Graduation

We did it! We graduated today. For some, it was just a couple years. For others, like me, it was closer to five years, and some even longer. It has been a journey that I truly embraced; I loved the classes and collaboration and professors. Every bit of it (well, most of it) has been an excellent part of the process and I'm so thankful to have been given this opportunity. My kids are excited for me that this opportunity is done; my husband is ready to have me home without having to study.

Tonight my six-year old daughter asked me to play a game and I was thrilled to realize that, for the first time, there was nothing else I had to do in that moment. It was a very warm and gushy feeling. To my fellow graduates, congratulations on your accomplishment. I am truly proud of each of you.

Dissemination

Well, we all survived dissemination, and it was actually fun. My husband, parents and oldest child came to support me. My 15-year old didn't want to have anything to do with it, so he babysat the younger two instead.

There were several other students who did studies related to mine, and it was gratifying to see that we came up with similar results.

Almost done!

I just realized that my last post was six months ago. One of the things I am looking forward to doing once I graduate in May is blogging. I have missed posting here, even if no one ever sees it. It is somehow gratifying to see my past comments and even use it as a reference.

I graduate with my master's in Adult Learning and Organizational Performance, which means that I am currently experiencing the birth pains of my thesis. Although I wouldn't have admitted this a month ago, I appreciate the process. I feel that I am a better writer than when I began this process, and for that I am thankful.

Facebook

Greetings! My technology voyage continues; I have recently been getting into Facebook. I have been connecting with people that I haven't seen in years and some that I don't see often enough. I have been able to connect with family members in a whole new way. I assume if you are reading this that you have computer access, so if you haven't set up a Facebook account yet, you should really check it out. There is some measure of privacy available, in that you can set your privacy to allow only friends to see your stuff, your friends and their friends, or anybody who cares to look.

I'm back

Hi everyone - whoever that may be. I have missed blogging and decided that there was no reason I couldn't blog, just because the emerging technologies class is done. If any of you out there have any interest in the subject of collaborative technology, I encourage you to check out the class at Drake University.
Since I last wrote, I have taken the needs analysis and evaluation class and am currently taking Leadership Essentials and Organizational & Political Savvy, both with Dr. Westbrook. There is a TON of work, but it's good stuff. I pretty much work, eat and sleep a little, and do homework. My kids are excited to know that I will be done with homework in 10 1/2 months. Woo hoo!
I have also purchased my first mac since I finished class, and I love it. It has a lot more functionality for the techie stuff I like to do. If you don't have one, you should check them out.
This is kind of lame for a first post, but it's after midnight and my brain cells are rebelling. Good night and blessings to you all.

Vodcasts

Today has been another banner day in the technologies for learning arena. I have painstakingly learned how to create a vodcast AND download it to my iPod. I am now trying to figure out how to do the RSS feed without feeding my whole blog. I just want to know how to syndicate specific files. If any of you have suggestions, I am open to trying them.

To create my first vodcast, I started with a PowerPoint that had each term and formula from chapter one of CPCU540: Finance for Risk Management and Insurance Professionals. I used Audacity to record myself reading the terms as I advanced the PPT slides and saved the voice as a separate file, which I originally added to the PPT file.

Through trial and error, I discovered that if I saved all slides as jpeg images, I could import them into Windows Movie Maker, then add the audio there. I also finessed my timings there, then created the movie, which saved it in a .wmv format. From there I used my Cucusoft converter, which I bought last year to convert my purchased CDs and DVDs to iPod files. This automatically created an mp4 file, which I then went to iTunes and imported. It's not in the iTunes store, so I'm the only one that can access it.

I'm really glad we had the discussion on the last weekend about copyright. This is something that I have always been very conscientious about, but there were some good reminders and great information. Because of that session, it occurred to me that I couldn't just use this content to make my own podcasts and distribute them without permission because the definitions are the words of someone other than myself. That could have been embarrassing, at a minimum.

This was the thing I was most excited to learn about when I signed up for this class, and I finally got it. I am checking into getting these distributed, so I don't know where these vodcasts will live in the future. Even if nothing comes of it, I will have had a great learning experience and I will be able to study for my CPCU540 test in a new and exciting way. Stop laughing, it's true.

It's all coming together

I have had several successes this week in the eLearning Technology arena. To set the stage, my employer has hosted a Trainers' Institute for at least six years as a live, face-to-face event. However, budget cuts eliminated that this year. In an effort to keep the momentum and learning of that event, my team decided to put on a virtual event. For 4-5 hours each day this week, we are offering 60-90 minute sessions via WebEx by Fugent. We have a broad range of topics and have made full use of WebEx's meeting manager capabilities.
Since we don't have Training Center on WebEx (not yet, anyway, but we are working on it), for one of the sessions we had breakouts where we divided participants into four groups and gave three of them different phone numbers to call. One group stayed with me, we all stayed in the online session so we could communicate via chat, and each team had their own group of white boards. It was really awesome to see it all come together.
Anyway, I offered a 60-minute session on eLearning Trends, which I recorded. It was very well received, and I am going to see if I can use it for my final project for this class. I had planned on something else, but I have copyright issues and may not have them resolved in time. A side benefit of the class today is that at least one person wants to take this class because I talked about it in my session.
I am still doing the other project for myself, but may not be able to make it available on my web site. That is actually one of my other aha's, which occurred just moments ago. I figured out that instead of recording sound directly into PowerPoint, which will probably make a huge file size, I made the sound recording separately, as an mp3, and added it as a sound object to the PowerPoint. Now all I have to do is time each slide to see how long it takes to read it, then set the animation to advance the slide automatically after that many seconds. It is time consuming, but I believe it will be worth it.
Even though our class is coming to a close, I feel like my learning journey is just beginning. When I think about how far I have come in the weeks since we started, I am filled with anticipation that I can't explain. I have to wonder if it's not a little like an explorer feels when confronted with the reality of his journey and the vastness of what he has yet to learn. As Jean-Luc Picard of the starship Enterprise would say, "Make it so."