EDUC 6000 - Week 5

This week's project has been an exercise in frustration.  Sonny has created Excel spreadsheets for each of the agency's eight districts to track safety equipment like pepper spray, armor vests, and batons.  Each of the items on the spreadsheet has columns that include information about the item like issue date and expiration date.  Needless to say, this has turned out to be a huge spreadsheet.  I kind of volunteered to help out with this one because the person responsible for monitoring this equipment (Andrew) is in my office.  When talking with Andrew, I found that he planned to have 2 tracking systems for the equipment, one to be used by field staff and one to be used by someone in Central Office.  This really seemed like a waste of staff since this would require the same information to be entered by different people.  However, the Excel spreadsheet doesn't provide him with the statistical information that he needs to have available, so he thought it would be easier to get that from an Access database.  I tried adding subtotals to the appropriate columns and tying them to a separate worksheet that just listed the totals.  This was doable but very time consuming.  I worked on that for a couple of hours and then determined that the data might be compromised as the spreadsheets were updated.  I then spoke with someone else in Information Systems about the logistics involved.  Of course, his first suggestion was to have I.S. create an application strictly for tracking the equipment.  The problem is that I.S. is so backed up with projects that we knew that wouldn't happen anytime soon.  We then discussed putting it in an Access database but we're not certain that field staff will have Access when their computers are updated.  There's speculation that the new computers will have a cheaper version of Microsoft Office.  We finally settled on importing only the applicable data to Access to create the reports Andrew needs.   We did a test and found that this would work.  Andrew is going to send the spreadsheets to the fiield staff to complete.  Before he can do that, we're going to establish passwords to keep others from making unauthorized changes to the spreadsheets.   I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everything works as we hope it does. 

EDUC 6000 - Week 4

We've had to push back the Microsoft Office Training, because I'm creating an Access Database for one of our directors.  This database will be used to track staff errors.  I've also created a report to send to the district directors that is organized by district, office location, and officer.  I've sent the database to Sonny for review and to get suggestions on making the report more user friendly.  I haven't had a lot of experience with creating databases with Access, but I really like using them.  So far it's not been that difficult, although I've had to ask for help with a few things like creating search commands on the form and setting up the report.   I worked on this for most of the day yesterday and some this morning.  I'm still not quite satisfied with the end product, especially the report, so I'll continue to tweak it.  Hopefully, Sonny will have some suggestions too.

EDUC 6000 - Week 3

I went through the rest of the pages of the manual on the camcorder and finished the power point presentation that I started last week. The rest of the manual was concerned with more technical aspects of operating the camcorder, so I didn't include a lot of that information. As I mentioned before, Sonny wants to keep the presentation to the basic operation of the camera. I ended up with about 42 slides. The equipment will do a lot more than what the presentation covers, so I included the direct link to the manual on the last slide and encouraged viewers to check it out. The presentation has been sent to Sonny for review, and he said he was pleased with it. We've started discussion for the next project, which we will be introducing staff to the tutorials for Microsoft 2010 Office programs. Sonny mentioned that he had used a program called Viewlet Builder many years ago, so we checked online to see if there is still a free version available. There was a newer version available, so I'll be researching how that program works next.

The following is the link for the powerpoint presentation:  http://www.screencast.com/t/uhQEz630Hde

EDUC 6000 - Week 2

This week I've started a project that will take a while to complete.  The agency has obtained a camcorder, and Sonny wants to create a powerpoint that staff can use to learn the basics of using the equipment.  The manual for the camcorder is really pretty good, but it's over 200 pages long and not very well organized.  It's my job to condense this into a powerpoint presentation that includes only the basic operation of the camcorder.  So far, I've went through about 100 pages of the manual, and the powerpoint has 32 slides.  The great thing about this is that I've been using Jing to create the slides so I can include the instructions and illustrations directly from the manual.  I knew the things I've learned in this program would come in handy!  It's time consuming, but I'm really pleased with how it's going.  Sonny says it looks good so far too.  Of course, I'll provide a reference and website address for the manual at the end of the presentation!