Contributions
Semester One and Week One:
Week Beginning
8/26/02
While trying to come together as a team Rob Moss and I propose to the
TTAC group that we consider using iVisit
to communicate as a team in real time online if needed. Rob and I had
used iVisit in previous course work as a collaborative tool to share ideas.
The nice thing about iVisit is that it will work to connect PCs and Macs
for text, audio or streaming video dialogue or a combination of all of
them. Everyone seemed to think this might be a good approach later on
in the term if and when we may not be meeting so much as we are now face
to face. So later on if needed Rob or I would set up an account for everyone
and we with have an established method of communicating together remotely.
I went to the STAR Multimedia
Lab in the Johnson Center to find out about workshops that would be offered
during the semester. I got there a little early since they had not yet
published their schedule. I got their web address (media.gmu.edu)
and during one of our 791 meetings that week I announced what information
I had gotten about upcoming workshops (not yet scheduled). I also gave
out the web address for the lab so they could monitor for workshops they
want to take.
During my "shield presentation" I announced to the class that
I was forming a group of regular GYM advocates to balance out all the
mental work we would be doing with some physical activities. Ever since
that time people frequently check with me to see who is going when to
the GYM to do what? It's nice to have the opportunity to build friendships
and teams by working out or swimming. Now we frequently carpool to the
aquatic center and have the opportunity to get to know each other on a
fun and informal basis and talk through Immersion ideas and issues outside
of the classroom (which sometimes can be very productive). These experiences
have also helped some of us feel tighter as a team.
Week Two:
Week Beginning 9/02/02
I have been involved with the web team since the second week of the term
and as of week four I have become co-webmaster
with Trista. The Webmaster positions do not rotate and are permanent
for the whole semester. This will be an ongoing contribution I will make
every week through the end of the term. On a regular basis Trista or I
or both of us will make modifications to the Fall 2002 T/TAC site by adding
new pages, links or capabilities as requested by the team as well as regular
postings that happen several times per week. I am starting to feel comfortable
with my web skills and am already seeing improvement in HTML authoring
skills and my confidence about the whole process.
Week Three:
Week Beginning 9/9/02
During initial meeting with Amie Fulcher I had a line of questions for
her about the technology baseline of the T/TAC audience. It turned out
she had no information on data of any sort concerning this and Brenda
confirmed that this was the case. This lead to the enlargement of the
question; it moved into the realm of inquiry. Research was done and revealed
that this issue had never been a part of any T/TAC performance analysis.
Our T/TAC team decided that this issue needed to be investigated. I volunteered
to work with Claudette, Rob Parrott and Phil to do initial evaluation
for T/TAC
Performance Analysis. My role was to address the technical
issues. I submitted my inquiry structure that served as the first foundation
of inquiry into technical aspects of the T/TAC project for this phase
or any other previous phase.
I became CO-chair of the Technology Subgroup team and provided the seminal
questions to structured the baseline of inquiry for the team (see
agenda from first meeting).
I have also taken on the data collection of education technology statistics
with my CO-chair Cindy.
I have also focused my time in another Technology Subgroup for special
education teachers and their educational technology use in Virginia. For
this project Rob Parrot and I combined questions we both came up with
to create a questionnaire
to collect data from Special Education Teachers. We will compile
this data and create the educational technology findings
document for Virginia Special Education Teachers (Rob compiled
the data)
I spent time learning from Lisa while contributing to the T/TAC Project
Web Flow Chart for the Web Team.
Week Four:
Week Beginning 9/16/02
During a meeting with our T/TAC group I was thinking out loud in front
of Brenda and the team. I proposed that we build PCD project into an element
of T/TAC like one of the "Webshops" for our 797
final project (I had the pleasure of designing the most of
the layout and GUI with Cindy adding needed refinements and functionality
you will see similarities with the final Webshops iteration of T/TAC
Phase 5). The proposal was well received and Brenda and others
complemented me for my idea on the team. I guess this is yet another example
of "enlargement" of an idea to a proposal and potential element
of the T/TAC site.
Toward the end of the week Trista went out of town so before she left
she got me up to speed on all T/TAC web issues she was aware. We also
made me the main point of contact on the web pages. I had some trial and
errors while feeling thought new postings, site modifications, and linking
everyone's portfolio pages to the T/TAC
team members page and re-positing content to the FTP site.
The work provided some good learning experiences.
Week Five:
Week Beginning 9/23/02
I am becoming more comfortable with my Webmaster skills so as Trista needs
to cut back on time devoted to the T/TAC website (she has done so much
already she can easily coast for a while) I will become the main point
of contact for all issues. My guess is Trista will continue to keep actively
involved even though she says she won't (she likes being involved and
busy). During the last few weeks I have continued to have Trista look
over my shoulder or check my work when I do anything major on the site
but I feel more comfortable on my own now.
During meeting with Mary Wilds She talked anecdotally about how approximately
one half of the teachers she trained over the summer in workshops were
inexperienced at even logging onto the Internet. This prompted me to ask
if this was in fact the case is the T/TAC site to support and train these
people even and appropriate tool for them? Brenda thanked me for asking
the question and then Mary proceeded to say but they will "get it"
but it will take some time and training "this is the tool that they
need." This made me think that perhaps my earlier proposal to the
T/TAC team to make "Webshops" to teach teachers about technology
might be the best first steps to help train the audience on necessary
technology skills. If the teachers don't have these basic skills to access
the future Assistive Technology and Behavior oriented "Webshops"
what use will they be to 50% of the audience? In all honesty I do think
Mary may have exaggerated this number but it was a point that got our
attention and reaffirmed the need to teach some technology in the first
"Webshops".
After our meeting with Mary was over I continued with a few questions
I had for her about 508 compliance and some ideas. This lead me to propose
that she look at a multimedia tool that might be a good authoring application
for 508 compliance while delivering text, audio, and video to learners
simultaneously. I also told Mary that the CODEC employed by the application
creates tiny streaming media files (less than 30 MB for about 10-12 minute
presentations). Mary was very excited about the possibilities so I promised
to get her a sample of what the "Producer"
authoring tool can do. I will be sending her a CD from a previous project
I have done with the multimedia-authoring tool.
Posted more content to the T/TAC Project site.
Helped Claudette for about 45 minutes with Photoshop techniques and tips
for elements of her website.
Finally I understood some elements of EDIT 772 (Database Class) so I arranged
to come in on Friday AM to help Rob, Rob and Trista for two hours on the
class assignment for the next week.
Week six:
Week Beginning 9/30/02
Brenda asked if any of our team would be interested in doing a presentation
on "Communities of Practice" by Wenger et al. There was some
interest at first but no one but Trista and I perused the task. On Tuesday
we were supposed to do the presentation but Trista and I insisted we needed
more than 15 minutes available at end of schedule so we were given 40
minutes, which lead to an hour-long presentation the following day. Trista
and I presented the nuggets of knowledge this extra reading has to offer
to our T/TAC team, Brenda, Howard and a Ph.D. candidate from Georgetown.
Brenda commented on the deep level of thinking that we had addressed about
communities of practice and said we had raised the bar on in class presentations
(that was nice to hear).
Link to our Communities
of Practice Presentation.
I helped Rob Moss for two hours as he worked through a 772 exercise that
we couldn't figure out in class.
Work done in Edit 704 this week: see Situated Cognition Exercise with
iMac video editing. Power
Point Presentation
Brought in watermelon and two bags of Starbucks ground coffee for presentations
two teams gave to each other on Wednesday.
Volunteered to become a member of the initial usability team to help develop
the usability preliminary questions and purpose.
Week Seven:
Week Beginning 10/7/02
Met with Rob Moss to discuss video needs for usability testing and how
final elements might be presented. I went over to the STAR LAB in the
Johnson Center to determine what hardware and software they had for digitizing
video and then outputting clips to CD. I spent about an hour evaluating
the equipment for use next week.
I updated reservation needs for video cameras and tripods to be used for
usability testing.
Committed a couple hours to work with other members of our T/TAC Staff
Usability Group to help define test procedures. See
tests. Added a few minor web elements to T/TAC Project Site.
Contributions 791 Week Eight
Week Beginning 10/14/02
Rob Parrott and I met
at 7 AM in the Commerce Lab parking lot to drive together down to James
Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA to meet Debbie Yancey and Richard
Boon (JMU T/TAC Coordinators). We talked to them about the T/TAC Online
work we have been doing as a public relations building effort while on
site to administer
usability tests of the online site. Rob was primary tester
for each of the subjects and I video taped their progress throughout the
testing. The video taping was done to refer back to when compiling findings
and to possibly be included as some streaming media clips for future presentations
(some material was imbedded into a PowerPoint presentation given to the
Assistive Technology Taskforce on October 28th in Richmond, VA.
See
AT Taskforce Presentation.
Trista is continuing to let me run with the Webmaster duties and I am
really enjoying the work. This week I posted all the Usability
testing documents to date on the T/TAC Project (approximately
20 documents with descriptions). This took about two hours to do since
the additions to the site were causing some format problems on the web
page I had to trouble shoot too.
Worked with the rest of the T/TAC team to review usability study findings
and develop personas. Based upon the studies we developed personas for
T/TAC Staff and Special Education Teachers. After about an hour or so
we had developed
two personas for us to focus on as we
continue to work on our T/TAC Project.
Cindy was sick on Wednesday and it was her turn to be facilitator for
our weekly group meeting on Thursday. I spoke with Rob Moss and created
the agenda for the meeting and sent it out that night. We decided if she
was still sick the following day I would facilitate the meeting. Cindy
came the next day and thanked me for covering the agenda and she asked
if I would still facilitate the meeting since she was still not feeling
well. So, I ran the meeting.
Worked briefly with Rob Moss and Deana to draft the layout and design
of a project
tracking calendar to go up onto
our website (Rob did most of the work and maintained that part of the
Phase 5 site for the entire term).
Proposed idea of the insomnia tag team concept to get projects done early
and to economize time (no significant action taken on proposal).
Spent 4 hours logging video taped usability studies from James Madison
University and then worked with Rob Moss to encode/ digitize video clips
to be used to support the need for several redesigns for the T/TAC Online
Website.
Contributions 791 Week Nine
Week Beginning 10/21/02
Spent several hours during
several days (approximately 8-9 hours) logging, digitizing and creating
digital video clips from usability testing. Finished with clip file sizes
optimized for acceptable compression quality for viewing during Assistive
Technology Task Force meeting next week.
Later in the week I went over to Rob Moss’s house to add a few more
clips to our selection of video clips to choose from for the task force
meeting. I then drove to the GMU to deliver clips burned to CD to Trista
for her to imbed into the power point presentation.
Spent several hours doing initial
Use Cases for content management to present to other team mates
Lucinda and Trista.
Contributions 791 Week Ten
Week Beginning 10/28/02
Presented a brief overview of events at Assistive Technology meeting at
group meeting composed of T/TAC and NSF teams.
Presented Use Cases to T/TAC Team on Content
Management.
Submitted 7 individual thoughts and considerations about design and navigation
of website into the several boxes we used to break down elemental considerations
for improvements.
Worked on Adobe PDF and MS Power Point accessibility issues with Trista
and Lucinda. This resulted in my calling Adobe and talking to several
of their staff until someone could fully appreciate the issues we are
attempting to address; ideally solve. See
Section 508 Document
Later in the week I presented the accessibility findings to the team (no
formal electronic document exists currently).
Invited the entire NSF and T/TAC immersion and some part-time students
to my house for a costume party. Nine students showed up at the party
and we had a great time spending casual time together.
Contributions 791 Week Eleven
Week Beginning 11/04/02
Contributed to use cases for database oriented login, archive, delete
content and auto delete.
Lucinda, Trista and I worked together for much of this work.
Contributions 791 Week Twelve
Week Beginning 11/11/02
Contributed to group effort on standardization of Visio flow chart conventions.
Booked time in Star Lab to teach Immersion Team basics of digital video.
Drafted flow charts for encoding/ digitizing and editing with Adobe Premiere
to give to participants to help them visualize the entire post-production
process.
Handed out Adobe Premiere flow charts to participants: Andrea Chen, Peter
Huffer, Rebecca Clark, and Trista Schoonmaker. See flow charts 1,
2,
and 3
for digital video.
Co-taught with Rob Moss the basics of digital video to the participants.
The workshop was held for two hours.
Lucinda and I met with Amie Fulcher to go over content management schema
and logic to material given to us from Amie.
Contributions 791 Week Thirteen
Week Beginning 11/18/02
Presented draft of visual
concepts for toolbar in order to prompt dialog and different
considerations for visual representations in Webshops section of T/TAC
Online.
Contributions 791 Week Fourteen
Week Beginning 11/25/02
Spent time focusing on layout, redesign and refinement of T/TAC Online
visual considerations with Deana.
Set up folder system on P Drive with Lucinda to manage new files and wire
frames/ storyboards going to our programmer Shuangbao.
Contributions 791 Week Fifteen
Week Beginning 12/02/02
Volunteered to do wire frames/ storyboards for all of the future Webshop
Creation pages and for both the teacher and T/TAC Staff sides of the website
(16 pages in all) and created the certificate of completion for teachers
finishing a Webshop for credit. Worked with Claudette to make a few example
Webshop pages populated with graphics and text to serve as examples
of completed pages for the final presentation on December 11th.
Got the pages into our programmer in time to have the new content integrated
into most recent version of website.
Rob Parrott and I finished our 797
paper for Gary Dickelman on DVD Menu Accessibility.
Contributions 791 Week Sixteen
Week Beginning 12/09/02
Spent several hours on Thursday and Friday of the week to post final content,
status report, and updated files to T/TAC
Phase 5 Website. The site now to includes all content created
over the Fall 2002 term and new content created during the last few days
of the semester.
Semester Two and Week One:
Week Beginning 1/21/03
Weather I mention
this or not in the contributions section, during every week I spend some
time working on and updating the T/TAC
Project Site for Phase 6 . I spent about a day and a half setting
up the new FTP site and web pages for the T/TAC Phase 6 Project site which
I will be the webmaster of for the semester (possible help may come from
Claudette and Rob Moss).
Contributions 792 Week Two
Week Beginning 1/27/03
As a team we
worked on defining our
semester goals, the client goals and how we can make them compatible
and intersect. We spent time focusing our reading and discussions on evaluation
strategies for projects and learning and usability studies.
I was given a few HTML modifications to do for templates and colors within
our T/TAC Online project site.
Since no one has been able to meet I have taken it upon myself to create
the new project site for the team for this semester as well as the new
Phase 6 logo. On Thursday I spent 8 hours on the TTAC Phase 6 website
and got it linked to the GMU Immersion site as well as create its structure
and links. This was a lot of work but it will make the rest of the semester
easier to post and update the site.
Contributions 792 Week Three
Week Beginning 2/3/03
This week we worked through three things 1) the creation of goals
for the semester and 2) how we might build buzz and 3) how to help build
an online community.
On the fifth we had a very helpful meeting with Brenda who helped us reign
in and organize what seemed like a huge unmanageable list of thoughts
and goals
which resulted in a methodical list of goals and focuses and the creation
of an image map to show the interrelatedness.
Saturday I attended the Hellen Kellar Institute for Human disAbilities
and TAM conference and workshops to learn more about section 508 assistive
technology and to create some "buzz" about the TTAC Online project.
I created an electronic modified version of the image map that we developed
during our meeting with Brenda.
I continued to refine our phase 6 project website (I spent about four
hours working to develop the project website).
Contributions 792 Week Four
Week Beginning 2/10/03
I contributed ideas and questions to think about to both presentations
during the week.
I gained new found knowledge transfer from aspects of my old profession
to Knowledge Management. I contributed to the Conversation about SCORM
and its need for domain and pedagogical grounding during the ADL's presentation
in the commerce lab.
Other things I did: got a sympathy card for Deana and a card and cake
for Lucinda's Birthday.
Contributions 792 Week Five
Week Beginning 2/17/03
Most of this week we were out of school due to heavy snow but
I was able to review and modify usability scenarios for teachers. I also
spent five hours on the T/TAC Project site adding pages, content and links.
Contributions 792 Week Six
Week Beginning 2/24/03
I can't recall any significant
contributions this week. Things really slowed, almost to a halt, because
of the heavy snow we have been getting- its a record year.
Contributions 792 Week Seven
Week Beginning 3/3/03
I helped Deana collect and sort content material for the development
of an example
Webshop to go onto our website. I was team scribe this week so I took
notes at the meetings this week and have posted the material on the project
website.
I also went through "Edit
Webshop" to find errors on the site or any inconsistencies. As
the Team Coordinator I was asked by a team member to talk through some
frustrations she was having with another member and difficult dynamics
she had encountered. This meeting helped blow off steam and readied me
for a possibly difficult conversation with the other party.
Other contributions this week were the two pages of problems I documented
on the website and the new material I posted to our project site.
Contributions 792 Week Eight
Week Beginning 3/10/03
I feel well prepared for talking about MS
Producer at the March 20th meeting. I partnered with and helped Mary
Wilds while she was on site (during spring break) to populate webshops
with assistive technology material. I documented a range of errors in
the webshops section of TTAC Online.
How do you feel about this weeks activities?
I also came in the afternoon on Tuesday and at 9 AM on Wednesday (during
spring break) to be support and help to Mary Wilds while she got content
together for webshops. I also researched all the available material for
" MS Producer" in preparation for my presentation in Richmond.
We all divided up into subgroups and worked to trouble shoot and test
the site for bugs.
Contributions 792 Week Nine
Week Beginning 3/17/03
I collected my material for " MS Producer" in preparation
for my presentation in Richmond. Rob Moss and I went down to Richmond
a day early to meet the on-site AV Engineer (Richard Schley) and to set
up for the camera switcher and Mini DV recording from three different
inputs. Poor timing resulted in Richard having a visit to the hospital
on the day we were to present training for the TTAC Online website so
we wanted to make sure that everything was in perfect shape while we had
a small window of opportunity to work with Richard. We also setup the
30 PCs in the training room with proper browser settings and training
material loaded onto the desktops. When there was a need for individual
help in our training classroom I helped learners work through any problems
they encountered and then returned to my video work. I was well prepared
for talking about MS Producer at the March 20th meeting (which I was asked
to do impromptu). I videotaped the entire training in Richmond and shared
camera-switching responsibilities with Rob Moss.
Contributions 792 Week Ten
Week Beginning 3/24/03
I proposed that in the interest of time savings we try to look
at all deliverables and projects in the aggregate to be completed in the
next few weeks to try to make as many tasks serve as multiple solutions
for related work – double dipping. The thing that was most obvious
to me was integrating more pedagogical re-engineering with Lucinda and
Brenda’s interest in a new video element to promote T/TAC Online.
After some consideration, I proposed a solution that satisfied our video
and media needs for: our Innovations competition, a T/TAC Online introduction
to the site and a media project that is Section
508 Compliant as well as an element for our final presentation. I
then suggested we satisfy all of these needs with Microsoft Producer.
These considerations shaped the resulting plan and were all integrated
in to the project.
During a meeting with the team and Brenda I pitched the idea of the Immersion
Program sponsoring a Community of Practice for Instructional Design Students
– past, present and future. Brenda really liked the idea and asked
what I needed to make it happen. She also said, "Anything you need
just let me know; we should practice what we preach"
I said I needed server space on a GSE server. Brenda promptly told Raymond
to get me whatever I needed to get the site started and she then said
that there might be some funding available to help me.
I spent some time working with Claudette getting her familiar with the
T/TAC Project site so she will feel comfortable taking over the webmaster
work for the last few weeks of the semester. I will officially hand the
site off to her next week so she has the opportunity to do some of this
work and have the experience of being a webmaster.
I was meeting facilitator this week so I ran what a very quick and informal
meeting that consisted primarily of updates and a few new tasks for subgroups.
There really was not much else on the agenda.
Contributions 792 Week Eleven
Week Beginning 3/31/03
We were supposed to meet with Kristine Neuber to start our Section
508 Plan but the meeting was canceled and moved to a future unknown date.
I spent some time looking through the W3C
guidelines for Section 508 Compliance and started to sketch out a
rough plan for the task of making T/TAC Online compliant- there is a lot
to do!
Contributions 792 Week Twelve
Week Beginning 4/7/03
Members of our team had a working
lunch following our time in the Assistive Technology Lab to think through
more issues related to our T/TAC Online project.
I took lots of notes and asked several questions about T/TAC and scripting
issues as they relate to compliance.
In my role as team coordinator I reported during our team meeting on our
current funds for expenses, we voted on what we special things we would
do for Brenda, Brenda and Shuangbao at the end of the semester. I estimated
what the per person contribution would be and started collecting money.
I then began making some phone calls to get solid prices. In the next
couple of weeks I will finish taking care of these arrangements.
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Contributions 792 Week Thirteen
Week Beginning 4/14/03
I created a metadata list of terms and words that I thought should
go into the index page of T/TAC Online in order to make this site more
high profile in web search engines. I will get this material to our Programmer
so that he can add it to the page or I may just add it while I work with
him to make T/TAC Section 508 compliant.
I worked with Deana and Claudette to create our
official Section 508 Compliance Plan based upon material from the
Access Board, and the W3C materials found on their websites as well as
two books: Maximum Accessibility, and Building Accessible Websites.
I helped Deana do some redesigning and content editing of the posters:
Section
508 Compliance , About
T/TAC, User
Centered Design, and Pedagogical
Reengineering for the Innovations Competition. These posters will
also be used by Lucinda for other events.
Contributions 792 Week Fourteen
Week Beginning 4/21/03
This week was just like the good old days in Television. Rob Moss
and I teamed again for another media event. It was also an opportunity
to share our studio production and post-production skills with Lucinda
and Deana. We prepared to use the GMU studio in the STAR Lab on Wednesday
but after several hours of us helping the staff figure things out, we
gave up and made arrangements to shoot our video production in a real
television studio in Arlington on Thursday. Deana and Lucinda got some
pointers in studio camera operation, audio, lighting, talent directing
and teleprompting while Rob and I did our work.
At the end of the day Deana was a seasoned TelePrompTer and Lucinda was
getting comfortable with being the talent. Saturday Deana and I went over
to Rob’s to put the video he digitized into Microsoft Producer to
index parts of the script for random accessing elements and to work on
synchronous text with the video to make the project 508 compliant. This
process took about three hours.
On Monday Rob wanted to refine the elements more so we spent another 3-4
hours on it in the Commerce Lab only to loose all of our work at the end.
Rob and I decided it was time to quite and come back to the work later.
The next day Rob had redone the package and had it to show the team. This
was a good week and it prompted some conversation about Rob and I teaming
and working together after we graduate.
Contributions 792 Week Fifteen
Week Beginning 4/28/03
This week I offered some constructive criticism of the Innovations
Brochure, I ran several T/TAC pages through WAVE
to check for accessibility issues, I worked with Shuangbao and Kristine
Neuber on Tuesday with Claudette to start running pages through RAMP
to check accessibility issues and to correct them on the HTML pages of
the site (not the .ASP pages which are tied to the database functions).
I also realized that Shuangbao may have to re-script pages so that the
database code resides elsewhere with the help of anchor tags; this would
make the content readable for screen readers like JAWS
or Opera. Moving the database script off the pages would also help pull
out images and graphics from the middle of this confusing code so that
ALT tags can be read.
On Tuesday I stayed for the
Immersion Open House to help recruit new participants and to answer questions
that the prospective students had. I hope I was helpful, I certainly was
enthusiastic about the program.
Wednesday my shift was the last one manning the T/TAC booth at Innovations
Lucinda, Trista, Deana and Brenda also were on the scene. We were all
anxious to hear the announcement that T/TAC was a winner this year but
it unfortunately it didn’t happen. I talked to a couple people about
our project and then helped breakdown the booth and take an easel and
computer back with me.
Contributions 792 Week Sixteen
Week Beginning 5/5/03
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