another who plans to start in the fall. Our school IT person also mentioned that she may be interested in finding out more about the program.

It feels pretty good to be confident and positive about a program like the IDD program. I know I gained a lot of knowledge and I would hope some of my experiences have inspired these few others to pursue this career.

Next week:
1. Enjoy the lull in activity.

15/5 April 16, 2008

It is already time for another 15/5, time is really flying by. This week has been very busy for the Genesis Learning Solutions team. We met on Monday, the 14th with actual camp directors to have them go through our project for content accuracy as well as provide specific feedback on several aspects of the project. I worked with John who was able to share several suggestions of areas that could be improved upon. Several suggestions were things we had been mentioned by our 6200 consultants. So we are in the process of making adjustments.

We had quite a breakthrough with some limitations with our project, thanks to Roman who was able to convert our basic design template into a CSS document. I am not sure what that means exactly, (I never really understood the concept behind CSS) except I know it allows us much more flexibility in adding additional text or graphics.

I am looking forward to getting our work to a more refined state. I noticed while the SME’s were going through the project, there were quite a few issues, especially with navigation and the wordiness of the project. One we can adjust, the other is quite a bit beyond the scope of the project. Now, I can really appreciate Dr. Branch’s detailed description and discussion on the importance of the scope document in project management. Without such guidelines, we could end up doing all sorts of things.

This week:
1. Attend SIG
2. Work on fine tuning Unit 1 (my section)
3. Meet with Dr. Powell’s undergrad’s for the beta testing (Monday)

15/5 April 9, 2008

I admit I’m a little late posting this 15/5, although I don’t have an excuse besides poor time management, I do have a reason. We are so far into the semester and things are beginning to boil. I have completed the guided practice for Unit 1 in our module. We are working on assessment pieces for the module. Our live debut of our module was thankfully pushed back to the 21st instead of the 14th which does give our team a little breathing room.

I was happy to have completed my comprehensive examination on Tuesday, the 8th and now have that behind me. I look forward to the completion of our EDIT 6210 project as well as my EDIT 6190 project.

This week we are heavy into the alpha and beta testing for the project. Myra utilized her Survey Monkey account to provide surveys for the students in Dr. Powell’s class to complete a content pretest. We are also using this to get technical feedback from some of our EDIT 6200 consultants.

Thursday, the 10th is the dress rehearsal for the Studio Showcase which our Genesis Learning Systems team will present the ACA: Business and Finance module for the first time. There is still quite a bit of connecting of pages we need to do as well as adjustments to the content pages.
We will be able to use the technology feedback from our 6200 consultants to help determine what we need to adjust as far as page navigation and interactions. That information is very important and will need to be gathered as soon as possible.

Next week:
1. Studio Showcase dress rehearsal
2. Meet with ACA Directors for SME assessments 4/14
3. Apply results of technology feedback.

15/5 April 1, 2008

This past week has been one of our busiest; from my opinion. Our development continues on our project. My assignment was to provide the example documents and guided practice for Unit One. This is the same unit for which I designed a storyboard so I was glad to work with material I had some familiarity. I am feeling a little overwhelmed due to my program comprehensive is scheduled for next Monday 4/7. Our dress rehearsal is next Thursday 4/10. Our project goes live 4/14. My portfolio defense is coming close and I am very overwhelmed.

I realize, this too shall pass, but I am really ready to be on the other side of all this. At this point I continue to work on my guided practice activities. I am proud of my drag & drop I was able to do in Flash. It was very time consuming but I believe it worked out well. I still have a few little items to clean up but other than that I think it is okay.

Work to do:
1. Finish guided practice.
2. Check content pages for continuity and completeness.
3. Add graphics to content pages.
4. Work on what else is needed.

15/5 March 26, 2008

This week has been very busy first kicking off with a meeting with our client, Dr. Powell. She listened, gave input as well as feedback on our storyboards including interactivity for each of our six units. We made adjustments to the storyboards and decided to meet face to face on Monday the 24th instead of online in Horizon Wimba.

During our Monday meeting we worked on adding content to our web pages. Our homework was to continue in that vein so that we could have adding content completed by our regular meeting Thursday evening. We are getting past the design portion of our project and actually working on the development, which feels pretty good.

This week:
1. Perhaps visit Josh's SIG on 3-D animation.
2. Find graphics to include in project.
3. Decide on example items to include in content.

15/5 March 19, 2008

Although I didn’t write a 15/5 for last week due to my being out of town for two days with 450 8th graders traveling on a bus to Savannah, Ga., much work did go on last week. It was also UGA’s spring break week so we didn’t meet on Thursday as we usually do. Genesis team did meet online in Horizon Wimba, Monday, the 10th and discussed our storyboard activities for the project. I found a website that has good as well as easy to understand examples of various types of storyboards (I’ll make sure to put it in the Studio Wikki) so we adopted a version to use.

We met as a team this Monday, the 17 to go over our storyboard and make it as detailed as possible so when we present it to Dr. Powell, she will be able to visualize our ideas. Well, that’s what we hope will happen. As a result of Monday’s meeting we also must develop pre/post test questions as part of our evaluation process. These questions will be given to a sampling of our target audience. The pretest results will provide us a baseline of the learner’s knowledge and hopefully these results will support our posttest results which will conclude that the students did indeed gain knowledge due to utilizing our product.

We meet with Dr. Powell Thursday evening and will present her with our storyboard, pre/post test questions which she will approve and submit to her students. The next step is to begin building our product and move toward the final project phases.

Next week:
1. Building project framework
2. Design and development of interactivity

15/5's March 5, 2008

This week the Genesis Learning Team is getting closer to where the actual rubber meets the road… the design phase of our project for ACA. I am continuing to get our html. file to a place where we can actually begin to design and import actual content into our webpage. I decided to ask Trudy, one of our great 6200 consultants, to send me the html. file of her screen shot. This hopefully will make this part of the project go a little smoother.

Our presentation of our project for the Studio, I believe, went very well. Roman’s “KeyPoint” presentation (Mac’s version of PowerPoint) was awesome and of course Myra presented the information in excellent fashion. Dr. Powell was present and she again stated her pleasure to be a part of the Studio experience.

This semester is flying by and I’m getting a little anxious about getting everything done. However, worrying will create little assistance in that aspect so I guess just moving forward is the best solution.

This week we are beginning to work on the design portion of our project. I am beginning the storyboard on PowerPoint so we can visualize the feel and interaction of our module. Melinda is working on the assessment piece; Myra is going through the content to section it for inclusion in each webpage. Roman is working on the hardware and software aspects and Radcliff is I believe working on Beta testing components.

This week:
1. Get design ready for webpage
2. Meet Monday in Wimba for updates.

15/5 February 27, 2008

This is also a late entry but at least I can say I’m catching up. This week we met with Dr. Powell who so far seems very pleased with what the Genesis team has proposed for the module. She expressed her desire for the module to have an interesting interface, colorful as well as imaginative graphics which the directors will enjoy seeing which hopefully will promote interest in its use.

The Genesis Learning team also discussed and reviewed the screen design and decided some definite alterations to the original design. Of course I’m still having issues getting the screen shot into a form I can make changes to it but I have asked Trudy to send me the original png. file so I can open it in Fireworks to make adjustments.

The team has several new deliverables we must work on. At this point Radcliff is taking on the Evaluation Plan with Melinda as backup person; the Hardware/Software specifications are being worked on by Melinda with Roman acting as her back up. Myra is continuing her work on the User Profile and of course I’m still struggling with the screen design but I’m determined not to let this get to me.

Next week:
1. Team presentation: Myra and Roman will work on for Thursday.
2. Continue work on assigned tasks.

15/5 February 20th 2008

This is a late entry so although the information pertaining to the week of the 20th, I am getting to it on March 1, 2008. Regardless of the tardiness of the entry, and I do apologize, this should reflect the activity for the week.

My assignment this week seems to be a simple one, I am to use the screen shot Trudian design for the Genesis team and make the changes we have discussed. Well, what may seem simple often has a way of becoming difficult. I spend several hours trying to take the png. file Trudy sent to me and convert it to html.

Trudy mentioned it was just a matter of exporting it as html. into Dreamweaver. However, no matter how many times I try to export, it would not convert into html. I eventually end up attempting to recreate the image in Fireworks for our use but that also doesn’t work well. Since this my first attempt at working with Fireworks and was so far unsuccessful trying to do something I really wanted to do instead of just experimenting, it is a very frustrating experience.
On a more positive note, our team has gotten the sign off on all of deliverables so far. We have a few things to tweak here and there, but for the most part we have gotten the majority of it completed.

We will meet with Dr. Powell tomorrow in team meeting to propose questions about how she envisions the module. We want the module to represent what she believes her camp directors will respond to most positively. In order for this to be a successful prototype for ACA to utilize in the future, it must be something the target audience in this case, the new camp directors, find inviting and user friendly.

Next week:
1. Dr. Powell’s insight on what she would like to see the module become.
2. Look at new deliverables to determine what’s next.
3. Get that screenshot into a usable format.

15/5 February 13, 2008

Our instructional goals/performance objectives document was still on the table for the Genesis Learning team this week. Over the weekend my task was to revise the wording in the document so that it was consistent throughout.

During our Monday evening meeting we tweaked the objectives a tiny bit and then it was off to one of our 6200 consultants for final proofreading and editing.

I’m beginning to see that not being able to work with each other face to face on a daily basis, like in a real job situation, makes keeping a consistent work flow a little more challenging. However, I believe our team keeps everyone in the loop through e-mail and Goggle Docs so we work through that glitch fairly well.

Our next tasks are revising the timeline, developing the user profile, creating a treatment rationale, defining our hardware/software needs, designing a screen design, and forming an evaluation plan. A lot to accomplish but I think we’ll get through it with flying colors.

Thursday in class we and Dr. Clinton will discuss our assigned article by Larson and Lockee which is about aspects to consider as we work toward Instructional Design as a career.

Next week:

1. Work on user profile and treatment rationale
2. Consider questions to propose for Dr. Powell when we meet on Feb. 21st.3. Work on ideas for activities within module.

15/5 February 6, 2008

This week the Genesis Learning team worked on the development of performance objectives based on the instructional goals taken from the Needs Assessment.

There are seven instructional goals which I was responsible for developing numbers 4) Describe basic procedures for handling cash and 5) Identify camp store income, expenses and calculate profit margin.

In my opinion, I’m not sure how appropriate goal 5 is as far as how we will be able to teach someone to identify income. Or perhaps I’m not clear on what we are to teach in this section. I am by no means an SME on finances so I’m not sure if I what I think is pertinent.

However, I think if we word the objective such as:

"Given a list of examples, the CDWBAT identify and categorize income and expenses with at least 80% accuracy. " Written in this fashion I think will work.

We are to meet on Thursday and hash out some of these issues because we would like to present the objectives to Dr. Powell for sign off, so at that time we will come to a consensus.

Next week:

1. Revise performance objectives.
2. Begin development of our instructional strategies.

15/5 January 31, 2008

This week we as a team worked on getting our scope document as well as our needs assessment completed. I worked mostly on the communication portion of the scope document and also touched up a few places.
My other task this week was to go over some of the 6190 projects to prepare for our nominations of the Blue Sock award for the summer session. I also worked on our team stationary for our documentation.
I was very rushed this week due to also having to prepare to go away for my husband’s and my 20th anniversary. Although I didn’t know at the time, we were going to Montego Bay, Jamaica and were there from Saturday until Tuesday. We stayed in a beautiful all inclusive resort called the Bahia Principe in Discover Bay. The resort had only opened in January of 2007, so it was just celebrating its 1st anniversary, so everything was still brand new. It was awesome although short. So thus the reason I hadn’t posted this 15/5 until today.

Coming up this week:
1. Team focus on developing performance objectives.
2. Receiving the sign off from Dr. Powell.

15/5 January 23, 2008

We met with our clients Gwen and Kat on Thursday, January 17 to discuss initial needs, goals, and outcomes for our project. Most of the discussion was geared toward the current BCDC business and finance courses and their ideas for the module. Kat mentioned that a need for the module came from the limited reach of the f2f workshops provided by the ACA for new camp directors. Out of 7000 members approximately 100 participate in the business and finance courses. They also mentioned there is a waiting list for those interested in the training. They will follow-up with additional information which they utilize in their camp directors workshops.

On Tuesday, January 22 we met online and discussed our final and official team logo, how we can lure 6200 class members to serve as consultants, using Google Groups as a means of communication, as well as other documentation issues.

We also decided who on the team would serve as a second for each team position. I will serve as the second for instructional design with Roman. Roman will work as my second on graphic design. My to-do’s before our meeting next week is:

· Continue work on scope document
· Look at/review 6190 projects
· Meet with 6200 class members for consultation positions.

15/5 January 16, 2008

15/5
January 16, 2008
The Studio class which consists of three classes (6190, 6200 and 6210) met today for the first time of the ‘08 spring semester. In some ways, this being my third studio class; it seems familiar and welcoming especially seeing classmates and professors we’ve had in past semesters. In other ways it seems very strange and unfamiliar. Our 6210 group were seated in the “place of honor” and were described in terms of being “experienced”, “seasoned”, and “experts”.
I really can’t say that I feel I have so much experience nor am an expert by any sense of the word. I think having experienced Studio as well as my other IT courses does credit me with some experiences that provide a set of skills I would not have received otherwise.
I heard a student on the radio this morning describing how each of her communication program classes gave the same information over and over. She felt that the only differences were how her instructors assessed her on the information.
I can attest that the IT program definitely imparts a variety of information in each class. I know I have been challenged academically, gain technical skills, have been introduced to and utilized a variety of learning theories all as a part of class lessons and projects. I know that I have gained a great deal of knowledge about instructional design and believe working in EDIT 6210 this semester will give me another opportunity to expand my skill set.
In our 6210 meeting we discussed our personalities and skills and tried to divide ourselves into teams. We seemed to naturally separate into two teams of five and although Dr. Clinton would like smaller teams, I think the groupings will work well. In our meetings, we also determined who would be responsible for specific areas of the project. Myra Blackmon will serve as our project manager, Roman Gaddis is in charge of instructional design, Melinda Pethel is our programmer, Radcliff Campbell will provide leadership as evaluator, and I will specialize in graphic design.
We’ve already started communication through email, and Google docs. Our team met on Horizon Wimba Tuesday, January 15th and put quite a few things in order. We decided a team name which I am very happy with; Genesis Learning. We exchanged email addresses, discussed looking at the skills inventory for the EDIT 6200 participants to see who would fit our needs, start the beginning of our scope document, created a list of questions for our client, Dr. Powell when we meet with her on Thursday, and began examining the ACA (camp organization) goals for our project.
I feel very good about what we’ve accomplished so far. This is the completion of my first 15/5 and although it’s taken me over an hour to write this out due to disruptions, it’s another accomplishment.

Donna Washington

About Me:

I am currently employed with the Fulton County school system as a teacher of students with special needs. I am pursuing a M. Ed in Instructional Technology through the University of Georgia.