Webiwhat?

Webinars. Lots and lots of webinars. That is what is on this week's agenda, so I hope you aren't burned out yet.

Have you ever thought you knew what you needed to know, only to find out what you didn't know you needed to know when it was a little late in the game? That's how I felt about using elluminate. It all made a lot of sense in class on Monday, and I thought, okay, I'll go play with it and figure it out. And I did play with it a little bit. But there were a lot of things I didn't think to ask because I didn't know I needed to ask them until I actually encountered them, which happened to be while we were broadcasting live. If I had it to do over, I would do a tutorial or something, and hopefully know a little bit more. I know, obvious.

We did know our material, and we had some good resources, so at least there was good content to make up for the technical issues. I think we could refine it and improve it, of course, but that's all part of the ADDIE process. I did get my first taste of creating an online survey, which was a good experience, and I'm more familiar with elluminate and what I don't know about it. Part of learning is finding out what you don't know, right?

One funny story: after we were done with the webinar, there were some people still in the 'room' trying to figure out how to get out. So, while we were working on helping them, we started chatting, just casual conversation, because we thought that we had stopped the recording. Turns out we hadn't, so the whole casual chat is preserved, our behind-the-scenes footage, if you will.

Obviously, there is a lot left to learn about webinars, and I'm interested to try some other tools. I think this one is a little more difficult than some of the other tools we have used because there is so much going on that it requires more attention. I do like that there is a live audience (unlike with the screencast), and that you can read notes, which didn't work so well for screencasting. I think out of all the tools, I prefer the face-to-face activities best, which is funny because I am not much of a public speaker. Face-to-face, you don't have to worry as much about the technical aspect (it's important, but not as critical). Not that I'm anti-tech. I'm just a terrible multitasker and can only focus on one thing at a time. But I also like being able to see who I'm talking to for some reason. It's more personal, and for some unfathomable reason, I appreciate that.

Well, I wish you luck in your webinars. I'm sure I'll sit in on some of them, and I can't wait!

To Tweet or not to Tweet

Hello all. This week, our reading consisted of Tweets, which seems kind of odd. But that's what the syllabus said.

To begin with, confessions: I confess that I already had a Twitter account. I set one up because my sister-in-law was having a giveaway on her food blog, and she gives away some great gifts. So, one of the ways to get an entry was to follow her on Twitter. I was lured in by the potential of winning cool kitchen gadgets, what can I say. I also confess that until this assignment I had never actually sent a Tweet. My last confession: I still don't get Twitter.

I noticed a couple of trends on Twitter. First, I see a lot of potential for marketing. I really do think it's a great tool for spreading the word about the events going on within your organization, and I find that aspect of it quite useful. But other than that, I am not sure what the point is.

A lot of the Tweets I saw were rather mundane things, like, "I just did this part of my job" or "I'm bored at work." Which , given the prompt Twitter offers ("What's happening?") and the character limit, is unsurprising. I couldn't think of anything worth mentioning, which is one of my aversions to Twitter to begin with. It's enough to live it, do I really need to tell the world about it?

Then there were the posts about professional related happenings. The frustrating thing was that there was no context, so it was kind of a 'had to be there' thing. Not understanding what they were talking about, I had little interest in the tweet.

Then there were the link tweets. (I confess, I posted one of these. Ironically, it was an article in part about Twitter contributing to information overload). But the links aren't very helpful because they don't give information about what the article is about, so you don't know whether it's worth looking at, and really, I have so many other things I could be doing, it's highly unlikely I'm going to be looking at any of them unless it's something a really close friend posted, and even then it's not highly likely.

I did find one feed that I'm interested in following after the assignment is over. It's GoArchivistJobs, I think, and it will be interesting to see what results it yields. 

So, I guess the end result is, as a professional tool, Twitter definitely has its place, but honestly, I just can't get that interested in reading about what everyone is doing all day long. And I hope no one is going to be super disappointed at the lack of output from my personal account, because I have a feeling it will be pretty limited in the future. (Although, there won't be much to miss. I can't be overly critical of anyone's tweets, because mine were abominable). And, just so the avid Twitterers out there know, I have nothing against you, and I'm glad you enjoy it. And who knows, maybe I'll figure out the appeal someday.

My first, but not last, attempt at screencasting

So, here is a link to my first ever (and hopefully worst!) screencast:
643 Screencast


I must say, I will probably never have a career as a narrator. And probably not as a director-maybe assistant director, or maybe I just need to direct someone other than myself. I will say, I have gained a new empathy for all the really lousy YouTube videos we watched in class. This is not to say I didn't like the assignment. I did, and I think it is a terrific assignment. It was just kind of stressful for me. Why, you ask? (Or maybe you don't ask, and are hoping not to find out. Sorry) Well, for just a few reasons.

For example, topic selection. This probably should have been very easy, but everything I thought of seemed so redundant or self-explanatory. I didn't actually look, but I imagine there are about a thousand tutorials on photo editing, or blogging, or wiki-ing (I know, not a word). I really wanted to do something that wasn't adding to the already abundant collection. And then, everything I thought of seemed so obvious, including the topic I finally chose, which was checking out audio and digital books online. Who is actually going to be doing that? Most likely people who already know how to navigate a computer. I ended up banking on the fact that somewhere out there is someone whose children bought them a kindle or mp3 player for their birthday and they have no idea what to do with it. I also convinced myself not to worry about what tutorials already existed. I did discover that there are a lot of cool tools out there though (including one called crocodoc, which has been a lifesaver this weekend! Yay for unforeseen perks of homework).

I also discovered some screencasting problems that we didn't mention in class. For example, I found I have a tendency to play around with the mouse, which doesn't go over well in a screencast. And I had to remind myself to balance professional and natural, and to hit my key points (it's hard to read a script when you have to watch a screen, after all). I also realized that not all topics lend themselves to all teaching strategies - for example, it was hard to draw connections and demonstrate transferability with my topic, and the limited timing didn't help. The big lesson here was that a five-minute screencast takes much longer than 5 minutes to prepare. (Although you may not believe it from watching my screencast...but I really did spend more than 5 minutes on it).

But, on the bright side, we learn from mistakes as much as we do from success, and I definitely learned a lot. I have a great new tool at my disposal, and a nice long list of what-not-to-do's. As far as learning and getting experience goes, this is a definite winner.