Confessions of an IT Poser Tools, Tricks, and Tips to Help Achieve Your Distance Education Goals Jessie Daniels Distance MBA Productions Manager Tennessee.

Confessions of an

IT Poser

Tools, Tricks, and Tips

to Help Achieve Your

Distance Education GoalsJessie Daniels

Distance MBA Productions Manager

Tennessee Tech University

Poser: (n)

How on earth did I end

up here???

Confession #1Dear Diary,

If one train leaves Chicago at 11am

traveling at a speed of 75 mph, and

another train leaves New York at noon

traveling at a speed of 60 mph, how on

earth do I figure out how to get

accounting lectures to be just as effective

if their students are on one of those

trains rather than in the classroom?

Content Delivery

Challenges and Tips●Challenge: AACSB Accreditation!

●Modular Delivery is key

●Don’t be swayed by every wind that

blows

●Lowest common denominator? KISS

Modes of Delivery

●Video (Studio vs. Screen Capture)

●Audio Only (audiocasts)

●Audio narrated PPT

●Docs

●Size matters

(File size, that is)

Methods of Delivery

●iLearn (D2L)

●iTunes U

●RSS feeds (requires updating of

websites or equivalent)

●The key is to find out what works for

your students! (Note: Expect

FREQUENT changes and requests)

Tools to Help

●Audacity (open source audio recording and

editing)

●Camtasia ($$ Screen capturing software:

Editable)

●Jing Project (Screen captures; image and

video)

●Zamzar (File converter)

●Impatica ($$ PPT compressor/converter)

●iSpring (PPT converter)

Confession #2Dear Diary,

Today, I explained the same thing to 14

different students and 3 professors. The

task takes five minutes to accomplish and

I spent 189 minutes explaining it over the

phone, IM, email, and in person. I am no

math wiz, but that seems like a waste of

time. There has got to be something I can

do to keep from doing that again.

Tutorials, Troubleshooting, and

Resource Management

●JIT Tutorials vs. Common

Troubleshooting

●“I know I have that...where did I put it?”

●Communication: How to get what you

have out there

Some tools to help

●del.icio.us (My Favorites or Bookmarks

wherever you go!)

●drop.io (Like a blog/wiki but more focus on

file sharing)

●Zamzar (file converter)

●Jing Project (screen capture, image and

video)

●An Organizational PLAN!

Confession #3

Dear Diary,

So a student doing an international

exchange, a finance professor, and

an HR manager from a multi-

national corporation walk into a

bar... if it were just that easy....

Online Collaboration and

Presentations●People, places, and purpose

●Absolutely essential for our program

●You can’t do it all! Mention many,

support one or two

Some Communication

Tools ●Elluminate (V-Room and V-Class)

●Google Chat (Video, audio, and chat)

●Skype (Video chat)

●Oovoo (Video chat, conference options)

●Dimdim (Online meetings; phone option)

●Scriblink (Whiteboard, chat, file sharing)

●Zoho (Many options like Google)

Google: One Stop Shop●Google Docs: Collaboration and Editing Documentation

oPresentations, Documents, Spreadsheets, Forms,

Surveys

●Google Chat

●Gmail (over 7GB of space!)

●Google Calendar

●Google Reader

●Google Scholar (Academic Search Engine)

●Partnerships with Blogger, YouTube, and Others (Picasa)

Confession #4

Dear Diary,

Facebook, MySpace, Twitter,

LinkedIn, Flickr... so where does my

professional life end and my

personal life begin?

Wait.

What personal life?

Social Networking

●Purposeful Utility: Think first

●What works for one, may not fit for

another

●Beware of mixing business with

pleasure

Some Tools●Facebook (Groups are especially helpful)

●Twitter (Useful for networkers, JIT problem solving)

●Linked In (Groups are useful for academic and

professional discussions; jobs)

●MySpace (Personal web page and interaction)

●Flickr (Photosharing, apps available with most other

social networking sites)

Confession #5

Dear Diary,

Maybe, just maybe, I am getting

the hang of this. As long as nothing

changes, I think I’m good.

Keeping Up●Blogs! (Just Google Educational

Technology or Instructional Technology

Blogs)

●Online groups and forums through

social networking

●Conferences and Personal Networking

Questions?

Confessions of your

own?

Resources●Audacity: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

●Camtasia, Snagit, Jing and More:

http://www.techsmith.com/

●Zamzar: http://www.zamzar.com/

●Impatica: http://www.impatica.com/

●iSpring: http://www.ispringsolutions.com/

More Resources

●Delicious: http://delicious.com/

●Drop.io: http://drop.io/

●Elluminate: http://www.elluminate.com/

●Skype: http://skype.com/

●Oovoo: http://www.oovoo.com/

●Dimdim: http://www.dimdim.com/

●Scriblink: http://www.scriblink.com/

●Zoho: http://www.zoho.com/

Still More Resources●Google: http://www.google.com

●Facebook: http://www.facebook.com

●MySpace: http://www.myspace.com

●Twitter: http://twitter.com

●Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com

●Flickr: http://www.flickr.com

●Some good blogs:

http://barrydahl.com/

http://www.teachbesttech.org/index.php/itu/

http://www.techlearning.com/

Contact Info

Jessie Daniels

Distance MBA Productions

[email protected] or

[email protected]

On Facebook and

Linkedinhttp://twitter.com/jessiedaniels