…for me to fall off the blogging bandwagon, now did it? It is certainly one of those cases where no news is *not* good news, sadly. I have several articles in different stages of completeness that I hope to flesh out and post, but life and work is, well, life and work. I am still looking and reading when I have the opportunity, and updating links and blogs as i find them useful. Don’t give up on me yet!
18
Jun
The Tao of Blogging
The prerequisite “blog about the blogging experience”…
First off, no, I do not intend to maintain the rate I had last week- I just had a backlog in my head and it’s taking a while to catch up. That said, how often I post will be directly relational to how much time life allows me to evaluate and introspect. I tentatively plan to post something significant at a minimum every other week (this post doesn’t count, heh). I’m hoping that’s a realistic expectation, but time will tell.
Basically, I think keeping this as an open playground to test things out and decide whether they are useful or not is the way to go. That said, if something goes away that’s useful for YOU, please let me know. Conversely, if something appears to suck massively, please tell why you think so- constructive criticism will be considered. Non-constructive criticism will be dealt with as it should. ;}
Mostly, I think right now that I’m still in the “sponge” stage- poring through data and soaking up info. I’ve fallen out of the loop on some things, and on other things I was never in the loop in the first place. This eclectic sampling is opening up some interesting questions for me though, and I suspect that getting back in the habit of research will come in handy when I go for my next degree- what degree I’m not entirely sure yet, but an MA in Instructional Design currently looks appealing. That may change, however.
I’m also hoping this blog will help fill a personal need for professional development- after 2 years at UCF in EdTech I foolishly thought we would be past various technological challenges so that I could include focus on assessment and development. Ha! After 10 years in this field, I should know better, right? And there’s nothing like managing a service desk (of any size) to keep you running from fire to fire, until the end of day when you end up in bed with a bottle of Maalox and a countdown calendar to your next vacation. Like a few other things in life, I recently realized that the time won’t make itself, and if I wait until a good time it will never happen. So yeah, there it is.
I had one of those training workshops that started out shifty and turned out wonderful.
One work day before each workshop I send out an email reminder. The reminder has effected a marked improvement on attendance, and it gives people who overbooked a chance to back out gracefully and keep me from setting up twice as many laptops as I need (or standing in an empty room wondering where everybody is). In this case, I only had a small group registered for a “Presenting Content in Webcourses@UCF” session and one back-out. Oh well, I’ve only had three in a session before.
It turned out to be perfect.
The attendees were three of our HR staff who are in the process of adapting a face-to-face training system into an online program. They have their brick-and-mortar curriculum and an empty course shell.
This is what I live for.
Since they were the whole workshop, I scrapped the original topic and went over their curriculum. We determined what tools they will need, walked through customizing the interface, and talked about how to streamline their training process. For two hours we picked through the toolbox to find the best choices to meet their needs. We have a follow up scheduled to go over the assessment portion and fine-tune the learning module they learned how to create today.
It’s so rare that I get to do this kind of development, and it was *fun*. Fun to ask and answer and try out possibilities and see their eyes light up as I was able to tell them something that will make their lives easier. It was application instead of training. I need more days like this.
June 2-4 I attended the SE Regional Educause conference in Jacksonville, FL. I had been accepted for a poster session along with Roz Veltenaar (the UCF Regional Campus Technology Training Specialist- yes, that’s ONE person for all ELEVEN Regional Campuses) and Donnie Merritt (Coordinator for Interactive Television and Videoconferencing - Office of Information Resources) on the distance learning solutions we’ve been developing for faculty training at our regional campuses.
This was rather a learning experience- I was asked if I could submit a proposal at the 11th hour. Luckily, I had already been considering presenting this topic, so it was just trying to write something cohesive at 6:30 pm on a Thursday to get it in before the deadline so I could go home. (This last-minute submission, by the way, is what I blame the less-than-ideal title on: “Successfully Distributing Faculty Training Among Multiple Campuses”. We may be submitting this session again to another conference, in which case I’d like to call it something more along the lines of “Distance Training Solutions for Regional Faculty”, which I feel is slightly more accurate, and much less wordy.)
We put our heads together to create our poster text, but I foolishly took responsibility for coordinating, and then when things became hectic let planning slide. Thanks to the Digital Media team, they took my sorry poster outline in Publisher and made it very slick. Next time around, however, I want to pare down the poster, which was very text-heavy, so it’s easier to read at a distance, and have a flyer with the full text available (this was part of the original plan that I didn’t pull together in time). In addition, by the time we presented the poster we had already moved to using Adobe Connect to provide online training. All said, it was well-received and we made some valuable contacts, and I have a much better idea what I would do with this sort of proposal in the future.
As for the rest of the conference, I want to just run over a few of the highlights:
- The opening speaker was Michael J. Bolger, the CIO of NASA. He talked about their current Information Technology Challenges: the restructuring and how they are improving security on their networks and consolidating resources. I knew most of it from when Drew worked for United Space Alliance (NASA’s largest contractor) but it was still interesting. It helps put into perspective our challenges in coordinating tech, training, and support across our campus network.
- How Agnes Scott College is using iTunesU. There have been some rumbling around campus about interest in iTunesU vs. YouTubeU, so seeing it in action and how other campuses are using it was helpful.
- UCF Shakespeare class that used Wikis for student projects. It almost made me wish that I had a regular class again, but since faculty are coming to me and asking about how to use these tools in their classrooms, it’s almost as good.
- Comparative study East Carolina University did of three course managements systems (obviously very interesting to me, since we’re in the midst of a migration and looking at possible future alternatives).
- Lunch Roundtable on New Helpdesk Methods was a great networking opportunity and gave me a chance to do some comparative shopping, so to speak.
- Discussion Session on Transforming Difficult Customer Situations into Positive Experiences was mildly amusing (we’ve all been there) but also very interesting and I wish we’d had more time to keep probing and comparing solutions.
- The final general session of the conference, Supporting Faculty Adoption of Emerging Technologies, was terrific. It was a five-person panel talking about how and whether to support faculty innovation in the classroom. Chatting with Jim Groom afterwards was probably the most useful personal/ professional development contact I made, and really inspired me.
Overall, the conference was more fun than last year, mainly because I actually knew a few folks already, and did a better job of networking.
Oh, and the scenery? Fabulous! It was my first visit to Jax and walking along the river at night with all the bridges and downtown buildings lit up was lovely. Monday night a coworker and I explored a bit, first finding Jacksonville Landing which is an open area of shops, restaurants and live music, and then a path onto a bridge that put us next to the Jacksonville Maritime Museum (closed, unfortunately) and Friendship Park which has a huge fountain and light show. We tried to come back on the other side of the bridge and got a little lost. Luckily, some kind folks pointed us in the right direction and we were able to get back on the bridge. We caught up to them and it turns out they were attending the conference as well, so we all walked back together. While there were lots of walkways, they weren’t very well-marked or lighted. I later checked our route using Google GPS- we walked 2.5 miles in all, heh.
Or, “the dangers of introspection in the workplace”.
At UCF we have a professional development track for faculty members who wish to teach fully online or mixed-mode classes (reduced seat time). These tracks are fairly time-intensive (semester long) and there is a waiting list for the fully-online course training. Those who want an online component but are not giving up seat time, however, have a self-paced online training course that walks them through basic tools and applications in our course management system. A dedicated individual can wrap it up in two hours, or spread it out over a weekend if they choose. Once complete, an empty course shell is created that they can start populating with content.
Separate from but in conjunction with the professional development track we have a series of in-depth, tool-specific workshops lasting between 2 and 2.5 hours long. These workshops, collectively, are called Webcourses@UCF Academy (no, I didn’t name them). Faculty members are not required to attend, but are strongly encouraged to do so. The seven workshops are offered on a rotating basis weekly: one face-to-face workshop on the Orlando campus, and one live online training using Adobe Connect (more on that later). These workshops are open to everyone- faculty members, GTAs, TAs, and staff. Participants can register online and attend as many (or as few) sessions as they like, as many times as they like.
I am the trainer for these workshops. All of them.
Now, in theory, my team members are available to assist me in training workshops. In the case of f2f training, they can assist, or in some cases even take over our introductory workshop. In practice, I have four part-time students on a rotating schedule who are handling all our faculty technical support for our course management systems, as well has a large handful of other applications used on campus.
So, I am the trainer for these workshops.
With the migration deadline slowly approaching, I’ve been trying to make adjustments to allow for (what we hope) will be a rush of interest in training for the new system. Since I need my current employees to do what they’re already doing, i started advertising for a training assistant. Preferably someone with an interest or background in training and/or pedagogy, who could stand up to faculty. Luckily, I found someone. Unluckily, it was just in time for a hiring freeze and budget cut.
Gotta love higher ed.
So, in juggling budgets, writing reports, and trying to create a stable basis with limited means for a projected increase in service needs, I found myself seriously evaluating what my team provides and why. And I made a rather interesting discovery:
We provide technical instruction, not instructional technology.
Splitting hairs? Perhaps. But it’s not what I envision for myself, this group, or instructional technology for the future.
So that’s really how this whole little journey got started- I had more work to do, and less funds to do it with, so I had to find some way to complicate things even further. Go, me!
Damn work ethic. *shakes fist*
I can already see the addictive nature of edublogging. This is going to be a fantastic way of keeping track of webinars and recording my feedback for future ref. Fantastic I tell you!
This particular webinar (http://net.educause.edu/eliweb086) is a subject near and dear to my heart. How DO we determine the impact technology has on learning? There seems to be plenty of agreement that it does have an impact, but how much of an impact? Significant? Minimal? And having an impact doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a *positive* impact. And which technology? Not all technologies are created equal. So often faculty ask me about various apps and I want to encourage their experimentation and curiosity, but we also have to address why to use something, not just the how.
In this webinar Karen Swan is emphasizing the importance of instruction over the technology: you can’t ask generalities because there will always be exceptions. Instead, look at the particular instance: does this podcast improve learning in this course subject? Can’t argue with that at all. Start with desired outcomes and then look at specific inputs. I’m not sure how faculty will respond to this response- the ones who are willing and able to do this are already doing it (theoretically); faculty who want to try out technology usually want a blanket answer, however- they’re already going through a time investment in learning how to use the tool in the first place, and I suspect that they wouldn’t thrilled about having to add additional assessment rubrics on top of that.
I’m amused that the survey data on student learning is pulled from UCF’s recent assessment data on learner characteristics (thanks Chuck!). Professional development equals more than knowing how to use the technology- they need to know how to use it in meaningful ways. This is the key issue I’m concerned with. The workshop training I provide almost exclusively deals with the how- in a group I can give different applications as examples, but it primarily rests on the faculty member to use what they have learned in a meaningful way for student learning.
UCF conducts a dedicated professional development track that addresses online pedagogy, but not all faculty have access to this (strictly limited seating). My department (Course Development & Web Services) and the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning are looking for ways to make pedagogy input more accessible to faculty outside the professional development track, especially for adjunct and transient faculty.
Overall, I can’t say that I took much new away from this session- some new assessment ideas and a fresh look at the intersection of teaching and learning, but the presentation was mainly geared toward semester-long events. The session title really only peripherally had to do with the content- the focus was on assessment and less on technology- a valid point in Swan’s approach, but I would have liked to have seen a case study of the system applied to an actual instance of technology use in the classroom to move it out of the theoretical.
I must admit, however, that I was marginally amused by some of the technical issues they had with Connect- it sounded very much as if the presenter was using a stationary mic and occasionally moved closer and farther away while speaking. I’m guilty of this myself, which reminds me to get my mic jack fixed before Friday’s online training workshop. *snerk*
Welcome to the world from the Redtech pen (metaphorically speaking, of course). What, pray tell, is Redtech, you may well ask? What is the meaning behind the post title? What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything? (by the way, if you don’t know that last one, please move along.) Well, let me tell you a story…
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a hungry English grad assistant found herself in need of extra income to expand her unappetizing diet of ramen. Rescue appeared in the form of a data entry job in the Dean’s office. The GA soon found herself challenged by things she had never dreamed of doing: managing listservs, editing webpages, even *gasp!* teaching faculty how to do these things. Eventually, the English teacher to-be found herself caught up in a world of learning and technology and eventually became *drumroll please* an INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGIST.
Flash to today, ten years later. Said GA now resides at the University of Central Florida, continuing to pursue dreams of fresh sushi and Thai noodles. But each of us, at some time, begins to ponder: Who am I? What am I doing? What is this thing called Instructional Technology? Is this my beautiful house? And so I have come to create this blog, to explore what it means to be an Instructional Technologist in a time when technology is king, education is evolving, and there is still no better way to rile up a cocktail party than by asking a group of academics to define learning.
So, back to the initial questions: what is Redtech? Well, in my search for meaning in regards to the beast known as the Instructional Technologist, I made a few amazing discoveries. First and foremost, there are nearly as many definitions of Instructional Technology as there are Instructional Technologists. Being the literary-minded gal I am, I then began to assemble my own definition, only to slowly realize that my definition of my role does not quite correspond with the institutional definition of my position. In addition, few of the folks who I would pin as ITs (a coarse abbreviation to save my fingertips and the length of these posts) carry this title, and a few who do, don’t fit into this scheme. Whu? So, I decided to go to the source- find other ITs and get THEIR ideas, definitions, descriptions and decisions, only to discover that probably 3/4ths of the blogs I was able to dig up are either stagnant or empty. Quelle horreur!
Anyhow, left to my own devices (always a risky thing to do) I decided to start my own blog to collect sources, resources, and points of view as I continue my hunt for the elusive Instructional Technologist. As an Instructional/Educational/Academic Technologist (interesting how popularity of some of these titles have waxed and waned, but I’ll save that for a later post) I foolishly wanted my blog name to somehow reflect this search. After sifting through the scads of empty or defunct blogs already in existence, and the few wildly successful ones, I found my options slightly limited. Edtech, while moderately descriptive, did not quite have the catchiness for which I was hoping. Enter: people with poor memory. How does this correlate? Well, my hair is red. Yes, it often occurs that if someone cannot remember my name, they call me “Red”, and for reasons unknown even to myself, I actually respond. *shrug* So, viola! Redtech is born.
Oh, and the post title? Well, if you haven’t noticed by now, I occasionally ramble. Expect to find things here that don’t necessarily contribute to my quest, but which I’ve stumbled across along the way.
