Work blog

One very cool project

By HANNAH INZKO on October 22, 2009 8:54 AM | 2 Comments | No TrackBacks

On Tuesday I had the opportunity to teach iMovie to two separate sections of an art education class, through EDUCATE.

I didn't have a lot of information about what kinds of projects these classes were doing that incorporated multimedia, so I decided to do a basic overview of iMovie with a couple of extras thrown in for good measure.

When I arrived at the class and got a chance to listen to the instructor give the project details to her students I was elated.

Both of these classes are going to recreate their own version of a fairy tale using video and each video must incorporate two things.

1) The fairy tale being portrayed, must have a twist built in. So they have the option of doing a PSA on the fairy tale, a documentary, a commercial, a trailer, etc...

2) The video has to teach the audience something. They must incorporate some kind of message into their video.

Each video is to be 2-4 minutes long and the students can use video, photos, music, effects, color, and text to relay their message.

The instructor really loved the idea of using the green screen at DC to take their videos that one step further. She encouraged her students to come to DC to use our facility or just get advice and guidance with editing.

I think I am going to ask if she would be willing to share any exemplary work and possibly a copy of the project description and grading rubric.

I really think there is something special here.

Its pickin up

By HANNAH INZKO on October 13, 2009 3:56 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

I feel the busy season start to ascend upon us...

The lab is packed and the editing room is continuously occupied. This can only mean one thing...

Students, at this point in the semester have either already been assigned their video projects, or at the least, have heard our overview of services presentation.

The educate workshops are going pretty well and we are starting to see some appointments from that.

We are also seeing more requests from first-year seminars, which is a really good thing. This particular genre of classes is my favorite to present to. Since the students are all freshmen, I can look at them and guarantee that they will be using digital media during their college career. At this point they can put a face with a name and location and resource.

Challenges for me right now are pulling together all of the separate projects that we have going on.

Sparky awards is taking off in classes I wasn't predicting and we are getting more and more requests for the sparky awards workshops. I have been working with trace on putting together some useful information for the students on how to create and submit their Sparky entries, and in the process coming up with a one-sheeter for the workshops.

Kaltura has sort of been on the back burner for a little while, but I recently was contacted by an instructor that wants to be a part of the pilot. I will have to do some testing before hand and figure out exactly how we are going to track any issues that it has with this particular class.

More blogging for my own good

By HANNAH INZKO on October 8, 2009 9:03 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

10/8

I am turning over a new leaf and will start blogging with more frequency.

There are several reasons I am doing this.

1) There are so many things/ideas/thoughts/lists going through my head at any one point that I feel like if I don't put them down somewhere, they will dissipate into thin air.

2) Any time that I can practice my writing skills is meaningful. I was one that slipped through the cracks in school, in terms of writing. I have always been told that I have good ideas, but I need to work on how to communicate them.

This first entry will be rough, I can tell already..

I just need to do a brain dump so that I can start anew.

Projects that I am working on:

Sparks:

Paint is done, electric is run, the projector people have been out to see the space and we have decided on a projector. We will also be replacing the projector screen, since it is ripped. Ryan is working with them on the switcher and how it will communicate with the computers.

The computer mounts are being installed this week and the computers will be attached next week. Kent was able to build all 5 iMacs in one days, because he is magical. The Mac Mini's have been ordered and will be built upon arrival.

OPP is waiting on the mount for the TV, the actual TV itself has arrived. Furniture has been ordered, or at least gone through the approval process. I contacted Deanna to make sure she tells me when the order comes through.

I am having OPP install a clear plastic strip by the door to ensure that the metal blinds don't get caught when the door is open and shut. I also talked the maintenance people in Sparks and got the room on a once a week cleaning schedule. I am ordering the podcasting booths, which will arrive next week. This way Dave can assemble them while he is still working on the room. I also scheduled time for him to come and look at our booth that has the built in shelf, so he will be building that too.

I have picked out silver lettering for the blue wall, but will wait to order that until the rebrand happens.

I have completed one movie poster that will go in the holders, I will be working with Dave Stong this weekend to complete the second.

I talked to OPP about replacing all stained and broken ceiling tiles, and moving the light fixtures up a bit, so that they don't interfere with the projector. The projector screen will also need to be raised up a bit.

We still need a coffee table with shelves.

Faculty Fellowship:

Nutr.360

The iMovie training and library training has been completed for the entire class. Tim and I did two full sessions, working with half of the class each time, while the other half did library training. I created a one-sheeter that I sent to Terry and she posted it on Angel.

The focus groups are scheduled for Dec. 1st and I have secured 12 iPods with mics to be picked up the day before and returned the day after. Free of charge.

Sparky:

Jeannette's class is now being required to enter, she has a great page on her class blog dedicated to the contest. I created a one-sheeter on the specifics of creative commons licensing that she can post. Trace added some items to his blog that would be good for her as well. He will be teaching iMovie to her two Eng 202 classes today.

I really want to do more with her in terms of organizing this for her and her class.

English202:

Lorena has scheduled 26 tours through Digital Commons during the first week of Nov. On top of this, we have started receiving requests from the individual instructors interested in the workshop on demand sessions. The requests are mostly for garageband, since the first assignment will be the trend analysis. One of the options for this project is a podcast. We are trying to schedule as many sessions as we can, but realize that we are quickly running out of man power.

Scheduling for Pollock:

The evenings have picked up a lot for faculty and for tours. In the past few weeks we have had class tours coming through, Lorenas class is coming through tonight at 7:15pm.

On the same note, we are not seeing very much traffic on the weekends, and would consider eliminating that shift and concentrating more on Monday-Friday. Especially since the weekend crew can't even answer support calls from campuses.

Educate workshops:

I have been working on some materials and lessons for the upcoming workshops. Garageband is next Friday and we will be using our regular workshop materials with just a few adjustments.

Ok, thats all I can think of right now, more to come I'm sure.

Feeling compelled to write

By HANNAH INZKO on June 23, 2009 7:43 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

I am washing clean of yesterday and starting the day refreshed,...or at least pretending to. Thats half the battle right there.

I was catching up on twitter this morning and methodically clicking on everyones posted links, (which seem to me to be a cleverly sneaky way of getting around the 140 rule),...but anyways. I came across my friend Nicks blog and his post about "The sad story of two homeless sims". I LOVED Sims when I was younger (ok, high school,...but whatever) and I have become fascinated by how people are using it now.

This, to me, seemed a lot like Digital Storytelling.

I have no idea what week it is...oh..3/9

By HANNAH INZKO on April 9, 2009 7:53 AM | 2 Comments | No TrackBacks

I hesitantly walked into the office today, not knowing whether I would walk into REAL last minute hysteria, or if the last two days were just that. I have been here for an hour, and so far its pretty darn quiet, hence why I can write this entry. But then again, it is only 8am.

I carved out some time this morning to catch up on my blog reading, both co-workers and web types.

I currently subscribe to mashable.com, gizmodo, lifehacker, the daily wtf and a slew of others. It was nice getting to read for pleasure today, I again feel connected,...sort of.

This is also the day that I get to give two identical tours to two different sections of the same class...English 202C. Right now they are assigned 3-4 deliverables for a small business or non-profit organization and most usually do either a brochure or flyer. The instructor thinks that if the class knew what resources were available and were given inspiration to do something else...they would. I guess thats where I come in.

I plan on giving them the whole dog and pony show here, with a tour and lots of information, for the first have of class, and the second half, I really want to gather them in one of the collaborative spaces and show some of the examples I have pulled.

We have had several groups use the Digital Commons to do commercials (Mktg 422) and PSA's (Engr 411).

Hopefully the students can find the inspiration and confidence to try out something new.

This did bring up one issue with our facility up here in Pollock. We really don't have a good place to do a presentation or demonstration for a large group of students. A lot of times when instructors and faculty bring their students by to see the facility we like to incorporate some visual examples of what can be done. With groups of 5-10 students we can pull them into our office, but with groups of 10-20 there really isn't a good place to take them. The computers in the collaborative spaces have plenty of space, but they have locked down the PC's to not play audio through the built-in output.

Week of 3/25

By HANNAH INZKO on April 1, 2009 8:36 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

I have been working on so many different things the past week or two, that my biggest challenge was figuring out a way to keep things straight.

I was finally able to bang out a schedule of sorts for the DC staff for the day before and the day-of the symposium. Of course as soon as I made it, things needed to be changed. We actually have 4 different things going on, on that one day. 1) The digital storytelling workshop, 2) Panel discussion about Digital Commons resources. 3) equipment set-up at the Penn Stater 4) Tours coming through DC Pollock. Phew!

Obviously priority is going to be the workshop, but making sure that we have enough staff at each place is going to be a challenge.

I was also extremely pleased with how the brown bag went. After almost having to cancel, it was great to see some familiar faces and I think we drew a great crowd. I was able to talk at length with a lecturer from the English department who is very excited to have her students start working on a multimedia project. The project was something that she has wanted to do for some time now, but without the technology expertise, she wasn't sure where to start. After listening to some of her ideas it was clear to me that her class would benefit from a condensed digital storytelling workshop. She originally wanted to do a podcast interview with a locally historical person, which would be fine, but I thought if we could incorporate pictures, and music and even video, they could do a documentary of sorts. I thought she was going to jump out of her skin. I was really hoping that she would email to set up some time, and she has. I am excited to see where this goes.

This project sort of tied into the planning for OUR Digital Storytelling workshop that we are doing. I have started on the poster part of the poster session that will be highlighting the activities from the workshop itself. I also have found some really great online resources pertaining to how we plan this workshop.

http://www.storycenter.org/stories/

http://www.tech-head.com/dstory.htm

http://electronicportfolios.org/digistory/index.html

Spring break week

By HANNAH INZKO on March 13, 2009 2:53 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Well, I had planned on a relaxing spring break, but no such luck. I spent the beginning of the week working with the instructor from Comm 150, helping him get his pre-existing powerpoint presentations ready for world campus. I thought this would be a quick and easy project, narrating powerpoint isn't exactly hard, but there was more to it than I thought. He had clips of some movies, full length versions of others, none in a format we could work with, each presentation was around an hour, and there were 7 of them. Trace and I committed ourselves to meeting our Wednesday morning deadline, and between the 2 of us, using four computers worked for more than 15 hours to complete this. When I look back on it, there are a few things that I could have done better. First, seeing the files ahead of time would have helped me understand the magnitude, also, being more organized and having the instructor mark timecode for slides, would have been helpful. All in all, I feel good about it, yes it was a lot of work, but this guy had been trying for years to get this course online, and what we helped him with, was what was holding them back. I have been working with both the ID and their tech person to come up with a more streamlined method for future presentations that will be going online. And....on an upnote, Trace and I got to basically take Comm 150 all over again, for free! So...that was cool.

Other than that, getting the Pattee DC installed happened this week. Trace and I met with the Len on Tuesday when we brought the sound panels over, and then went back over on Wednesday to set up all of the computers and decks. I have a tutorial binder all ready for Josh on Monday.

week of 3/6

By HANNAH INZKO on March 9, 2009 1:20 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Pretty much the highlight of my week today was getting to talk to Coco Kishi, one of my favorite contacts at UT Austin. I met her at NMC a few years ago, just as she was starting up her studio space and wanted to learn more about Studio 204, and loosely based her facility on the same concepts.

We check in on each other every once in awhile, but this time I initiated contact because I noticed that she was using some pretty interesting methods for scaling.

The website they have is really informational and I hopped around a lot learning about their new initiatives. The training module that really caught my attention is used by faculty who are assigning video projects, and completed by their students. The modules are built into the design of their class and required for each student as part of their grade. The modules go over what they will need to learn in order to complete their video project, and questions at the end ensure that the students have watched and understood the videos.

I also really liked the fact that they gave a lot of support to their faculty, and formed relationships with several different colleges around campus.

Their enrollment is somewhat similar to our main campus, they have about 50,000 students, and their video/editing facility is much smaller, they have a total of 17 machines and 4 staff that take the entirety of the appointments. To handle the flow, the faculty that are interested in assigning a project are worked with ahead of time on the type of project they will assign, and priority is given to the students that are coming from that "approved" class.

They also have several incentive programs to get faculty interested in using their services.

I asked Coco how many students they help in a semester and she said that they handle about 300 projects. This could mean that a student could come back a few times for the same project, but she said no more than 400 individual appts.

It might be interesting for us to talk about some of this stuff during our upcoming staff meeting? Just a thought.

Week of 2/27

By HANNAH INZKO on March 2, 2009 7:42 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Ahh,..this past week was the week of facility and equipment maintenance. I finally met with OPP about our card swipe being installed. It turns out that we do have the correct wiring in the building to support this thing, its just a matter of connecting to the hub downstairs. They will have to be drilling through the ceiling of the folks that live down there, and I'm not sure that Will looked happy, but I will bring him cupcakes, and everything will be ok. I am waiting for the rest of the OPP guys to come through and give me a final estimate before the work actually begins. Hopefully that will be soon.

I set up a meeting to talk to the building manager from OPP about signage. I really want to get some permanent directional signage up in Pollock. This meeting will happen on Monday.

We also received Trace's new computer. I thought it could be put in place on Friday when tech support came up, but...not so much. Again, hopefully soon. Lastly I was able to install the new version of iLife and iWork and Ryan and I played with iMovie for a good hour, trying to break it. Or at least find something we didn't like about it. Couldn't. Thats a really good sign.

I also settled on a part-time person to help out at Pattee, after my initial interview, I re-did the schedule and sent him up to Hank's group to do the final paperwork. He should be good to go in time for opening.

I also interviewed an applicant for the summer. I want to feel out how busy we are going to be before I can promise him a set amount of hours.

Intern is doing great! He took his first serious appointment on Friday, and by serious, I mean that it came with all kinds of issues. I think everyone here learned something about FCP and its accepted file formats that day.

Now that all of the maintenance issues came and went in one week, I can get back to updating the FCP workshop.

Week of 2/20

By HANNAH INZKO on February 23, 2009 11:20 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

My brain has been everywhere this week. I really made an effort to set aside time and read some blogs that I hadn't previously gotten a chance to look at.

One blog that really made me think was dana boyd's blog. She will be speaking at the symposium this year, and I really wanted to make sure that I good sense of what she was all about, and understand more about her research. I have to admit that in previous years of the symposium, I hadn't done my homework on who would be speaking (well, except for Lessig). Maybe because I am so wrapped up with the technicalities of the day, I mean heck, I haven't gotten to attend a session yet.

I found her paper "Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics" to be really interesting for me. I am hyper curious about the social impacts technology, especially in higher education, and how people shape and re-shape technology as much as it shapes us.

I was also inspired by Marcus Robinson, (the only MAC candidate I got to see), to look to the future at what we can be doing next. What other things are possible for DC and what things can be done better.

Several years ago I participated in the 5 Minutes of Fame at the NMC conference in Cleveland, OH. It was back when Studio 204 was just starting to take off and we really were the ONLY ones of our kind. I met a women named Coco Kishi from The University of Texas at Austin, who was just starting to plan a facility similar to what we had. We had some really good conversation at the conference and continued our correspondence for some time afterwards. She would call me with lists of questions on how we got things going here and she even linked to our tutorials until they created their own.

I stumbled upon the website for her facility the other day and I was totally blown away at their progress in just a few short years. They have even done what I have always wanted to do,... created courses for credit.

Work blog

One very cool project

Its pickin up

More blogging for my own good

Feeling compelled to write

I have no idea what week it is...oh..3/9

Week of 3/25

Spring break week

week of 3/6

Week of 2/27

Week of 2/20

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