EDUC 5000 - Week 15

In the last few months, our agency has changed email applications.  We have gone from using Groupwise to using MS Outlook Web Access.  Unfornately, a lot of us hate it, because we can't do some of the things that we could do before (like checking to see if a sent mail has been opened), and the number of emails that we can have is a lot smaller than we had.  Before, emails automatically dropped off after six months.  Now, we have a size limitation.  Anyway, my current project is to develop training for Outlook Web Access for the staff.  I started out by checking to see what is available online and found that Western Connecticut State University had posted something that I'm going to use as a basic outline.  I'm going to modify it to suit our needs, but I will, of course, give them credit for their document in the presentation.  After determining the best design, I started on the slides and ran into two issues.  I started the presentation on someone else's computer that had MS 2010.  There are a lot more design options and flexibility on that version of Powerpoint.  Unfortunately, that computer didn't have Jing (I really couldn't live without this program), so I emailed the presentation to my work computer to finish.  The next issue was with the presentation examples.  I want to use a generic email account to set up the examples, so that my work information isn't included.  I'm going to email Sonny to ask if this is possible, but it will be next week before I have an answer.  Since this will be a pretty time comsuming project (I've already spent about two hours on it today), the delay isn't a problem, as I can finish the presentation next week.

EDUC 6000 - Week 14

In week 12, I talked about a training session that Sonny conducted and some of the problems that we had due to using webcast.  However, I didn't mention that there was a problem with one of the videos in one of the powerpoint presentations.  Sonny called before the training got started to see if I could get it to work.  Unfortunately, I couldn't.  I think that the breakdown in communication here is between MS 2010 and MS 2000.  He created the presentation in 2010, and it didn't play on the computer with MS 2000.  Well, the training is over (at least this one), but the presentations are still available for viewing on our network drive.  Therefore, we thought it would be good if everything worked like it's suppose to, especially since most of our staff have the old version of MS Office.  Luckily (yeah, right), I have MS 2000 on my work computer (I've been using my personal computer with MS 2010 for most of the projects for this class), so I started playing with it to get the video embedded again.  Nothing I tried would work.  Then, I had really bright idea.  I'll cheat (sort of).  I used Jing to take a picture of the video and then used the picture as a hyperlink to the video on YouTube.   This worked, but I really couldn't believe there wasn't a way to embed a video in the actual slide.  So it was back to researching.  I found a video on YouTube that showed how to embed a video with MS 2003 and older.  I started following the instructions, but it still didn't work.  It turns out he left out part of the instructions.  You have to select options next to the link for the YouTube video you want to use and select long link.  Then you can make the changes that the guy talks about in the video.  Ironically, this video is titled Embed YouTube Into PowerPoint (Stupid Simple).  It really is simple, but it helps if all the instructions are included.

EDUC 6000 - Week 13

Happy Thanksgiving!  Unfortunately, the short holiday week (3 days) had an adverse affect on my ability to complete an assignment for this week, as my I.T. contact didn't come in to work.  Sorry!!!

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.