Metacognitive Blog (Final Blog)

Wow, its hard to believe that this semester is already over. This class was a great continuation of TSTM 444 and has helped me gain a better overall knowledge of training. We covered several different methods of training in this class, but the one that stuck out in my mind was virtual training. Virtual education has become a major part of training in today's tech-savvy world. In the future, it is safe to say that this type of training will increase greatly.

The major project we completed for this class was a training session with the SC Department of Education. We held an online learning course on Google Applications for business/technology teachers in South Carolina. The project itself was a success. I feel that each member of my team did a great amount of work and took the project seriously. We used CamStudio, a free screen-capturing software to record the videos. The only significant problem we ran into was hosting the videos. We would have liked for more participation from the teachers, but you can only ask for so much. We understand that those who signed up for the course get very busy, especially around this time of year. This type of training would probably work better for teachers over the summer, when they can fully concentrate on the modules that we provide. All in all, I feel that the project was an excellent learning experience and will help us as we go out into the real world.

Blog Response Inventory

Blog 1 Response – 09/08/2009; Xayy Sihirath; Blog 1 – 08/31/2009

Blog 2 Response – 09/21/2009; Spencer Touchberry; Blog 2 – 09/15/2009

Blog 3 Response – 10/5/2009; Matt Ward; Blog 3 – 09/28/2009

Blog 4 Response – 10/19/2009; Chris Lambert; Blog 4 – 10/12/2009

Blog 5 Response – 11/30/2009; Daniel London; Blog 5 – 10/28/2009

Blog 6 Response – 11/16/2009; David Harris; Blog 6 – 11/16/2009

Blog 7 Response – 11/30/2009; Steven McQuithy; Blog 7 – 11/23/2009

Blog 7

I just finished recording my video with CamStudio. My topic was based on Google Groups. I did my video on Searching for a group of a particular interest. The video itself took a while to complete, and I am still unsure if it uploaded correctly. I tried to upload it to YouTube, but I am not sure if it sucessfully uploaded. The video recorded perfectly and I did not have any trouble with the voice and timing of the video itself.

We are on the last few modules in our training group for the SC Department of Education. Overall, I am very pleased with the videos that each member of the group has created. I wish that the teachers who signed up for the classes would have participated more, but we can only do so much.

Blog 6

It has been very difficult to keep up with assignments for this class. I had no idea that we were already on Blog 6 Response, and I haven't even posted mine! Needless to say, we've been busy with out training workshop for the Department of Education and so far so good. We've had decent participation from the teachers, but would like to get them more involved with the class. I am about to start working on recording my CamStudio video, and the topic I have chosen is Google Groups - 'Find a group based on a particular interest'. The reason I chose this topic is because it correlates with the training videos we have developed for the SC Dept. of Education.

Blog 5

Well we launched our Google Apps for Business Teachers in SC this week, on Wednesday (Oct 28). We had a good response to the flyer that was sent out a week prior to the launch date. Almost 30 teachers inquired about the course and out of those, 17 have signed up for the course. Module 1 was launched on Wednesday and was put together by Daniel London. He did a great job with the videos, and also put together a very informative PowerPoint presentation which served as a course overview. Our next module will be launching next Wednesday (Nov. 4), and will cover Google Docs. William Foster has put together a nice storyboard and I am looking forward to see how his video turns out. This assignment has given us all first hand experience on developing an online training course, something that will benefit us in our future endeavors. I have encouraged all of the teachers that have signed up for this course to give feedback and suggestions so that in the future, this training session will be even more beneficial to them.

Blog 4

As our group is approaching some important deadlines within the next few weeks, I feel that we are prepared. As a group, we are on the right track and know exactly what and when certain tasks must be completed by. However, individually, we need to get on the ball in creating outlines and such for the recording of our training sessions. It is difficult for us to meet outside of class time due to busy schedules. Moving forward with the project, it is time for us to start putting together outlines for video recordings using CamStudio. Each group member has gotten set up on NiceNet and we will be playing around with CamStudio in the next couple of class meetings. Our first training session is scheduled to be delivered on October 28th, which is a couple of weeks away. A tentative flyer for the course has been emailed to Tony Dillon and I am waiting to hear back from him regarding that. As a whole, this group is on the right track, but individually we need to start picking up the pace in getting the deliverables prepared for each training session.

Blog 3

Our training team has been making some significant process towards our ultimate goal of delivering a training session on Google Apps for the South Carolina Department of Education. The training session will be prerecorded and offered to teachers in SC that are interested in learning about this new technology. We will be using an open source video software, CamStudio, to record the training videos. We will be posting these videos along with other useful information for the teachers on NiceNet, an internet classroom assistant. To learn more about NiceNet, visit their website at http://www.nicenet.org.

In class, we have been moving towards our annotated bibliography assignment. Last week we chose our topic, and this Thursday we have our first citation due. The topic I initially chose was how many virtual high schools are currently operating. It was difficult for me to find any relevant articles on that narrow of a topic, so I expanded it to trend in K-12 virtual learning. I believe that by altering my topic, I will be able to find better and more useful resources. I am interested in learning about this because just a few years ago, it was only a concept. Now, virtual learning is increasing daily.