Coming to an end…

So here we are at the end of our Constructivist journey…and I’m still processing everything.

Looking back on the first day of class, I admit I was scared half to death.  I am a person who needs structure in the classroom – give me assignments and due dates and I am okay.  Without those things, I do not thrive, that’s why I only took one online class through the World Campus, I need that person in the front of the room guiding the class.  I still need those things, but my eyes are now open to a different way – the constructivist way.  I feel like we have come a long way as a class from that first day a month and a half ago.  We have built our “safe” environment and have tested our ideas out on one another.  Today is my day to “test” my idea.  I actually have a bad feeling about my lesson.  It’s very different, in fact if I wanted to, I really wouldn’t have to do anything other than put a url on the board and let everyone go.  See, in my work environment, I hardly ever meet any of my end-users or conduct face to face training.  It’s all online and e-learning.  So I went out on a limb and created an e-learning course that is self-guided.  It’s sort of a cross between a webquest and an e-learning course.  You can check it out here for the next 30-days…cate’s demo lesson.  I worked really hard on it and hope that it works out okay, but I already know I’m probably going to get feedback that it’s not really constructivst.  But that leads me to the question, if self-directed e-learning isn’t constructivist that how can you do constructivism through e-learning.  I guess that it’s my attempt at sprinkling it into my work environment the best that I could.  Let me know what you think…

I actually downloaded the trial versions of the new Articulate products to create this lesson.  I have it posted on Articulate’s Online server which is pretty cool.  I can track who visits and see which part of the course was accessed the most.  Maybe in my debrief I’ll go over the tool alittle bit.  For those who don’t have a formal LMS system, this seems like a good alternative.

Okay, got to leave for class now…if any of you read this before class, please no sneak-peaking.  I want you all to see this at the same time.

This week…

I’m not entirely sure what to write this week…it’s been a bit crazy.  Last week’s class was interesting.  We definitely saw two totally different examples of constructivism – one very radical and one that would be a more realistic “sprinkling” in my corporate environment.  It was good to see both sides but it definitely got my head spinning and I began to rethink what I was going to do for my lesson.  It does seem like everyone is using the tactic of having the class divide itself and make some kind of exhibit.  I want to go in another direction.  I have a new idea but I’m not sure if it’s constructivist enough.  I’ll have to run it by Amy and see what she thinks but hopefully it will work out.  I agree with Ceil though, there is a lot of pressure for going last…you have all set a very high bar.

I also was very confused about what a webquest was.  These are not used in the corporate world so I could not understand the need for a rubric, I wanted to put quiz questions or some type of assessment that would be self-directed.  I wanted to be able to do it in Articulate Engage and add in some Quizmaker quiz questions.  After getting some help from Kevin, I now have a much better grasp on what is involved in a Webquest and in what context they would be used.  I’m actually pretty excited about the webquest I created and will be posting it hopefully by the end of the weekend.

Work has been busy this week.  I have been converting some power points made by other work groups into online learning in Articulate.  In addition, I published my first brand-new course to my lms and am now involved with training the HR department on how to use the 360 degree assessment portion of the LMS.  That’s what’s been making my head spin for the week…I might update later in the weekend…

Hope everyone is having a good week

Procrastinator

One of my biggest problems is that I am a procrastinator…it’s something that I have known for a long time and try to overcome, but most of the time I know I probably won’t.  So when it comes to blogging regularly like I should…I procrastinate.  I know I’ll eventually get around to it but, because I’m such a bad procrastinator I know it won’t be any time soon.  I think that is my biggest challenge with constructivism…you can’t be a procrastinator, and I am.  So I am apologizing for my lack of blogs recently…hopefully I will make up for it with the loads of links I am going to put in here…

First off here is a copy of our second-life-presentation we gave in class this week.  I thought the presentation went well and the rest of the class seemed very receptive to the information and the use of Second Life.  Yes, it does have some quirks, such as spending hours creating your avatar and having to wait for the different environments to download onto your screen, but it seems to have it’s advantages as well.  I would be interested to see an actual live demonstration of a training session conducted in Second Life, it just amazes me what is happening with the technology available today.  I was actually talking to some technical trainers from Big Brothers & Big Sisters today and they wanted me to forward them our presentation because they are trying to get their department involved with Second Life.  Who knew that it was such a training phenomenon…

Secondly, I promised you all some of the downloads/presentations from the Articulate User’s Conference that I attended last week.  I finally forwarded the info to my personal laptop so here you go.  Here are all of the power point presentations/pdfs from the day’s speakers:10-things-you-need-to-know-v2003; extending-the-community-online-v2003; links-to-tutorials-and-tips; phil-in-philly; rapid-learning-tips-for-dist; toms-tips-and-tricks-v2003; making-of-pallet-jack-article; solving_nagging_training_problems.  Hopefully some of these will be able to help some of you.  And don’t worry if you don’t use Articulate there are still some helpful hints/tools that you might be able to use about Power Point and e-learning in general in the presentations.  Also here are some Power Point Templates that they made available to us that you might be able to use: taimma_objection_handling_dr_office_v20_2008_09_15; template_e-mersion-v2003.  I have more but I actually can’t figure out how to upload them at the moment…gotta love technology…so if I can figure it out I will post them, if not please feel free to contact me and I should be able to email them to you.

I guess that’s all for this week.  I’m looking forward to seeing everyone’s presentations in class tomorrow.  Last week’s were all so impressive, I can only imagine what we are going to learn about next.  Until the morning…

Web 2.0

So the Tool Time presentations in class this past week were very cool.  I really enjoyed Oscar and Kevin’s presentation about Diigo.  I had never even heard about this website before and thought it might be a good tool to use in the office.  My boss was out at corporate headquarters last week, and on Monday when she was back at our office I got the chance to talk with her about possibly using this application.  She also is very interested in Web 2.0 applications and had never heard of Diigo but had used Delicious before.  She was up for trying it out and I think this coming week we are going to be setting up our accounts. 

Since we also have a new member of our training department who is going to be based at headquarters in Minnesota we decided to have a weekly meeting about Web 2.0 applications and which ones we can use to communicate better with one another.  I am really excited to see the relationship between school and work grow as I get further involved with this course.  Hopefully I will get to show my co-workers some cool new tools and applications to use to better improve and grow our department.  I’m sorry I am going to miss this week’s presentations and hopefully will be able to learn about the different applications through other classmates’ blogs and the posting boards.

This week was very busy at work as our new co-worker was out from Minnesota to train for a week.  It was one of her first times in Philadelphia so my boss wanted to make sure we did a lot of team building.   One night we took advantage of Philadelphia’s Restaurant Week and went to 1225 Raw.   For those of you that enjoy sushi, I highly recommend this restaurant.  The service was great and the food was out of this world.  We all ordered something different and sampled each others and agreed everything was fabulous.  After dinner we took our out-of-town guest on a driving tour of the city and ended up at the Comcast Center’s Comcast Experience.  It was truly amazing and I highly recommend that you go and check it out.  Using our “tools” that we learned about last week I even found this pictureon Flickr.

As I said I won’t be in class this week, but I will be there next week and Tara and I will be doing our Tool Time presentation about Second Life.  I’ll also be doing my Individual Lesson, so this will be a very busy week trying to finalize both presentations.  I’m also going to the Articulate Users Conference that Jaff mentioned in class last week and look forward to sharing what I learn there maybe in my next post.

Until then…

Welcome to the World of Blogging

So this is my first journey into the world of blogging.    It is a little overwhelming, but I have a feeling I will soon become addicted to it and will start posting quite often.  I don’t want to look at this as an assignment I have to do for my INSYS 527, Constructivism class.  I want to approach it as a fun new experience, something that is taking me out of my comfort zone a little bit. 

I am really looking forward to seeing some of the presentations in class this week about Web 2.0 technologies.  I don’t really know anything about a lot of the technology that was just briefly touched on last week in class.  Twitter is one of the applications that I remember hearing about very briefly in my EDPSY 421 class, but I had never checked it out before.  I decided it check it out and I found an interesting blog/tutorial of how to use Twitter in a business environment.  I’m not sure if I will do it or could incorporate it into my corporate environment, but it is interesting to learn about and see how some people use it.

Our tool-time presentation is going to be about Second Life.  I also heard of Second Life mentioned in some of my past courses, but truly did not know anything about it.  Recently, I remember seeing on the news a story about a woman being arrested after attempting to kidnapp her “virtual” boyfriend.  I could not understand how an on-line environment like that could be an asset to corporate training.  After starting my research though, I am finding out that this “virtual world” is alot different than my first original judgement.  I’m not going to post any links now because I don’t want to spoil the presentation, but there is some really cool things going on in this application.

Well unfortunately I don’t have much else to say tonight…I’m feeling a little under the weather.  I originally thought it was my fall allergies kicking in, but now I’m starting to think I might have caught a cold from my 3 year old nephew. 

Can’t wait to see what this week’s class brings.  Hopefully I’ll be feeling a little better in the morning.

PS – The picture up at the top of my page is one of my favorites.  I had been at an event for work one gray and rainy day and was on my way home when the sky started to clear.  I happened to have my camera with me and I stuck my hand out my sunroof and took the picture.  It doesn’t really do it justice, but I was amazed that it turned out as well as it did