Category: Work Reflections (Page 5 of 5)

Easy pick for a pic today. i was going to look for an actual butterfly but I like the ‘wings’ on this tree on Quadra Island that  I noticed while camping this summer.

Monday I managed to knock out a few video/screen casts and a couple more handouts. I turned off all the little butterflies of the other things that were hovering around last week and focused on one task. At the end of the day as I was hoping to have everything packed up to send away I realized I may not have saved a couple of files before (probably) overwriting them and ‘saving as’ something new. Turns out that waiting until morning to figure it out proved that I hadn’t lost anything after all. Word was behaving strangely – or maybe it’s me – but clicking on a document in the list of ‘recent’ documents would not open the document I clicked on but something else entirely. Disconcerting when you want to send files to someone.

I feel much better this week around timelines. Last week was super stressful, as I said, being distracted by all the things to do. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still behind, but I have a list, and have started on all of the things on it.  It’s now a matter of pulling the links, resources, notes, images, etc. together and ticking off the list items. This week I decided to put most of my focus on finishing ONE THING and that was good for me. When I needed a break from that thing I did little bits of the other things so I could see some progress.

In and around creating resources I’ve been working on a tangible version of a to-do list. I tried out this Kanbanchi app for Google drive. I like it, but it’s a pay for service after 2 weeks so I didn’t really take off with it. I doubt I’d get the value out of it. I saw somewhere that there is a free educational version but have yet to find it.  I switched back to a google doc. It’s a little more cut and past than drag and drop but I think it will work.

The OER challenge has started and some of the emails are going to spam for some of us, but not all emails, and not all participants. I’ve asked helpdesk if we can have Tannis whitelisted. I’m getting a lot out of this so far – mostly by going in and reading the challenge comments. Lots of great resources and ideas coming up already. I’m using a google doc to try and keep track of the NIC contributions so we can see where it goes.

I plan to start next week focusing on PD – planning, and registering for some conferences, followed by job description and concept mapping. I’m also thinking of something useful that I can ‘build’ and want to give more shape to that – progressing through the open ed challenge is giving me ideas.

All in all, this was a good week. I went over time by a few hours but feel like I accomplished some things. Nice way to head into a long weekend.

No real reason for this photo – clean desk(top) clear head?  Saw this sculpture in a museum at the cabanas in Guadalajara. 

Despite not having workshops or studios there was enough to do to keep busy this week, but also a little time to a some physical and digital cleaning up. I had a few un-filed files and things thrown on my desktop, and my desk that I put away. 

I went into the office on Tuesday so that I could hand off a laptop dock to Margaret and set up my own. We had a socially distanced conversation with Gerald, the Health and Safety Manager who lives across the hall (for now). Looking forward to seeing the NIC branded masks.

The Spanish class I signed up for has started. It’s a distance section but will probably have some synchronous clarification sessions. When I was a student, I was a student for a really long time. I hope I remember how… 

There were a couple of instructor conversations early in the week but that has slowed to crickets (as of Thursday afternoon) I expect more around mid-term and/or when the first of the grading starts. That kind of information – marking and grade center – doesn’t stick until one has to do it.

I spent a good portion of my Thursday just playing around with Kaltura Capture and trying to get a screen cast for how to turn on captions. I had a few false starts and managed a couple of ‘not-bad’ versions. Most of the issues were around getting the frame for the recording in the right place or not being able to grab the recording control to drag it out of the way in time. It was kind of fun to watch the recording and see where the Kaltura captions were different from the BlueJeans captions. Bluejeans came out as ‘bleaching’.  I will work on enunciation while trying not to sound like a robot. I will also try not to let perfection get in the way of good enough but I know I can do better. It gets easier every time. Practice, practice, practice. 

Friday was the first Education Council meeting of the term.  We have lost our Chair due to the faculty lay-offs. I’ve resigned from Planning and Standards and from the Fast-track Committee but since EdCo was an elected position I’m going to stick out my term. I’ve been thinking that committee work is going to look different going forward – along with everything else. 

A few requests came in on Friday afternoon and all were (nicely) directed to help desk. 

Officially the week work ends on July 22, but for consistency…

It was a nice ease back in to work after a couple of weeks off. As you can see, I sat around a camp fire and got to read a bit for fun. Camping is not the most ‘relaxing’ kind of time off as you still have to cook and do dishes, but getting away from screens was nice. 

Day one was primarily cleaning up email and getting back into the swing. I had set out some priorities before I left, the big one being the ‘Student Training Course’ for Blackboard Learn. I still don’t love the name but I guess that’s what it actually is. I made it several years ago when there was virtually no student support and the instructors who were using Blackboard felt that they had to explain how everything worked. It is still functional but needs a lot of work to bring it up to date. I met with someone from Student Technical Services to walk through my plans and some initial updates. I like the way it’s taking shape. I have a couple of new pieces to add, some screen shots to update and then some aesthetics.

I tried registering for a course this week and had an eye-opener. As a former student I thought it would be easy. It wasn’t. There are a couple of ways you can work through the website and there is some key information missing the way I did it.  I figured it out eventually and we’ve sent a message outlining the issues to the powers that be.  I also met with one of our advisers and walked her through the steps I took. 

The more I dug into the student course, the more I want it to be better. It’s coming along. I’m going to add a section on how Kaltura fits in. 

I’m getting into the half-time groove and I think I have my fall work hours figured out Next week, it looks like there will be a little help desk and some instructor meetings. I want to go over the upcoming sessions I have in August and make sure everything is ready  as I’ll be taking the week before off as well to use up some vacation days. 

A short but full week with Canada Day landing right in the middle of it. We pulled off seven studio sessions in four days. The numbers are smaller these days- I even had one private lesson – but with that we can really dig in and spend more time on the ‘why’ and ‘when’ to use things, not just the ‘how’.

In building my handout for the Assignment and Communication Tools studio I got into the 3 levels of interaction (Instructor – Student, Student- Student, and Student – Content) and which tools facilitate them. I kind of anchored the conversation around that and was able to circle back with each tool to tie in to creating student engagement. This session really brings out the good conversations around online discussion and everyone gets try things out as both instructor and student.

I enjoy the creativity the participants show in creating tests, assignments, and discussions on the fly in the studios. I hope they leave feeling more confident about how things function and with some understanding of what it’s going to be like for their students.

We did a hands on studio with Student Services using Mediaspace instead of Blackboard. We set up a channel for them to practice publishing videos to. They really dove in and created some videos with thumbnails and hot spots. They’ve now created their own channel for when they have ‘ready for prime time’ content.

I had a couple of instructor meetings and took care of some help desk tickets in and around studios. I learn a little more about Kaltura and Mediaspace as I use them.

I don’t usually take a summer vacation and I’m looking forward to a little time off. I plan to read some books, stare at some trees and count the shades of green on Quadra Island. There will probably be some staring at the ocean and likely some star gazing.  I’ll stop there as I can see my vacation time getting stacked up with so much to do. 

And now, it’s time to set that ‘Out of Office’ message. See you in a couple of weeks. 

Another busy week comes to its conclusion. 

This is a picture of Bubba, the Manager of Guest Relations at the Villa Ganz in Guadalajara. I met him in 2015. I don’t know why but he just seemed fitting for this post. 

I got a course site set up for the Department of Accessible Learning (DALS) to experiment with. Mike added some quizzes. I’ve asked what else they’d like added so they can experiment with assistive tech and just get more used to functionality in Blackboard so they can learn what’s possible and figure out what to ask of instructors when someone needs an accommodation. 

Albert and I met to prepare for our Kaltura Studios, and I spent some time testing student submissions in BB from Kaltura. I learned that for a Kaltura quiz,  Instructors have to add the quiz under ‘assessments’, not just by adding Kaltura media if they want to create a Grade Center column.  Also, students have to select ‘Kaltura submission’ instead of ‘Kaltura media’ as their submission for it to work.  That makes sense as it will ‘freeze’ that media on submission so it can’t be altered in My Media.  I also found out that short answer quiz questions don’t get counted in the mark – only T/F and M/C.  It’s not super intuitive to find the student submissions.  In conclusion, Kaltura quizzes are probably not the best tool for ‘serious’ testing but can be really useful for flipped learning. 

I played assistant on a Kaltura guided tour with Margaret.  There were about 12 people and I think it went well. I’m feeling more confident with Kaltura every day and can now demonstrate two ways to use it – through Blackboard and through Media Spaces.   I had a little time in the afternoon for catching up on creating resources and doing the things I told people I would do. 

Albert and I got through two more Kaltura Studios where we had participants finding and adding YouTube videos and creating quizzes.  We’re now planning a hybridized version of our two studios to customize a studio for Student Services. 

Friday was a frustrating day. It started with a failed BlueJeans meeting and a couple of tickets without enough information to be able to work with.  The instructor got in to Bluejeans (late) but couldn’t hear or get a working microphone. I tried troubleshooting settings to no avail. She logged out and in, no luck. We tried the phone, the meeting ID didn’t work for her and calling her phone resulted in ‘out of service’ for me.  I tried email but still haven’t heard from her. Not much else I can do but I’m concerned and will follow up next week. 

I got one of the help desk tickets sorted out with Mike’s help. We determined that they weren’t actually looking for Blackboard help but it took a little back and forth to get there. For the other one, the instructor wants me to check out something in a course, but didn’t tell me which course.. and he has a lot of them in the system. Oh well, next week.  I listened in on the marketing town hall. We’re obviously focused on supporting faculty so it was a good reminder that there are forces at work to recruit and to re-assure students that fall will be okay. Different, but not a lesser quality experience. 

Even planning and recording screencasts got the better of me and Word formatting was particularly uncooperative. At least I was able to get a handout updated. I’ve got a start on recordings. I’m going to have to insert a few slides to be able to show the things I can’t screen cast. I’ve got it figured out and it should work. 

Lots of studios next week with varying attendance. More teaching, more learning. Bubba has his eye on things. 

Most weeks I start drafting my weekly reflection on Monday and jot a bit down each day so I don’t forget. 

This week, I didn’t do that. This could be a pretty short post.  This was a week for planning and creating in advance of next week’s Studio sessions.  Getting the ingredients together, as it were. 

I had a few meetings with Margaret, Mike, and Albert around planning and Margaret and I did some condensed run-throughs of how  the studios will go. I’m excited about next week although it’s Friday evening and I’m still working on handouts.  That’s just how the creative process goes sometimes.  

I did have a few meetings with instructors this week too. I love seeing what they’re accomplishing in their courses. Some are really embracing the Kaltura videos and others are just trying to make a nice organized course while they’re teaching it. On Friday I was able to make two math teachers happy. I helped one set up a grade center and another to edit test questions. Everyone I worked with this week made me feel appreciated. 

Short and sweet this week. Next week should be a lot of fun. Stay tuned. 

All the feels this week. 

The long weekend was nice but it meant that the training sessions for this week had to be a little more compressed. Tuesday I started with an instructor/consultant meeting first thing and then it was BlueJeans all day. Blackboard basics followed by Blackboard content, a quick break for lunch and then a couple of Bluejeans sessions – participant and moderator. I got my Kaltura homework done for Wednesday and was able to close a few helpdesk tickets. No time for much else.

There was a lot of grief and sadness in my feeds Tuesday night. Ed-tech friends experiencing  the loss of loved ones. Not covid related but I’m sure that intensifies things. I am not a public griever. I find it difficult to respond to sad posts even if my sentiment is heart felt, but my thoughts are with them and I can’t imagine how sad it must be in this environment where you can’t visit and your grieving happens in quarantine.  A reminder to be grateful for my current circumstances, and I am. 

We got more Kaltura training on Wednesday morning. It went a bit fast but I think I have a sense of things – it helped to have done the homework. I need some time to experiment a bit more. I’ve created one screen cast so far and uploaded a couple of videos.  The instructors who attended with us seem pretty excited about the possibilities.  Margaret and I took some participants through BlueJeans participant and moderator training sessions. We saw some new faces and got some good feedback. I sorted through a few more help desk tickets at the end of the day. Next week is looking a little lighter for training sessions and hopefully I can get some other things done. 

Thursday started with Bluejeans for teaching and Learning – AKA bluejeans 3. I like those sessions as we get to hear from participants and they do a little group work and it feels more conversational that just pushing content. Mike and I did grade center and assessments sessions and in between I did one on content and communications. Full disclosure, I had set up for a general overview session and an  observant participant set me straight.  Somewhere in between those I managed a bit of correspondence and cleaned up some help desk tickets. It’s difficult to flip the switch from facilitator to other work when the turnaround time is so tight.

Friday felt a little lighter just for not having to facilitate. Then, a little heavier with the news from the town hall.  Still, I’m feeling optimistic about the upcoming terms and fortunate to be part of a team that is helping with this transition. I managed to get some work done on my sample course for trades and now have about 20 instructors enrolled as students. It’s a starting place for looking at how to organize content and I’m using it as a jump off for my ‘sample course template’. I can see a lot of ways to expand it. There’s always a dance between the ‘how’ and the ‘why’. For something general you don’t want to go too far down either road but they are so integrated… I think I could add some ‘for more information on this… ‘ type of links. 

I am super excited about next week and planning the next phases of our workshops. I love the studio format and having people build something to take away. It takes me back to doing the studio sessions with instructors from the University of Guadalajara in the Agora project in 2015.  Active, hands on, doing, can’t wait.  I should qualify that with, I know how busy I’m going to be… It will be fun to create the sessions though and I know that I have some good collaborators to do it with. 

So kind of an emotionally up and down sort of week. Onward.