Monthly Archives: February 2015

Reflection for 2/23/15 to 2/27/15

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This is the last week for February 2015. It feels like things are flying. I’ve gone through so much since the new year.

There are alot of things that have suddenly appeared on my plate. Many items require less time and management while other things are going to require my focus in the near future. Hopefully, I can set up a plan that helps me to stay balanced.

Basketball is going well. We won on Sunday. We are currently 4-2-1. I’m proud to see the kids playing with purpose and finishing games. Winning our remaining game would be a nice way to put an exclamation point on the season.

It’s been a good start to the week. I’ve been working on keeping the revisions and developments going forward. So far it is working. I’m hoping that this momentum will keep up.

It was a relatively quiet day. I’m hoping that I can have a few more days like this to stay on top of things. I went to a DMT Video meeting. It was good that we were continuing to talk about how to make video meaningful in courses. It’s so easy to put information out there, but are we really meeting the needs of our students when we do this? To me, video needs to be interactive.

Thursday was a good day in that we continued progress on 220. I’m looking forward to having a project document that we can share with the rest of the faculty. But the rubrics are getting somewhere.

It was another 2-hr delay for my kids today. It has been a delay-filled year. I’m hoping that things will move toward spring soon.

It was a productive day in which I was able to plan for an instructor revision meeting and set up a merged section for Summer ’15.

I’m glad that we are moving to a new model for course set up starting in Summer ’15. It will be nice to focus more on design and less on the details of setting up for the semester. But I’m glad to provide any necessary insights.

It was a good week. I’m hoping for more of the same for next week.

Reflection for 2/16/15 to 2/20/15

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Since last week worked out so well, I’m creating this on Friday from the week before the week to be reflected. Hopefully, this pattern will allow me to participate more and be more reflective.

It’s Tuesday afternoon, and I’m just getting back to this. I spent alot of time yesterday on the course that I’m teaching. I’m glad to see my students doing well. It looks zyBooks is working.

I went to two meeting today regarding the future of online learning, both at the College of IST and at the university at large. It makes me feel good that I’m among so many smart and creative people. I’m looking forward to the many changes that we will be going through in the next several years.

It’s Monday 2/23/15, and I’m just getting back to this. It was a good week but busy. In fact, I was here until 5 PM on Friday without even realizing it. I was called away by an emergency which shortened my time and didn’t allow me to finish this.

Hopefully, next week will be a bit more manageable.

Reflection for 2/9/15 to 2/13/15

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I’m starting this up early so that I can get a quicker start on this for next week. I’m hoping that this allows me to spend more time reflecting.

I spent alot of time on Monday getting back into the revision game. There is alot of juggling going on, and I’m a bit wary of all that is up in the air.

IST 220 is concerning me. There isn’t a faculty champion, and there always seems to be a problem that no one is willing to take responsibility for. I’m wondering if we need to give up on labs in the class if this trend continues.  It’s Tuesday, and I got another reminder of how this course is running without a leader. I’m seriously considering how we can do this course without labs.

It was a rough day today. Micah is sick, so I came in late (half day). But the most difficult thing is that I’m working with instructors who refuse to take ownership over their work. It’s easier to rely on others than to actually take responsibility. I’m not going to take responsibility for others anymore.

I’m hoping for a better day tomorrow.

It’s Wednesday, and I’m working through all the things that seemed to be a problem yesterday. We may be to a solution point in 220, but I’m going to communicate out to everyone teaching in Spring ’15 and will see the result.

I had a chance to go the Penn State forum today. I would call it more of a motivational speech. Susan Russell talked about dignity. I think what she is doing and saying is important. We need to connect. It is easy for humans to separate by nature. Mobile devices are only promoting this separation. One point that she made regarded looking people in the eye. I did a test when I came back on campus. I encountered 11 people. Three looked me in the eye. Of those three, two of them looked down immediately after noticing that I was looking at them. I was also thinking about cultural differences.

All in all, it was a good day with some resolution. I’m hoping that tomorrow the momentum keeps moving forward.

Thursday started off with items from EA. I worked with Shawn Clark in the AM on Blackboard Collaborate. It was a bit disappointing to him that pdf’s, word docs, and excel couldn’t be placed on the whiteboard. It is possible to share the file which is like Adobe Connect. The bottom line is that we can share screens if necessary.

The other issue was that there was a reading that was missing from a course, but simply adding the reading to the course caused a copyright violation. Luckily, I was able to navigate and explain the situation properly. Ultimately, we have a problem with the course in that there are too many readings and activities are not tied to the readings. I’m hoping that a switch to Canvas or whatever LMS allows for a conversation to change the design of this course.

I was also able to get 220 labs fixed. But I’m afraid that we may always have items to fix every semester. I also had a chance to look over the preliminary Master plan for the team project. I was able to go through a few things and am looking forward to the discussion with the team about it for more feedback.

I had a lengthy discussion with Rob Lipton about 220, 402 Cloud Computing, and 402 Digital Forensics. It is good to have someone with so much experience to get feedback and perspective from.

All in all a good day. I’m hoping for more of the same on a busy Friday tomorrow.

I had meetings straight from 9A-1P.

I started with a productive meeting with Mike about 220. We are on a good path to get this project done on time. I’m going to try to get feedback from ID’s and instructors to make the best product. The next deliverables due are rubrics for next Thursday.

We had a succinct and well run meeting for the LDI group next. We even finished early.

Next, we met with Mahir Akgun about 402 SMO revision. I’m hopeful that we can revise the course to make it good and finish by the end of July.

Lastly, we had a Faculty Online Luncheon. We had lower attendance than usual, but I think that is because BB Collaborate worked only in Chrome without issue. It was a good discussion about teams.

All in all a good week I hope for more of the same next week.

Reflection for 02/02/15 to 02/06/15

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It’s been a while since I wrote since I got back from vacation on 1/31/15. After getting back, I coached my oldest son’s basketball team and went to Jury selection. Needless to say, it has been a bit crazy since I left for vacation. That has made me think quite a bit about my efficiencies or lack thereof and how “plugged in” I have become since leaving the classroom and entering the Instructional Design world. It is nearly impossible to let email go for even 1 day. I average from 70-100 emails a day in my work account alone. This does not include my personal email. To unplug completely, I would probably be close to 500-700 emails to get through. I’m not sure how someone is to process all of this data in a coherent way. I hope that the next time that I leave for vacation that I have a better process that allows me to unplug during the time.

Today, I caught up with email from yesterday and was able to get a quite a few things done for the class that I’m teaching. Also, I had a chance to talk with a faculty member regarding an upcoming course development (Summer ’15/Fall ’15 for Spring ’16 implementation). It looks like we will need to touchbase with IT to see if the exercises for the course can be completed in vlabs or VHOL.

Anil and Chris also created a few ideas for John Bagby’s image for Big Data.

I also set up a meeting for Thursday with Mike Manjolovich for a revise on the IST 220 Course Project.

Hopefully, we can get things going and complete all projects on time.

It’s Saturday, and I’m finishing this up since I didn’t have time on Thursday or Friday. The meeting with Mike went well and we have follow-up meetings set for the next three Thursdays.

Unfortunately, we haven’t resolved 220 Cloudshark issue. I’m thinking the faculty have fixed the issue for their courses, but that still doesn’t excuse the person that I trusted to put together the activities for not making fixing this a priority. I guess I learned a lesson about trusting this person for the future.

We had meetings concerning consistency that took up about 2-3 hours this week. I’m glad that we are discussing this, but I’m having a hard time concentrating on all of the details surrounding this. I’m glad to see that we are taking a collaborative approach to making decisions on this matter.

I’m hoping for a week next week that involves more time for me to play with my new computer. It is a Dell Venue Pro 11. I like that it is small and easy to carry around. I have stations for everywhere I go. The question is whether it will have the power for me to do all that I need to do. I’m hopeful the answer is yes.