4/9 Class

Reflection: For me, Rodney's presentation was good in the sense of "wow, so that's what the corporate world is like". I guess I've been in nonprofits and academia all my working life so I was a little perplexed by Rodney's comment about Chevron. He urged us would be PMs to just focus on the people, nevermind the nasty things that the company does. Elsewise, I think there were some good nuggets about the importance of how project management pervades most of the endeavors of our lives nowadays. Also, I wonder how others felt when the hourly rates were mentioned - I was like... hmmm wow money, but also at what cost? Sigh.

- Ty

Rodney Dunican Background
- ITEC grad (1999)
- Wrote a lot of online learning courses, Instructor Led Training (ILT)
- Different roles: Project Manager, Instructional Designer
- Business of learning is very different from learning itself ($, numbers of learners through a course, training = less lawsuits)
- Ex. of what Rodney has done: "Change Management", year-long Management Immersion, soft/hardware, softskills, sales

PROJECT MANAGEMENT
- Do the things that turn you on.
- "Temporary endeavor undertaken to produce a unique product or outcome".
- Defined set of tasks, timeframe, milestones. Desired results.
- Almost all jobs are project-based.
- Billing project milestones
- Project Managers are in charge (finances, etc.)
- In the business world, its about the learning bottom line.
- Grease (keep things moving), glue (keep things synched), ring leader (time management).
- Scope, time, cost, resources, quality. Leadership + team building
- Project Management Certifications available
- Desired learning results, client goals, communication, internal business needs, development team needs/goals, cost/time/quality
- Risks are potential problems.
- Kim: AGILE Model (throw all the folks together and brainstorm)
- Applying specific parts of past knowledge to problems OR creating something brand new.
- TEAM: ID, SME, Web Designers, Web Developers, Solution Architects (LMS), Clients, Talent, etc.
- Collaboration, shared vocabularies, using people's expertise (to inform and enhance the project)
- 5 Phases: Initiate, Plan, Execute, Monitor, Close

INITIATE
- Sales, solution planning (key stakeholders, needs assessment. Sometimes its not a training issue, but an incentives issues). SOW (Statement of Work- Contract, $60, 80, 100/hr. Average ID: $90. PM: $100+). Contractors - Professional/General Liability, Insurance, Marketing, etc.) Identify the person to do the final sign-off on the project.

PLAN
- Solution design. MS Project: for mapping out the project.

EXECUTE/MONITOR
- Solution development. Task updates, status mtgs, change requests, issues/risk log, milestone sign-off and documentation, QA testing. Alpha+Beta TEsting. Report project to finance. Early changes easy, later changes difficult. Signing off helps to allow for invoicing and project flow.

CLOSE
- Celebrate success

Resources:
- PMBOK - www.pmi.org (Project Mgt Body of Knowledge), certification
- www.4pm.com (Newsletter w/ articles on best Practices)
- "Making It Happen" fictional account of project mgt. 180pp.

Other
- Each team member does PM on their own.
- How does one brag in a good way?

A Whole New Mind

I'll use this blog post to collect thoughts for Daniel Pink's "A Whole New Mind". I'm about 2/3rds through now, so look for changes/additions:

- STORY-TELLING: Something we learned about back in ITEC800, I love Pink's example of the Hero Story. As a student of Anthropology (that was my BA), I definitely recall talking about how knowledge is passed down through stories. Morality is often taught through folktales, songs, chanting, etc. It only makes sense that that is how our human brains are wired to process when it comes to complex amounts of informaton.

- RESURGENT ART/DESIGN/AESTHETIC: I attended the HS of Art & Design which Pink mentions in the book. It's great that in NYC everyone has the opportunity to apply for High Schools outside of their zone, choosing something they want to focus on (art, music, science, vocations).

4/2 Back from Web 2.0 Expo

Unfortunately I didn't get to catch any of the presenters on the upper levels, mostly because they were mostly over by the time I was able to get out of work early. With that said however, I did enjoy going to the expo. There were a ton of social networking apps, mashups, and other cool things. Here's what I liked the best:

- Yola (They recently changed their name from synthasite), allows you to build your own site online. Very awesome. Nice t-shirts too!
- YouCity.com a 3D Modeling and Mapping service. Not exactly Web 2.0 on its own but one can see how it easily could be very interactive. Actually, they do mention how its used with schools, real estate, games, etc.
- Grou.ps was a free create-your-own social networking site.
- OER Commons - freely available and open source education resources for all. I'll have to look into them more.

The one thing I also noticed was that a lot of the booths were enterprise focused and business focused. Our friend SocialText was there. Also, I was expecting something called JomSocial to be there (for Joomla), but they weren't. Wonder what happened... Overall it was a fun expo to attend. Did anyone have the appetizers? They were yummy! Perhaps I'll catch something tomorrow...

2/19 Class

Link to our (Alex + I) podcast assignment from last week: http://alex.podomatic.com/entry/2009-03-18T01_09_50-07_00

Reflection from last week:

Started off class by attending a lecture on the role of gaming in civic engagement. Over I thought there were some interesting points, but felt like much of the discussion wasn't very constructive in getting at what most of the audience seemed to want: ideas about WHY we should focus on gaming to teach people civic engagement, among other things. The speaker did state that he did not feel that gaming was anymore able to engage us than a really good lecturer (amongst other things), which I would defintely not agree with. I would have probably enjoyed a live demo of a group playing Simcity or something of that nature.

The second part of class the LMS/CMS group did their presentations. I was part of this group and showed everyone my www.gaginang.org website which was built out on Joomla. Unfortunately the keyboard/computer was having trouble with logins (for all presenters).

3/12 Class Reflection

Last week's class was spent breaking up into two groups and recording our thoughts/takeaways from Ellen Wagner's presentation. Our group had technical difficulties multiple times, with the result that the soundbytes of Alex and myself were chopped from the group file. We ended up making our own at home and are working on our shared file at the time of this writing. During, we got to hear from our peers on virtual worlds - which is right along the lines of my holodeck obsession. Viewing learning as a human enterprise, if and when we get to the technologically advanced stage of having a holodeck, the lines between reality and virtuality (I just coined that!) will be blurred ala Matrix. Now, after msging with Alex, I think I've been too negative about the potentiality of all that. Holodecks will lead to a new stage of human existence, virtually(!) unfettered by limits. If you read the writings of popular futurists, you might become overwhelmed. But it can also really be heartening to see what humanity may create.

Ellen Wagner Class

Script:

- What did you learn?

3D learning, haptics, Wii IS going to be the future (see my voicethread from the last post). Web 4.0 - the ubiquitous web.

- What are your takeaways?

Designers should design for today - designing for the needs of now - that is the sweet spot.

- What keeps you up at night?

Feeling like technology and ID will end up the way it will end up, even without my participation/influence in/on it. Feeling overwhelmed with the possibilities of technology and neglecting the natural joys of life.

Reflection:

I really liked Ellen's "Hype Cycle". It's a great way to view trends and how people take to new ideas. Maybe we can get a copy of it? Also, web4.0 idea sounds a little scary. Actually it's like giving a certain level of consciousness to tools and objects. The dark side of this of course is when super villains command armies of robots and tanks to attack from their neural implant blue-brain. =)

Kurt Bonk

I appreciated having the opportunity to hear from Kurt Bonk and getting an overview of his book The World is Flat. Definitely a lot of information crammed into about an hour and half. One thing that stuck out to me was when Kurt showed the picture of the family who took went on a Carribbean boat trip and their three kids were still able to have class. If WE truly ALL LEARN, then these sorts of things should be more possible. Also the example of kids having a little tutoring device was great to see as well. One topic that I'd see to see more discourse on IS exactly that, attitudes of the general public to how learning actually takes place outside of traditional ivory towers. In fact, I sometimes wonder about our very own ITEC program... hmmmm ;) If I've learned anything, its that ITEC has provided me with access of knowledge to tools and contacts. There is a lot of content in the program, that's for sure, but I feel like I'm not fully utilizing the information/skills/tools. I think a lot of this has to do with the constraints of having to work a f/t job and also because I'm not much of a night person. Perhaps I should take advantage more of HyFlex. =)

Oh and here is my 1 minute (It's gotta be at least 2 mins I think) response to Kurt Bonk. More about me having fun with Star Trek I think. =)

Seems like the screen is too thin to show the thing so here is the link as well: http://voicethread.com/share/379697/