EDUC 6000 - Week 12

This morning I spent three hours in a training session conducted by Sonny.  This was a webcast that included staff from the Nashville, Murfreesboro, Knoxville, Johnson City, Chattanooga, and Memphis offices.  The training was intended to show staff how to use their new multimedia equipment.  The equipment included a overhead projector screen, overhead projector, digital recorder, camcorder, and a DVD player.  I was able to help Sonny by reading instructions to him as he demonstrated the equipment and finding specific instructions within the powerpoint presentations as he needed them.  Everything went fairly smoothly until we got to the camcorder presentation.  Webcast training was not ideal for this due to the small size of the equipment.  It was difficult to demonstrate how to operate the camcorder as the people viewing via the web couldn't really see what he was doing.  I could see how this type of training would be beneficial for reaching a large group of people, but it was obvious that it was not a suitable method of training for some topics.  Since this was the first webcast training that I'd ever been to, I still found it interesting.

EDUC 6000 - Week 11

This week we were finally able to work on the spreadsheets that we've been putting off for various reasons.  For this project, we took 8 spreadsheets that were created to coincide with the 8 agency districts and created a master spreadsheet that contains all the information in the individual spreadsheets.  The individual spreadsheets track equipment that is kept in each district.  I worked on the individual spreadsheets in a previous week.  This week we wanted to link the spreadsheets to the master spreadsheet.  As a result, when the individual districts make changes on their spreadsheets, it will automatically update the master.  We actually found this process easier in an older version of Excel.  The 2010 version wouldn't allow some things that the older version would.  We don't think that will create an issue as the field staff is using the older version.  Anyway, the link works great.  We also protected the individual worksheets by linking them to the staff id of only the staff that should be allowed to make changes.  It was interesting to find that you can only do this in MS Office 2010.  The older version doesn't have that option, but it will still work on the older versions if it's created in the 2010 version and saved.  The worksheets are saved to a network drive, so everyone has access, but we don't want everyone to be able to make changes.   Finally, I created a pivot table for the master spreadsheet.  Yes, I finally figured it out! 

EDUC 6000 - Week 10

When Dr. Luck explained that I was to work with someone from I.T., he didn't say that every assignment had to be successful.  That's a good thing, since yesterday was definitely not a successful day.  I had planned to work on a pivot table, but we didn't have all the data that was requested from the field staff.  Instead, I worked with Sonny on reimaging a computer.  I have heard our I.T. staff use that term before, but I didn't really know what they meant.  After spending several hours on it, I still don't know what they meant, because we couldn't get it to work.  It had been a long time since Sonny had done this, so we asked for help from another I.T. person.  Part of the process involved burning some backup discs from our network drive.  We actually ended up burning several sets because the discs didn't work.  I finally narrowed it down to the second disc being corrupted and reburned it again.  I got started on validating the backups again before I left for the day.   At a little after 4, Sonny called me to let me know that the problem was that you had to remove a partition from the hard drive on computers that have Windows 7 on them before the computer can be reimaged.  Unfortunately, the person that we asked for help never metioned that.  Needless to say, this was a completely nonproductive day.  As Sonny said, we worked our behinds off and didn't get anything accomplished.  "Momma said they'll be days like this...."

EDUC 6000 - Week 9

This has been pretty much a research week which hasn't felt really productive, although it has been time consuming.  In my last post, I mentioned that I was going to be trying to create a pivot table for an excel spreadsheet.  It turns out that this just isn't easy.  I'm really having a hard time with this one.  Sonny and I worked on it some as well, but it's not really something he's done either.  He did show me how to include the totals in the spreadsheet to create the basic information needed though.  Anyway, we've both been looking at this this week, so hopefully we'll be ready to actually do something with the spreadsheet next week.  Andrew won't have the finalized spreadsheets with the data from the field offices until then anyone.

Anyway, in addition to this, I also found a chart and video to send to Sonny showing the differences between Windows XP and Windows 7.

EDUC 6000 - Week 8

I met with Sonny this week to discuss the powerpoint presentation on Microsoft Office 2010.  He likes the presentation, but he suggested some things be added.  He liked the use of the picture at the beginning of the presentation as a hyperlink, so he wanted make other pictures throughout the presentation changed to hyperlinks to the online help.  I also added shapes to those slides that included instructions on clicking on the picture to go to the website.  He also suggested adding a video to the presentation that compared 2010 to 2007.  I found a video at Microsoft's site that showed a side-by-side comparison, but I had a problem embedding it into the presentation.  For some reason, the embed code provided just wouldn't work.  Since that didn't work, I went to YouTube and found one that I really liked better than the one on Microsoft's site.  It's about 6 minutes long and gives an overview of the differences between Microsoft Office 2010 and 2007 in each of their applications.  I didn't have any problem embedding that video into the presentation using the Old Embed code.  I think that may have been the problem with using the embed code on the other video.  It was like it just wasn't recognized.  Any suggestions on that is appreciated!

Anyway, I think I'm pretty much done with this, so I'm working on my next project which is create something showing the difference between Windows 7 and XP.  I'm also researching the use of pivot tables, pivot charts, and slicers to use in a spreadsheet.  This goes back to a spreadsheet that I worked on in Week 5, and Sonny wants to see if this would work instead of creating an Access database to work with the Excel spreadsheet.  I think that's going to be a challenge!

EDUC 6000 - Week 7

This is a continuation of last week's project.  I'm still working on the powerpoint training for Microsoft Office 2010.   When I started this, Sonny said he had done some work on the project before, but he couldn't find his work.  So last week, I started a new powerpoint using hyperlinks and the screencapture function in Powerpoint as well as instructions to explain the illustrations.  Since then, Sonny found his work.  After reviewing what he had done, I integrated it into what I did last week and made some changes to make the presentation flow better.  This took about three hours.  I've sent it to him again to review.  I'll let you know what he thinks when I find out. 

EDUC 6000 - Week 6

I finally got to work on the training document for Microsoft Office 2010 this morning.  Viewlet Builder turned out to be a bust.  Neither Sonny nor I could get it to work.  However, Sonny discovered that the 2010 version of Microsoft Office Powerpoint has a screenshot function.   I used it to start a Powerpoint presentation on using both the regular help function and the interactive tutorial.  I've been using the 2010 version personally for a while now and have found it to be somewhat difficult to navigate.  What I found out this morning is that I should have used HELP!  I'm going to be playing with this a lot more to discover all the bells and whistles in the tutorial.  If I had used this before doing some past projects, I would have been a lot less frustrated!  I've sent what I've done so far to Sonny to review.  We'll discuss it next week and make any needed changes or additions.