the goal for "break"

First off, I'm a 12-month employee at an educational institution. Additionally, most people prefer that I do much of my job when they aren't working. Therefore, I get a little touchy about this whole notion of the "break". I don't mind working hard, even heinously long hours, while students and instructors are gone. (Actually, I really like working at an educational institution when there aren't students and faculty hanging around trying to do stuff. Or staff and administrators, but that's not usually a problem.) What I mind is the assumption that I have been somewhere else, even on a vacation. The nerve.

I will be bringing up a new satellite campus; 5 classrooms, 1 w/ 30 laptops, a couple of offices, a file server and a few domain controllers (virtualized), a few wireless access points. The tricky part is that it will be a pilot for a few new technologies; a wireless controller w/ the AP's running a lightweight OS, multiple SSID's of differing security levels & requiring different network routing, and most of all we will implement VoIP. That's Voice over IP. It's not skype, it's business class voice requirements and tying it in with the behemoth ROLM system. Of course, I'll have a number of smaller projects to fit into January, too.

That shouldn't be here nor there, but it does suck my brains out before I get home. What I really want to get done is the scripting of the instructional units, podcast recording, make all of my slides and assemble them into enhanced podcasts. That's a non-trivial amount of work but I'm pretty comfortable w/ the content. I want to try to work in a technique of calculating binary bytes on the fingers. I've never seen it taught, but it's something that evolved for me along with my understanding. I've heard of a few other people who did that but never spoke to anyone about it. I certainly never tried to teach it. That's a bit bold but could be bery powerful.

The central point that I've come to realize is that I am focused primarily on the instructional aspect of this project. I'm very attached to the effectiveness of the instruction. I am interested in the technological aspect, but really only insofar as it serves learning. I am emphatically uninterested in a repackaging of a run-of-the-mill product.

It would be cool if I get a real plan for the skill modules functionality down on paper (as it were). Building the website would certainly give me a leg up. Getting the actual requirements of the standard format that has been alluded to would certainly be helpful. But my focus is on getting the actual content done. I got some feedback that there was poor sound in the left channel, detectable on earphones. I didn't hear it on the computer, but I thought I saw something like that on the monitor. I didn't pursue it because the two recorded channel patterns I saw in Garage Band matched. I whined about a reduced level on the new mic to my Apple rep and he asked about the 9-volt that powers the mic. I said it was new, but when I looked at the other one of the two that my friend gave me, I saw the bottom bulging out. I had tossed them both into the front pocket of my hoodie and, once I got home to take them out, they were very hot. I laughed at the time, but I'm hoping the source of the sound problem is as simple as new 9-volt EveryReady's.

That's my goal(s).

the hump

I feel like I over it. The hump. I kept feeling as though I had another 2 hrs to do on that first podcast. Then I would work on it for 6 or 8 hrs and think that I had another 2 hrs. Once I realized how to remove the graphic size restriction in Garage Band, I wound up scrapping the graphics and starting over. While the Photoshop to Powerpoint to iPhoto to Garage Band to iTunes path gets to feeling a bit convoluted, Powerpoint is probably the only negotiable stop. And what it does for me is provide the alignment and, of course, ease of consistency. I'm happy w/ the quality of pseudo-animation but I kept finding that I needed more pictures.

The kitty, who normally climbs across the keyboard and sits in front of the monitor when I am at the computer, found a new way to get my attention. Once I started recording my voice portion of the festivities, kitty attacked the paper recycling bag for the first time ever. She's so smart at being annoying. But twenty some hours later, I finally got it done. I got it to some reviewers whom I believe have finished posting their feedback. I got good verbal input, so that helps. I'm fixin' to check that out right now to put together my Instructional Design portfolio.

the new plan

It's coming back together, or maybe more together. I'm feeling like I'm getting a hold of the reins and not careening wildly towards a cliff. I am planning to use a blog as the central point of delivery, as some podcasters do to provide a transcript. The does a number of things for me:

• It provides a central point of delivery that I can begin to use now. I give up very little that I would have gotten from my own website and I gain overall development time and don't have to wait to provide access to text, pics, and podcasts.
• It's easy to replicate. I didn't realize it before, but I have a stake in demonstrating a framework for non-technical instructors to consider.
• Interaction w/ learners is built in as comment posting.
• The blog seems to be a good fit with the podcast as a new media. True, they are both merely refinements of existing technologies, but they commonly used by digital natives for recreation. I'm enamored of the idea of taking learning to where the learners is at (sic). For those fogeys like myself, it can serve as an introduction to these new (standard) information delivery mechanisms.
• I will have to contend w/ the blog format of most recent posting appearing first. It seems that the worst case will be to repost in reverse order, but I'm not even sure that's necessary. Putting lessons on separate pages could ease this, if it's even an issue.

I like it. I have monkeyed with templates until I came up with something close enough to my branding though very basic. I'm looking forward to getting some lesson content up there this weekend.

link test

If you don't have iTunes, get it here & install it. (You'll want a fairly modern version to utilize "chapters". If you aren't at v7.02, you might as well upgrade. What the heck - it's free.)

Then you can check out a podcast, on your computer or downlad it to an iPod,

Base format crisis

So I've been sweating bullets since the prototype. It's obvious that the format at the center of this project has to carry the weight of holding this whole thing together. The podcasts can reinforce and enhance that, but not represent the body of the presented material. As I've been exploring podcasts, I came upon this guy, Matt I presume, who does "Matt's Today In History." He has a blog, but he also has podcasts & RSS feeds. The sound is quite good and he has the voice of a radio man; not all announcer-y or NPR stilted. I'm envious. It seems like a pretty nice way to go about it. But he doesn't use pictures. (He also hosts his RSS at a place called hipcast.com, which costs $$, but is interesting nonetheless.)
The blog is appealing because it makes the html publishing so much easier. While that may be a bit of a plus for me, I am trying to frame a model that may be used, in a piecemeal or ala carte manner, by much less technical instructors. I'll put a few graphics in this and see how it looks.

Hmmmh. Well, I can drag them around and WYSIWIG them better than I thought. If I were going to use a podcast that wasn't at the Apple Store, I guess I would just link it from hipcast.com or just a web server somewhere. Unless...

Nah, I can't use the graphic upload function to sneak my podcast up here - I get an error. I can't log into my csumb accts on either home or myspace, so I'll have to try that later, much to my chagrin.

Podalicious

I'm getting stuff done on the podcasting front. Apple was out on Thursday and, though we didn't do a full on "kitchen", the SE went over Garage Band well enough for me to grasp the basics. I had been stumped about the way in which a PowerPoint could be imported. The trick is to use "Save As" and make JPEGs out of the slides. However, the screen that I'm designing for has a 1.5" diagonal. Sure, that's the Nano; the big, full-size video iPod has a whopping 2.5" diagonal screen. But if you're going to design a podcast, you have to account for the lowest common denominator. After spending a day or so exploring podcasts, especially those offered under "Education" at the iTunes store. I had been deliberating about the values of the various Nanos; 2GB for $150, 4GB for $200, or 8GB for $250. Once I had actually seen how much content there is besides music, I went ahead and ordered the 8GB. In (red), of course. The other thing that I accomplished on Thursday was to get myself listed as one of the prototype offerings for the Cabrillo iTunesU site. It is offered in conjunction w/ the Apple iTunes store, hosted by Apple but branded and access controlled (or not) by Cabrillo.

same story

I'm tired of whining about being tired and sick. I spent the weekend climbing through dusty, asbestosy attics, up & down 20' ladders deploying access points. Followed by 2 days of migraine. I took 2 more days off work, so I'm just tired, not exhausted. Oh yeah, hadda drive down to work on a group project Wed. But I'm not getting good, clear, focused time to make the kind of progress I need to make. I can't even quite get the whole assignment done. I'm going to have to be okay with it. Maybe this weekend will work out...

but I did get Profcast. I need to spend a little time with it and Garage Band to see which works better.