|
Cathy Coleman's Tech Scout Website
Tech Scout Activities for 2008 - 2009 My name is Cathy Coleman. I have been a staff member at Kirkwood Community College, since the fall of 1984. My current position with the college is as the Audio Visual/PC Technician for the Kirkwood Center for Continuing Education (KCCE). This is my first year as a Tech Scout for Kirkwood. During the past year, I worked on two projects. The first was to find a way to offer our clients at KCCE a way to do video conferencing without the use of expensive video equipment. You may be asking what videoconferencing is, so let me give you an explanation. Videoconference (also known as a videoteleconference) is a set of interactive telecommunication technologies which allow two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously. It has also been called visual collaboration and is a type of groupware. It differs from a videophone in that it is designed to serve a conference rather than individuals. A video conference may be as simple as a conversation between two people in private offices (point-to-point) or involve several sites (multi-point) with more than one person in rooms at different sites. Besides the audio and visual transmission of meeting activities, videoconferencing may be used to share documents, computer-displayed information, and whiteboards. Now you may be wondering how videoconferencing would be beneficial to KCCE. In addition to KCCE housing the Kirkwood Continuing Education classes and staff offices, it is also a conference center. Often times, meetings or conferences are held in KCCE, but there are participants at other locations (in Cedar Rapids or even in another city or state) that are unable to physically attend the session, but they would still like to participate and obtain the information shared in the meeting. This is where videoconferencing becomes of assistance. With the use of special software, microphones and cameras, you are able to allow participants at remote locations to see and hear the presentation. They are also able to interact with the presenter and audience even though they are not in the same location. I evaluated two videoconferencing programs, Elluminate (http://www.elluminate.com/), and iLinc (http://www.ilinc.com/). Although nothing compares to actually being at the presentation, both of these pieces of software allowed the presenter and the participant to see and hear the presentation in addition to being easy to use. In my second year as a Tech Scout, my goal is to continue on with this project now that I have located a program to use for videoconferencing. The next step is to purchase an actual web camera (instead of using the one on my laptop monitor). Logitech has several kinds of cameras available for $50 and up. I will also need to purchase a license for the software instead of using the free trial version provided on the company’s websites. After obtaining a camera and software, I will tweak the system until I feel comfortable with it and confident it will meet our customer’s needs in KCCE. Then we will be able to begin using it with actual customers. The second project I had was to find an easier way for the Program Director for the Continuing Education computer courses to evaluate students in the computer certificate programs. These hands-on computer trainings run from six to sixteen weeks. At the end of the certificate course, the Program Director evaluates the students on what computer skills they have learned, and then determines if they have met the requirements to pass the course. This final evaluation has been done several different ways, but a simple, computerized, standard evaluation has yet to be created. Through Tech Scouts, I discovered Kirkwood has a software program called eLumen. This software is currently being used to evaluate learners in credit courses. The facilitator is able to evaluate the learners via the web as well as post the results on this same website allowing the facilitator and learner to have access to the evaluations. To begin with, the program administrator decides what they want to evaluate the learner on and then creates a rubric to use when evaluating the learners. The program administrator may “copy” rubrics their colleagues have already created in the eLumen software, and customize them to meet their needs; or they may create a new rubric from scratch. I am currently working with the program administrator to create a rubric for the courses in the Basic Workplace Computing Certificate. This is a time consuming task. You have to determine which things are a must know and which things are a nice to know for the learner in each course, since you have a limited amount of time to evaluate their learning at the end of the course. Once these rubrics are created, this fall we will begin to work on creating them in the eLumen software and then we will do a trial run with a certificate class. Once we have the Basic Workplace Computing Certificate evaluations completed, the goal will be to do the same thing for all of the other computer certificates in Continuing Education. Working as a technician at Kirkwood, I have noticed that many staff and faculty use a PC in their job every day, but they don’t always know shortcuts that could help to make their work simpler. For this reason I decided to offer a class with some basic computer tips. During the spring semester, I put together a course called Computer Tips and Tricks and offered it twice for the staff through the KCELT Center. I put together a handout giving step-by-step instructions on how to do some simple tasks and explained when and why you would want to use these shortcuts. The feedback from the learners in the class, whether experienced users or beginners, was very positive. Everyone told me they had learned something they didn't know. For next year, I am going to work on another class with more advanced tips. If you have any questions or want additional information about the projects I have been working on, please contact me at cathy.coleman@kirkwood.edu . Copyright 2008, Cathy Coleman/Kirkwood Community College. All Right Reserved. |
|
