Week of February 6, 2012 – Oops

As I write this, I came to the realization that I didn’t post last week’s reflection. Hmm, this annual goal is going to be harder than I ever anticipated—and it’s only February!! Ah well, on to this week’s update…One of the things I have been stressing about this week is my presentation at next week’s conference. I leave on Friday for the Instructional Technology Council e-Learning Conference in Long Beach, CA. I’m very excited to go seeing as it’s been 2 years since I have been with my instructional technology colleagues. I started going in 2009 (?) when I met @cmduke and @sherrymn, who ended up becoming good friends of mine. I was still a Masters student but when I graduated, I moved to the great state of Texas to work with them. They gave me an opportunity to gain experience as an instructional designer which then allowed me to take a position here at Miami University. Since the 2009 Conference, I’ve kept in touch with a lot of colleagues, including @barrydahl, @busynessgirl, @hhwebb, and @ajwms. When I started at Miami in February of 2011, I wasn’t able to go to that year’s conference and I felt like I had really missed out. Anyways, I’m presenting with a panel of colleagues (including some of those listed above) next week at a session titled, “eLearning Digital Story Slam.” The group of us will be presenting digital storytelling using a variety of tools and methods. I decided to create my digital story around the implementation of WordPress at Miami University. I’ve created the visual aspect, but can’t decide if I want to add an audio component. I suppose I should, if nothing else because the Prezi is fairly “slow” without it. Anyway, I will most likely be using Jing to add audio to the presentation early next week. I also need to document my processes into the Google Site that we’ll be showing the conference participants. Man, I feel like I have a lot to do!!I’ve been doing some support with WordPress, mainly troubleshooting some of the complications that CELTUA has been running into with their site. It’s not too surprising, they are always making my life complicated. 😉 I’m running into a problem with our group’s blog. There are things I want to do that I know are technically possible, but because of the limitations we’ve put on end-user access to themes and the PHP. As much as I know we need to have these guidelines, as a WordPress designer in my free time, it makes me yearning for more. I guess I’ll continue looking for free themes that might work for us…The course design projects are essentially completed from my perspective. I haven’t heard from the instructors in about 2 weeks (or more) and the last time I did, things were moving swimmingly.Our group had a “retreat” yesterday where we spent the morning talking about our vision and how to proceed with our services from this point forward. With IT Services across the university under scrutiny, many of the things we want to do and accomplish has to wait to see how our group will be changing (if at all) in the near future. 2 of the new items that I volunteered to investigate the feasibility of were 1) short podcasts (audio and video) about edtech topics, and 2) 30-minute topic-specific webinars. I think both would be fun and can be useful, however I’m not sure how to get the word out. One of the things we started talking about yesterday was marking/advertising our group and the services we provide. Since we are within the division of IT Services, it’s our (maybe just my) understanding that we have to use the official IT Services channels for advertising our events and such. I brought up the idea of creating a listserv for ALT clients to advertise webinars, seminars, workshops, etc. that we put together. The listserv could be made up of anyone that uses our services (SGIDs, course designs, 1-on-1 consultations, etc.). We didn’t come to any decisions yesterday about how to move forward with marketing strategies and I expect we’ll be talking about it in the coming weeks/months so that we can begin re-branding ourselves.Well, I think that’s all for this week. I’m hoping to set aside time on Friday morning before I leave for the airport to write a weekly update. I’m hoping for that one to include info on iTunes U at Miami University.