Seeing Through New Eyes

You know you always learn more when you go through the interview process. Well, I have had an opportunity to be on the other side of it. With the chance to be on a search committee and do the interviewing it has opened my eyes to so many different things that go into interviews and unique thoughts that I would never had imagined the interveiwers were noticing. It has especially been good for me since the organization is full or instructional designers. The position I helped interview for was not, but hearing insights into that field was very helpful. This probably sounds like one of those, oh duh situation where you're thinking everyone should know that, but it was a nice reminder for me. I certainly will approach applying for jobs and interviewing differently now. Here's a list of a few things I know I"ll work to improve now: resume (look and feel), correspondence-keeping it very professional, eye contact in face-to-face meetings, work on all my small fidgits and quirks, ...

Below are my screen shots from Netlogo. Flocking: Ants: In the flocking simulation I found that the three turning sliders changed the dynamics of the flocking. And that the slider for minimum-separation changed if flocking would actually occur. Whether or not the birds flocked didn't interest me. What I loved was when flocking did happen, that the turning dynamics of them could change. This caught me by surprise. I hadn't thought of flocking in terms of straight lines or curves before. So, individually we all change slightly day by day (straight lines and curves). It may depend on how much sleep we received, how hungry we are, how much knowledge we have of the project we are working on, what personal things are going on in our lives, etc. The interesting thing about it is that with a different turn the dynamics of the flock or project changes. The ants simulation showed that the higher the evaporation rate, the less number of ants that actually did any gathering o...

One more week of playing for class…that is playing the game Lineage. It is amazing how much is packed into this game. When you step aside from having some fun to analyze the games components and the interactions taking place there’s a lot going on. So is there learning occurring? What is true learning anyway? David Merrill states in his First Principle of Instruction five components of learning. Here they are: 1. Learning if facilitated when learners are engaged in solving real-world problems. -solving the problem in progression, more complex as you go 2. Learning is facilitated when relevant previous experience is activated. -have a foundation, take time to use the previous knowledge 3. Learning is facilitated when the instruction demonstrates what is to be learned rather than merely telling information about what is to be learned… -media is used, examples of concepts and non-examples 4. Learning is facilitated when learners are required to use their knowledge or skill to...

Now I know why people get so addicted to gaming, it really is fun. I have played games on the computer and on game systems, but never online like this. I had a blast! I must admit that I really suck, but I am having fun. After a long time I have reached level 10. My screen name is AvensGray (I'm sure I interacted with fellow class mates-especially RoeHaun, thanks for helping me). I signed on as a Knight (my class and race?) using a dagger, an pprentice knight sword, and a mace. I had a good orkish helmet, cloak, armor and leather boots to top off my look and protection. As you can imagine, I died A LOT. After dying 25 times I quit counting. Oh, and the most embarassing way I died was while others were trying to help me and they had to keep finding me again. I don't think I had a favorite creature, except the water snake women things in the dungeon were weird, can't remember what they were called. Looking forward to actually getting into the normal areas of the game, now tha...

Are people different online than they are offline? That seems like it should have a simple answer, but in today’s world it doesn’t. I found it interesting in the readings David gave my class Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community that what can be found in the offline world is found in the online world. Take a look at trolls, identity lying, identity of people by voice and language (or actions), etc. I was particularly interested in the section on trolls. In the example of someone on a community who started out being nice and following the rules suddenly turned on others and their posts. Was she (Ultimatego) a troll or just that way? The various reactions to Ultimatego ‘s malicious postings and know-it-all attitude were not far from what you’d see in the offline world as well. The range was from people who totally ignored her to those that would lash back. So why would anyone want to have two identities (an online and an offline)? There is always a chance that you can meet an ...

What a fun week this has been. Once I waded through the readings, I finally got to the fun part of talking with people. I must admit, that IRC is fun and informative at the same time. Quite the contrast to the MOO experience of last week. So I was connected to IRCnet for a while. First off I visited the channel #Beginner to get started. That was a good experience. Everyone there was friendly and very helpful. I learned a lot about the interaction and shortcuts by observing and chatting. I was surprised how many people were logged on, but not participating. I guess like me, they were learing by observation too. I actually spent quite a bit of time here. It helped so much. Next I visited the channel #Chatzone. That was a little slow. The conversation I had with one person was really hard to follow. Here I was also asked to join a small erotic chat. I declined graciously. My time in this channel was short-lived. I also visited the channel #Worldchat. Wow, this was a fun place to...

I have mixed feelings about this weeks assignment. I really enjoyed the time I spent in Zork playing. I remember my older brothers playing games like this when I was younder. I would watch them type in commands and then map out on paper where they were. It was fascinating. The hours of playing in Zork were fun. I found that for that sort of game I loved to explore the world and try to map out where I had been, like I had seen my brothers do. I found it hard to navigate the game without mapping. LambdaMoo was a different story. I never had problems connecting with the server, but I had problems once inside the world. It took me quite a bit of time to grasp the commands. In the mean time the other people in the rooms with me laughed at me, jeered. At one time someone had mentioned that they were new (like me) and that they were a student. Someone who obviously was well known to the world said, "No one is holding class here. We're a small community that really resents untrain...

Reputation, trust, coopertaion, and incentives: there are many ways to build these up, and just one bad stroke can tear them down quickly. Buying more and more online is creeping into my life. Until just the last 6 months or so I have never thought of problems with online purchasing like fraudulent dealings. Most of my concerns have stemmed from any paranoia about identity theft. In my online dealings, mostly ebay and Amazon.com, I have found that reputation and trust play very large roles in what I feel safe doing. Incentives I find to purchase online fall into cheaper items that come right to my doorstep. I usually have to wait a few days before they arrive, but Amazon.com offers free shipping for purchases over a certain amount, and that adds to the incentive. It hasn't ever been hard to purchase from Amazon.com because the company has a good reputation and I trust them. On ebay, looking at the reputation system there (the feedback) is important to me as well. I won'...

I need to clarify what I had written in a previous post . David had made a comment to me that my question showed, "a pretty pervasive bias toward knowing "like we do offline", and that knowing should always be like that. I think we should recognize the legitimacy of completely online relationships...". After reading his comment I realized that I had not written or conveyed in my writing very well what I was really thinking. I do that so much. So, I am trying to redeem myself in some ways because I love online learning and interactions, and I guess I don't want people who read my blog to think that I believe online interactions and learning should be like face-to-face. I realize it is different, and I actually appreciate the difference. In my personal experience with online vs. face-to-face I have noticed though that the online relationship changes some once you've met face-to-face. That change usually isn't bad. So back to my original post about the ...

First I want to say how excited I have been about Fanfiction. This site has so much potential. It was sometimes hard to pull myself away from reading so many great writings. I found that just like gaming this site can capture you and keep a tight hold for a long time. Authors followed : 1. The Village Girl :This author wrote based on the movie The Village. I read the story titled The Attack. I really enjoyed the realism the author inserted into the scene and the thoughts of the characters. 2. Dolce Notte :This author wrote off of the movie The Prince of Egypt. I read the story titled Side By Side. The story is great because it focuses on societal issues of the past that still exist today. 3. Galathilion :This author wrote from several ideas. It is interesting because it was an assignment for school. It incorporates a couple of books and a holiday. The stories title is An Elven Christmas. For the restrictions set on the writer from the teacher, the creativity in the writing is wo...

Tonight I spent dinner with a portion of my Understanding Online Interaction class. It is so amazing to me how different interactions take place in face to face environments versus online. For the rest of the semester I will now read my classmates postings with a different perspective. I've met most of them and have a little bit of knowledge about them as people rather than just online students. I had wondered before dinner if this would 'taint' or change any interactions we had online or not. But then I realized that most of these people already knew each other. So their online perspectives have already been different than mine. I guess I'm not sure how to explain this, but communicating 'outside of school' has always opened up different doors for me. I'll admit that there are opportunities for me to interact with these people away from 'school' per say, but I have not taken the opportunities to do so. In the end it really is my own fault for not t...

This week has been quite interesting. Once again I am learning more and more, and I am really enjoying it. David introduced the class to Sharp Reader , a RSS/Agregator. I was struggling with keeping track of my classmates’ blogs, but this software allows me to read them easily. The blogs I have followed this week for my assignment will definitely be ones to follow. Here are the topics I find interesting and that came up in the blogs I browsed. Topics of interests: • Learning Management Systems-this area seems to have some controversial aspects and I want to hear the whole story before I have a good idea of what is good for education and what is not. • Distance Education and E-learning-I am fascinated with distance education and e-learning. There is so much within this area that I just can’t seem to get enough, and I’m always finding new resources, like the link from Dorothy Little’s blog to E-learning guru , a great blog full of resources. • Educational websites and resources-T...

In browsing through some EduBloggers tonight I found a fabulous blog by Anne Davis about ways to use blogs in education . It is a great list that anyone interested in education and blogs should look at.

My professor, David Wiley, asked me a question back in one of his comments to my blog (oh one way far back before I posted the same blog about 25 times!!) Anyway, he wanted to know how much value I was finding in reading other people's blogs. So to answer that question more fully, I would say that finding blogs with subjects that I am interested in adds a lot of value to my experiences (and especially for the class he is teaching, since I am being introduced and using blogs and other online communication tools.) It is a great educational experience to read from bloggers who have been blogging for quite some time and are part of the culture of blogging. There is a lot of information that can be gleaned from others. Although some of the blogs I tracked for my assignment last week were not necessarily educational in nature, I have found that even just reading the blogs of my peers (well, I like to think they are my peers-most of them are PhD students, which is a level much higher than...

Well, looks like my Blog Hopping post shouldn't be missed! Wow. Oh well. I shouldn't leave writing my blog until Monday morning. Wiley shouldn't have a hard time finding my entry-heehee. Just for some clarification, my post was posting. So after trying many times I opened another brower and it finally posted my blog, and posted my blog, and posted my blog. I wish I had had the feedback from blogger saying it was posting my post even though nothing happened in my window and when I opened up my blog and refreshed it nothing changed either. Now I know. Thanks for the help Bekir, I have successfully taken off all the extra postings.

Ok, so another week gone by and I have been looking at blogs. Below are the five I have followed this week. Some of them have been a little boring because the people only posted a few times, but others have been actively posting everyday. It is interesting to see that those who post everyday seem to use their blogs as a way to vent or reflect on what is happening in their lives, at least for the personal blogs. The Blogging of the President has been quite an interesting one too. It appears that the people posting there are writing a little more formal, at least with less explitives involved. Each personal blogger seems to be adding whatever options of their personality there are to their blogs. Images and animated images were prevelant too. I found it amazing that I could go in and read what people had to say and then feel so connected to them. It made me want to go back everyday and read more, which made those who posted irregularly disappointing. I also found myself going through the...

So this week in David's class I have been pondering over his question posted, "What are the economics underlying voluntary online collaboration and support?" I have struggled quite a bit with this question, reading other students posts and thinking some more. The biggest problem I have had is with the word economics. The word alturistic came up in the questions, and students have wondered if that even exists. But I want to know what voluntary communication and collaboration has to do with economics? Mabey I just have the wrong definition of economics, Dictonary.com says economics is, "The social science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services and with the theory and management of economies or economic systems." I guess I view this having mostly to do with money, monetary gain, etc. I had been searching for a word that might work better than economics, but I haven't found one yet. Anyway, I posted my question and si...

So this week I have been introduced to Google Groups. Wow, what a fascinating and big archive and discussion group. The archive was great. I liked that when I searched for something relevant groups were displayed. It was strange though that some groups I did go to had postings that seemed quite unrelated to the group. It was fun and heart wrenching at the same time to go and read postings in it. I couldn't believe how far back the archive went. I was finding postings as far back as 1998. I read some postings relating to 9/11 in the United States. I was so amazed that people were 'watching' the news and then going to Google Groups to post what was going on! I was just reading news that day. I found myself searching and reading way more than posting. It wasn't until this weekend that I realized for my class I needed to do some postings. Oops. Oh well, at least I did some postings. It probably isn't exactly what my professor had in mind (I think he wanted a much more i...

I began really using the tools of the internet my first year of college. I had used computers ever since elementary school but only for word processing needs (and that began using the DOS systems) or learning games. Of course, at that time the first desktop workstations were just coming into use and the domain naming system had just been introduced. During junior high and high school I used computers still for word processing and a little bit of searching, but nothing that really stands out in my memory. In my first year of college I was introduced to email. It was great. I could eaily and very cheaply communicate with my friends who had moved to go to school at other universities. Of course, I could only access this from the school computers. I didn't have that access at home yet. And nbeknown to me, there was a lot going on with the uinternet at that time. After I was married I moved to Logan, Utah where I really began to dig into school and I learned so much more about compu...

Hello World!!

I have never attended the IT Institute at Utah State University, but it has been well worth my time. I have had the opportunity to hear from many people in and outside the field. It is great to hear how Instructional Technology applies to so many different areas of education and the corporate world. There's one more day, and it promises to be just as good as the first two. Now, all I need to do is jump into my school work and keep up with the issues and ideas I've learned about at the Institute. Oh, and hopefully be able to spread what I've learned.

It is Friday and I have now turned in all of my work for the Summer Semester that can be done right now. There are still some questions floating around about one class, but the major stress is over. Yeah!!!! I have learned a lot this semester. It has been rough, but worth the long haul. My new job as Project Manager for the Digital Library is going well. It has been just a week, but I am already learning a lot and starting to think through the work flow of this department. Since we are still so new, there is a large amount of work to be done. I hope to be able to apply the concepts and tools I have learned in the last few months and really the last year to my current job and future employment. -Heather

Well, class is officially over but there is still a lot of work to do. I have been quite pleased with what I learned over the last week. It was enjoyable and informative. It's great when those two coincide. I really enjoyed learning about Camtesia and RoboDemo. They are great tools. Ellie and I ventured to a movie Friday night to let our brains rest and when it was all said and done we were still analyzing the movie like we were still in class. I guess that's ok, sometimes. I feel charged up and ready to continue learning and growing within the field of Instructional Design and in Distance Education. -Heather

Well, it is day three of INST 6750 with Sandie Waters. It has been going well. We have discussed a lot of issues and have learned about some great tools. I have really liked all the tools we've talked about. I guess the ones that I have really liked and would be is Instant Messaging (IM) and Breeze in PowerPoint. I love the tasks you can handle with IM. It is dynamic and fast paced, but a great way to collaborate and discuss. Eddie Loo spoke to us this morning about Macromedia Breeze and using it for audio in PowerPoint. Oh, that was great! It was so cool to see and hear presentations by people overseas from the United States. I can see the potential this tool has for Distance Education, especially International Education. -Heather

Here is a link in a blog: Instructional Technology Department/USU

I am here in class learning how to use blogs and setting up my own. This is my first experience with a blog. How fun!